Editor's Note: It's Friday, and it's been a long week - we could all probably use a drink. Here to help us is Greg Best, the mixologist and partner in Restaurant Eugene, Holeman & Finch Public House and H&F Bottle Shop in Atlanta. Visual aids provided by Mark Hill, the Director of Photography for Turner Broadcasting.

This drink was conceived in an effort to be contrarian to the contrarians. It’s no secret that there are many affiliated to bar culture who can’t help but cringe when the word "vodka" is mentioned in their presence. I’ve never understood this, because it’s the first thing most drinking folks ask for. Sure, I understand that it’s not the most expressive or exciting spirit to play with, but let’s face it, it’s not going anywhere.

Enter the Punch Wagon. Delightfully refreshing, bright and snappy, this is a perfect example of what I’d call a "gateway cocktail," or "trust-building drink." Using well-known ingredients in a playful recipe allows for the feel of a user-friendly cocktail experience without some of the more eccentric trappings that we drink geeks are prone to.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Sometimes, when it comes to beer, the question is not "how?" but "why?" Take, for instance, Sankt Gallen Brewery in the Kanagawa region of Japan. In the past they’ve been modestly known for flavored beers: sweet orange ale, pineapple ale, orange chocolate stout. As of this week, though, they are abruptly widely known (at least among beer news followers) for their Un, Kono Kuro, a coffee stout made with coffee beans that have passed through the digestive tract of an elephant.

Now, right about here is where I run into all sorts of problems. Let’s just bypass the question of whether this beer tastes good or not. The real question is this: Why on earth would you ever want to eat or drink anything that was excreted by an elephant?
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Stale, contaminated nuts and pretzels served in a culture dish are standard fare in most bars.

But some establishments across the country aren't only taking their countertop cuisine to new levels - bomboloni, gougères, croque monsieur! - they've decided to give it patrons on the house.

Gratis bar food may be a dying tradition in some quarters, but we found a number of joints that don't care about cost or mess, opting to dry your whistle before they wet it. Here are ten of the finest, for starters. Serve us up your own favorites.

Discover the 10 best free bar snacks in the U.S. on CNN Travel.

Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and writes Eatocracy's beer column, "Berrong on Beer." He Tweets at @nathanberrong and logs beers at Untappd.

I’m always looking for better beer. I’m not content with run of the mill breweries and with the continued growth of craft beer and new breweries popping up daily, there’s really no excuse for drinking bad beer. But getting the beer from source (brewery) to destination (mouth) isn’t as straightforward as one might think.

Luckily, designers and brewmasters are working together to improve vessel technology. Here are three design innovations to optimize the beer drinking experience.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Today, I’m told, is Malbec World Day. Why it isn’t World Malbec Day, I don’t know, though certainly the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship must; they, after all, are the ones who came up with it. Nevertheless, “Malbec World” sounds like a department store, and personally, I think that if they wish this celebration to catch on, they ought to reverse it.

That’s where my complaints end, though. I’m entirely happy with Malbec itself, a red grape that first achieved notice in the French regions of Bordeaux (where they largely ditched it after a big frost in 1956 killed off most of the Malbec vines) and Cahors. But French Malbec (or Cot, as it’s sometimes called) can be bruisingly tannic and tough, and it’s Argentina where Malbec has really come into its own.

The grape arrived in 1868, carried over by a French agricultural engineer named Michel Pouget, and now it’s grown on more than 75,000 acres. As well there might be: Argentine Malbec at its best combines vivid black-fruit and spice notes with a firm (but not aggressively tannic) structure. On top of that, there are very good Argentine Malbecs available for modest prices - never a bad thing. Here are five to check out.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

Among various mundane considerations, such as being Tuesday, today also happens to be Winston Churchill Day. Admittedly, W. C. Day isn’t exactly the most well-known commemorative day. It’s definitely way below Earth Day, for instance, which is coming up on the April 22. But I do like to think that it’s got more legs - as it were - than National Dance Like a Chicken Day (May 14). One can only hope.

Regardless, April 9 marks the day that Churchill was made an honorary U.S. citizen. There have been only seven, ever, and only two of those managed to still be alive when they received the honor - our man Winston, and Mother Teresa. Churchill definitely wins over Mother T. when it comes to loving wine. He was particularly known for his fondness for Champagne, hence the famous quote, “Remember, gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!” He also loved good Bordeaux and port.
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Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and writes Eatocracy's beer column, "Berrong on Beer." He Tweets at @nathanberrong and logs beers at Untappd.

Today is Good Friday, a day on the Christian calendar that calls to remembrance the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. For Christians, this is a day of sorrow that is often marked with fasting and contemplation in order to bring a constant awareness of Jesus’ death. It marks the last days of the Lenten season - a time in the life of liturgical Christians who deny themselves of something for roughly 40 days as a penitence to Christ.

On Sunday, Christians all over the world will join together in praise marking the resurrection of Jesus and the beginning of the Easter Season, a 50-day celebration filled with feasting, or as my pastor puts it, "eating good food and drinking good wine and beer."

That got me thinking about the Easter season in a totally different way. Although my faith is routinely being challenged and reworked, there are definitely things in the Bible I can fully commit to and support. Love God? Love your neighbor as yourself? Love your enemies? Turn the other cheek? Thou shalt not kill? Eat good food and drink good beer and wine as a way to celebrate the goodness of God? I’m totally on board!
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

You’ve got your ham, or you’ve got your lamb. When it comes to Easter dinner, at least in the U.S., these are the main courses people gravitate toward. But there’s also one other inescapable Easter food: the egg. When the kids amble home from the annual Easter egg hunt and suddenly you’ve got 15 hard-boiled eggs on hand, who cares if they’re covered in colorful stripes and spots? You still have to eat the things, right?

So, looking at it that way, the ideal all-purpose Easter wine should be good with ham and good with lamb and good with eggs. Moreover, it should be festive. And, ideally, not too pricey. That’s a tall order. It’s like looking for fat-free pork belly, or a modest politician.

But for me, there is one answer out there, and it’s sparkling rosé. Sparkling wines tend to work well with salty foods like ham. The richer fruit of a rosé will give it enough substance to go with lamb, and the wine’s acidity (plus the light rasp of the bubbles) makes it one of the few types of wine that go well with eggs.

Rosé sparkling wines are made all over the world these days, or at least all over the winemaking world, and they’ve become increasingly popular in recent years. Here are a few excellent possibilities.
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Facing renewed controversy about the safety of energy drinks, Monster Energy Corp. has decided to market its products as beverages instead of dietary supplements.

The company recently joined the American Beverage Association, which recommended it sell its products as a food, according to spokeswoman Tammy Taylor. Monster Energy's products will not change, but in the coming months its labels will include the caffeine content in each can.
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Ray Isle (@islewine on Twitter) is Food & Wine's executive wine editor. We trust his every cork pop and decant – and the man can sniff out a bargain to boot. Take it away, Ray.

If there’s one kind of wine in the whole world of wine that’s misunderstood, it’s probably kosher wine. The basic misnomer is that it is somehow different - that the process of making kosher wine differs in some radical way from the process of making regular, un-kosher wine. This idea, mostly, isn’t true.

The short version is this: Grapes are kosher, and there’s nothing about the nature of the winemaking process that makes them not so. What matters is more the who than the how.
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