Jeanne O'Brien Coffey

I may be dating myself, but I remember when Two-Buck Chuck first appeared in Trader Joe's. And honestly, it wasn't too bad. I believed the stories — that they were buying bulk wine that was sometimes very good, and sometimes not so good. My experience with the wine reflected that at the time— although these days, it's just not good.
Supermarket wine has a pretty bad rap here — deservedly so. Much of it is too sweet and unbalanced, with little thought given to flavor and a focus on price. But ...

I am standing barefoot in a Hindu temple in Kerala, having checked my shoes in a pile of hundreds and hundreds of others at the door. Dusk is falling, and music, lights and incense swirl all around me. Dozens of elephants are brushing past, close enough to touch. Walls lined with thousands of small oil lamps flicker on the crowds.
My group of five Americans are the only foreigners in the temple, in a crush of thousands. We're such an unusual sight that kids tugged on their parents’ clothing, ...

Typically, when you go to a tequila tasting, you taste tequila, right? You take it into your mouth, and even if your intention is to spit, you ingest some of the spirit. But the interesting thing about “taste,” as we all learned in biology class, is that humans can only identify a few distinct ones. Most of what we experience when tasting actually comes from scent – or more specifically, olfaction, as Harvard professor and serial inventor David Edwards can tell you.
“You can identify about a ...

The soaring windows are draped with opulent blue and gold velvet. A delicate antique writing desk, adorned with a magnifying glass and letter opener, stands in the corner before an inviting tufted chair. A delicately painted French Provincial style bed, with a tall white headboard and matching curved footboard, is edged by a pair of inlaid delicate antique nightstands. Beautiful ceramics adorn the gilded furniture and a leaded glass door leads to a terrace with sweeping views of the Loire Riv...

The chalkboard by-the-glass selection at Rebel Rebel may change over the course of a few hours—and that’s exactly how owner Lauren Friel likes it. She will pull the cork and sell a glass from nearly any of the 30-some bottles on the shelves lining the bar, all of them low-input and sustainably made. Friel also runs VinDrop, the consulting business that built the all-female wine list at Dirt Candy in New York City; several times a month, she invites like-minded winemakers such as Alex Krause o...

Let’s face it: Blue is hardly Mother Nature’s favorite when it comes to plate and palate. In fact, blue tints are often a signal to steer clear of foods. Even blueberries aren’t truly blue. And they can’t color cocktails a vibrant shade of indigo.
But butterfly pea flower can. The oddly named plant with sapphire petals has long been used to tint food and drinks in Southeast Asia, and tea made from the flower has been credited with health benefits, from anxiety reduction to antioxidant power. ...

Will Frank McClelland be coming to a suburb or grocery store near you? The acclaimed chef, who shocked us all by closing Boston’s famed L’Espalier this winter, is ready to get back into the kitchen, but his new mission is a far cry from the white tablecloths and special occasions of the restaurant he helmed for 30 years.

It’s mud season in New England. Which makes it the perfect time of year to get away to Portland.

Polo requires a strong core and a willingness to swing a mallet from
a moving horse

Eco-entrepreneur Tom Szaky built a multi-million dollar business selling garbage, cleverly upcycled as colorful totes and new shampoo bottles. But now he’s dreaming up a world that literally has zero trash.

Business
Spindrift founder Bill Creelman wants to upend the seltzer industry and do for carbonated water what Sam Adams did for beer. And he’s starting by asking what the competition is really made of. —By Jeanne O’Brien Coffey
On a brisk day just after the new year, Bill Creelman, founder and CEO of Spindrift, sets a shiny, unlabeled aluminum can on his desk at the seltzer company’s new headquarters in Newton. The unassuming gesture is ripe with anticipation: Inside is Spindrift’s newest fla...

Offering health benefits may seem costly, but so is hiring and training someone new—$3,500 for a single hourly employee. Benefits are a great way to keep talented team members from looking elsewhere.

Chef, restaurateur, and author Barbara Lynch shares her holiday in Gloucester

Reports of the death of the independent bookstore have been gravely exaggerated, to paraphrase the old Mark Twain saying. As communities and proprietors know, these welcoming spots are much more than just places to buy something to read.
“When I walk into a local bookstore, it’s my way of connecting with and supporting my community,” says Ryan Raffaelli, an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School who studies technology reemergence, which is the scien...

So things haven’t gone as planned this year, and your heart is full of revenge instead of bliss. Send an array of bitter chocolates or drinks, to show you’re so over it (not).