Your daily dose of news and happenings from around the drink-o-sphere:
– Aaron Goldfarb asks why small towns seem to produce better beer than big cities.
– The Economist covers the Oxford-Cambridge wine-tasting contest.
– One of the five new bars helmed by Dushan Zaric at Hotel Figueroa will lack an actual bartop.
– Finally, are New York’s bars stuck in the past?
[Photo: Flickr/Quinn Dombrowski]