from the editor: As American As

Roland Barthes argued for frites as the culinary sign of Frenchness. Because I am writing this letter at the Fourth of July, that most patriotic of American holidays, Im wondering whether there really is anything as American as apple pie. Ralph spent three years lobbying the New York State legislature before it agreed to create a new agricultural license that would allow spirits to be sold at the distillery, as wine is at wineries or beers at microbreweries. [...]this little craft distillery, which produces only ve thousand gallons of spirits a year, has to pay the same federal excise taxes as the big guys do: a whopping twenty-seven dollars on the gallon, adding 27 percent to Tuthilltowns production costs.