Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Guess You'll Be Toasting the New Year With Korbel | What's becoming really big now that the economy is screwed? Budget beer, apparently. Low-end brews like Busch and Keystone have seen sales shoot up in recent weeks. [AdAge]

Diamond Dusted Liquor | What a perfect time to launch a decadent, extravagant product: Double Cross Luxury Vodka is filtered through diamond dust—just what we've always thought vodka was missing. [The Daily]

Are you fond of the refreshing effects of a super-caffeinated beverage every now and again? Well, that probably means you're on your way to become a drug abuser. According to psychiatry professor Roland Griffiths, who's calling for caffeinated drinks to carry health warnings, energy drink consumption in college students "predicted subsequent non-medical use of prescription stimulants, like Ritalin." Horrifying! If only they were just smoking pot and moving on to injecting heroin, like previous generations. More

Are You Surprised? | "'Vodka and scotch sales are up, there's no question about that,' said Chris Adams, executive vice president of Sherry-Lehmann Wines & Spirits... Traffic in his store has increased this month by 23 percent." [Crain's]

Wine, Online | Amazon.com plans to start selling wine later this year, now that the bans on out-of-state wine shipments to New York and Michigan have been struck down. Amazon will only be selling selections from California, so if you're into French or Italian varieties, you're out of luck. Oh, and no hard stuff. Just wine. You'll still have to head to your local liquor store for your vodka in plastic jugs. [WSJ]

College Presidents: Drinking Age a Major Bummer | In a move that flies in the face of everything that movies have taught us about university administrators, a coalition of college presidents is campaigning to have the drinking age reduced from 21 to 18. Notably absent from the list of signatories: the presidents of 19 of the Princeton Review's top 20 party schools. Class of 2013, expect a funnel and a ping-pong ball in your admission package! [NYDN]

"Pure" Booze | If we're to believe the result of a Daily News reporter's experiment, your liver actually knows the difference between regular beer, wine, and spirits and "organic" alcoholic drinks, which supposedly contain fewer additives and chemicals and pose less risk of a bad hangover. The risk of waking up in a stranger's bed? About the same. [NYDN]