By Micah Hanks

Andre Terrail, third-generation owner of the famous La Tour d'Argent

The La Tour d’Argent restaurant in Paris plans to auction 18,000 bottles of its finest vintage wines, featuring Cognac, Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux, and a variety of other treats to be gathered up by collectors and enthusiasts.

The BBC reported today that close to 1m euros is expected to be raised by the sale, which La Tour d’Argent hopes will help “renew the cellar’s contents and ensure the restaurant keeps its multiple Michelin stars.” Upholding a rigorous claim to their quality and class, the restaurant’s website shares the following about the operation:

Every “Tower” has its legend and, as you can imagine, ours is no exception. Throughout all the vicissitudes of history, for close on a century the Tour d’Argent has maintained its almost sacred attachment to tradition and honor. Indeed, the venerable age of the building and the authentic anecdotes surrounding it count much less than the extraordinary enthusiasm of André Terrail, after him, his son Claude and now, again, André. Time and people may pass and fashions may change, but the table is always set at the Tour d’Argent.

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Occasionally, we all get a hankering for a lighter, less-expensive beer. Perhaps it’s the cheap cool they provide on a hotter summer day, or the easy, smooth drinkability as they glide down one’s gullet.

Many of the larger American macro-brew companies boast titles that liken themselves to being royalty; this, of course, can tend to cause uproarious scoffing in the company of fine craft-brew connoisseurs. Still, those who proudly call themselves consumers of what are truly considered to be finer beers know that there are plain and humble lagers canned on American soil which, though often paired among the least expensive brands at your local supermarket or alcoholic beverage store, hide golden (albeit foamy) treasure worthy of note.

For this reason, I’m proud to announce the first of a series of features that will be appearing here at Culture of Spirits written by my good friend Smoky Wydell (a.k.a. Dakota Waddell). “Smoky” is a history major living in Asheville, North Carolina, with a penchant for finer craft brews and traditional Southern sippin’-whiskies known for having a little more alcoholic content that their mid-shelf competitors. Nonetheless, having grown up in the rural Smokies of Western North Carolina (one might ruminate that this was the impetus for his nickname, at least in part), Waddell also maintains a bit of reverence for less expensive American lagers and “shwag beers” favored by the “high society” of the lower-middle class. Thus, it is with great delight that I introduce him to you with his first installment of “The Poor Man’s Palative: High Rolling Among the Lower Middle Class with Smoky Wydell.”

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