Bar openings and events in NYC

We admit it—we have a crush on orange wine. You too? Then check out this wine festival dedicated to the stuff that will surely make you blush. On April 19, the fifth annual Orange Glou Fair is back to celebrate, you guessed it, everything orange. This orange-only wine fest, founded by orange wine expert and sommelier Doreen Winkler, will feature a whopping 100 wines from around the world, including pours from China, Japan, Spain and the U.S. Only showcasing varietals from independent winemakers, the festival highlights a selection of natural, organic and biodynamic pours as well as rare bottlings and hard-to-find vintages.   Taking over Gallery Space LES for the day, the festival offers forur sessions to book: 11am-1pm, 1pm-3pm, 3pm-5pm and 5-7pm. Tickets are priced at $45, and all attendees will come home with a trinket-worthy wine glass. So, come meet the winemakers, schmooze with fellow oenophiles and drink to your heart's desire.

There are a lot of cocktail-making classes in New York, but Manhattan’s first legal distillery to open since Prohibition, Great Jones, does it just right. Set within its underground speakeasy, its two-hour class, The Shake Up, taught me how to make two actually-delicious cocktails with its smooth whiskey—but that’s not all. To start the class, we were whisked into the distillery where we had a quick tour and learned about the distilling process and the different kinds of whisky that are made on site—helping set the scene for the imbibing we were about to do below.  Once downstairs, we were immediately greeted with a Great Jones Straight Bourbon Smoked Old Fashioned (a welcome cocktail) and a solid charcuterie board (smoked almonds, marinated olives, dark chocolate coins, Jasper Hills Farm Alpha Tolman cheese, Jasper Hills Farms Moses, American Prosciutto and housemade sourdough crackers) at each table. To my surprise, we did a tasting of a few of the Great Jones Straight Bourbons, which already had me wondering how I’d get through making two cocktails. Our mixologist Ren took us step-by-step on how to make a Boulevardier and a Paper Plane, giving us tips and tricks along the way, including how to use (and open) a cocktail shaker and how to smoke one. The welcoming and cozy atmosphere helped me to relax and just learn, too, rather than being anxious about not being the best mixologist. I definitely made a few spills along the way, but I learned so much about why whiskey...