Dragoon Brewing Co. holds its official grand opening tomorrow, Friday, May 18, and food truck Animal Farm will be in the parking lot. Then, as if that isn't awesome enough, on Saturday, May 19, more tasting room hours and this time food truck Planet of the Crepes will be there. From the brewery's website:

Next up, Friday the 18th, we’re [Grand] Opening our doors for our normal Friday taproom hours, 3-8pm. Come in, have a pint, get a growler filled, and eat some delicious food from Animal Farm (the foodtruck). And finally, this Saturday, the 19th, we’re going to be open for our normal taproom hours (normal = from now on), 2-8pm. Planet of the Crepes will be parked out front, serving up some, you guessed it, crepes.

When I die I want to be wrapped in a man-sized Planets of the Crepes crepe, placed on a Viking-style raft, lit on fire and floated out to sea with a pint of Dragoon Brewing Co. beer in one hand and an Animal Farm burger in the other. That is all.

There's a new winery down in Sonoita called Hops and Vines, and I am smitten with it. From the winery's brand-spanking-new website:

We're a small winery that's awesome! One of many great Sonoita-area wineries in Southern Arizona, our family farm is a fun, warm place for families and wine afficionados alike.

From its interesting line of non-alcoholic beverages called The Sober Shack to a variety of wines - we hear the most popular one thus far is a Muscat called The Fluffer - it's well worth checking out. A spokesman for the company tells us the winery is also the only local producer of hops, which should be of interest to the growing number of microbreweries taking shape around town.

There are tastings ("$10 with our glass, $5 with your glass"), special events, gatherings around bonfires, the list goes on. Head over here to check out more on all that.

Hotel Congress is throwing its annual Agave Fest this Friday, May 4, with more than 40 different liquors to sample, $2 street tacos and a performance by the Latin Funk Project. More on all that here.

This year's event will also include an Iron Chef-style bartending competition in which contestants can make any drink they want, except margaritas. There will be plenty of other innovative cocktails to sample as well.

While it's still going on somewhat under the radar, Tucson has a steadily growing cocktail scene that can be glimpsed at events such as this one. It wasn't more than four or five years ago that we had no modern cocktail to speak of and now we have our own chapter of the United States Bartending Guild - which is one of the sponsors of Agave Fest - and restaurants across the city that are steadily raising the ante drink-wise.

Tickets to Friday's event are $25.

If The Guardian says that rappers are endorsing moscato and it's apparently perfect for our forthcoming hellfire of a summer, I guess that's all I'm drinking now. My desire to keep up with rap beverage trends hasn't always turned out well (I still have a case of St. Ides in my garage, for example), but it's too late to turn back now.

In the past couple of years, a more down to earth drink has cropped up in songs by Kanye West, Drake and Lil' Kim. Moscato, a slightly sweet, fizzy, low alcohol and inexpensive white wine with origins in Piedmont, Italy, has become the hip-hop community's new favourite drink. According to a report on decanter.com, sales have risen by 70% in the US in a year. And supermarket buyers are anticipating something similar here.

It's not hard to see the appeal of moscato to rappers or indeed anyone else. At its best, moscato is pure, aromatic and unforced, sweet without being icky, and light (generally around 5.5%), all qualities that also make it perfect for a summer's afternoon.

The new Tucson brewery Dragoon Brewing Co. opens the doors to its new taproom this Friday. From the brewery's blog:

Hi all – it’s been a great week here at Dragoon Brewing. As you probably know, we have released our first beer, Dragoon IPA. We’ve been happy with the responses and the excitement everyone has shown and are so glad you all enjoyed the beer!

Our plan was always to open our tasting room for regular hours once we had at least three or four beers ready to serve – we’re not there yet, but because the response has been so good this week, we’d like to open our taproom for a special event, in which you can buy growlers of our IPA!

Here’s how this will work: at 4:00pm on the 27th of April, we will open our doors and sell growlers full of our delicious Westcoast-style IPA. The containers are going for $8 and the liquid itself $12. You can get out the door for $20 total (we include tax in all our pricing). This event will be first-come, first-served. We have a limited amount of our first batch of IPA (a lot, but there’s still only so much), so when we run out, we’re out! If you aren’t able to make it or if we run out, you can still get our IPA at several locations around Tucson – Time Market, Wilko, Cartel, 1702 – more kegs are out on the market but as far as we know, haven’t been tapped yet – check Twitter for up-to-date info!

If IPA isn’t your thing, don’t fret! We will be releasing our Stronghold Session Ale very soon. And we’ll most likely run another event just like this once we have both Session & IPA out.

Mead is wine made from fermenting a mix of honey, water and, depending on the type being made, fruit and spices. The answer to why local chef Jerry Morgan's award-winning mead is so delicious, however, requires a longer discussion.

I met Morgan - a chef at renowned eatery Janos - last year when we arranged a trade: A box of my homegrown veggies for a bottle of his prickly-pear mead. After one sip of said beverage I knew something special was going on, a hunch that was recently validated by Morgan taking top honors at the Arizona Mead Cup. You can check out the results here.

Morgan took home a gold for a mead he brewed with mesquite honey and hibiscus flowers. He says there were hundreds of entries in the contest and that he was quite honored to place so highly.

If you're finding yourself a little jealous that only a small circle of people - including Janos Wilder, who reportedly has a bottle of Morgan's mead in his personal wine cellar - and the judges of the Arizona Mead Cup have tasted this heavenly beverage, take heart. Morgan has filed the paperwork to start what he says will be Tucson's first mead-brewing company. He's currently seeking investors and a spot to make it all happen.

Morgan's Mead will be a far cry from the scant number of commercial mead choices currently available. Morgan says he'll use local honey, which varies from batch to batch and will pass on various nuances to each run of mead. He also used to work at Native Seeds/SEARCH and says he'll be using the knowledge he learned of local foods there to create his products.

"I want to do something unique, but I also want to do something that is tied to the Southwest," said Morgan. "I'll be using local honey, and each batch of honey differs depending on where the bees went and the water content."

Morgan says a big part of his job will also be educating the public that mead can range from sweet to dry, and that there's a whole galaxy of flavors that can be created.

Morgan wasn't sure when the business would get off the ground, but we'll let you know when it does.

It surprises me a little that The Buffet has a Facebook page, but if you enjoy booze-related humor, it's a worthwhile "like".

HUB Restaurant and Ice Creamery and the nearby Playground Bar and Lounge are holding an Easter egg hunt this coming weekend. The best part? Inside each egg there will be a slip of paper entitling the finder to a beer for a penny.

Owner Kade Mislinski says 100 eggs will be hidden at HUB and Playground and "all about" and that it costs $5 to participate. Whoever finds the most eggs, and ostensibly drinks the most beers (although I'm pretty sure you'll be able to pass your penny beers on to less successful egg-seekers), gets to pick the charity to which all the money made at the event is donated to.

The events start at 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday April 7 and 8.

With opening day just a week away, we talked with Tucson Padres General Manager Mike Feder about the upcoming AAA Baseball club's season. He's excited about a lot of things, but he made a point of mentioned that this year's Thirsty Thursdays (co-sponsored by your friends here at Tucson Weekly) will feature this astounding technology of Bottoms Up beer.

"The beer pours from the bottom and it pours a virtually perfect 16-oz. beer," Feder says. "The beauty of it is, you can do 40 or 50 beers a minute."

Here's the upside: The cups are 16 ounces, so you're getting more beer per cup. Minor downside: Thirsty Thursday beers will be $1.50 instead of a buck, but with the larger serving, you won't need to go back as often and lines will be shorter, so quit your complaining.

Opening night is Thursday, April 5. Details here!

Wine shop Catavinos at 3063 N. Alvernon Way holds yet another inspired wine-tasting this week:

With April Fool's Day right around the corner we're here to prove that no fools attend wine tastings at CataVinos. Here's where you put your palate to the test to see if all that wine-tasting is paying off. We'll pour six wines disguised in brown paper packaging. Your tasting sheet will provide tasting notes; your assignment is to decide which wine is which. A fun favorite around here, anyone matching all six wines correctly tastes for free. No kidding!

The tastings take place from 4 to 8 p.m., Thursday, March 29 through Saturday, March 31. It's $10 to taste six wines.

Check out their tasting schedule over here for more details.