Free Republic

Annacarla Berta’s first taste of grappa came right around the time that most of us would be learning to form full sentences. While spending time with her father Gianfranco in their family’s Piedmontese distillery, the then-three-year-old stuck her finger in a recently distilled batch of grappa upon her father’s insistence. Her first impression? “I don’t remember loving it!” laughs Annacarla, now in her mid-twenties. “But now I like it much more.” As the latest generation to carry on the legacy of Distillerie Berta, Annacarla knows that the general idea of grappa among Americans falls a bit closer to the first...

A Wisconsin man is warning others about the dangers of binge drinking after he jumped over the edge of a parking garage wall and fell four stories to the pavement below. Matt Mathe survived the fall, which was caught on surveillance video. The video shows him running full speed and flipping over the wall. For a split second, he tries to catch himself, but by then it is too late. Mathe said he was so drunk that he thought he was on the first floor and could simply hop over the wall onto the street. "It was a mistake," he...