October 2, 2006

Nights in Black Velvet

If you ask us (and we know no one did), stout, and Guinness in particular, is the single greatest beer ever created. Sliding Guinness sales aside it's the perfect beverage, fine to drink alone or alongside any meal from Bangers and Mash to ham and eggs. While we usually drink our stouts straight, there's a long history of combining this black gold with other liquids, from Bass beer in a Black and Tan to a shot of Chambord in a Black Fog.

The redoubtable Wine X Magazine has opened our eyes to another Guinness concoction - the Black Velvet. A combination of stout and sparkling wine, the Black Velvet has a reputation of transcendence. Or, it has that reputation in the few places the bartender has heard of it anyway. A lot of bars around us in the Boston area serve them, but we've never sampled - we're going to make sure to fix that mistake after all the praise being lavished on the drink. Learn more about the Black Velvet, including tips for good stouts to try and choosing the wine to pair it with at Wine X; we've also found some other stout recipes at DrinksMixer.

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