Who's calling the shots in US drinks trade?

New York

TREADWELL Park on the Upper East Side of Manhattan looks like any other sports bar. On game days, it can get packed with young business-casual types gathering at oversize screens, playing foosball and eating burgers and fries.

Downstairs, however, is a hidden lair - a tasting room, dedicated to the best beers in the world.

A former storage space, it can accommodate only about 10 people. This, however, didn't stop the Samuel Smith Brewery, a prestigious beer-making family in England, from choosing the cellar for one of the first tastings in the United States of its oatmeal stout.

Anne Becerra, the city's first woman to be a certified c…