To be called bourbon it must be at least 51% corn. The rest may be any grain.”What does the industry mean when they say ‘high’ or ‘low’ rye bourbon?”It is a common question, often misunderstood.First, this is rye-recipe bourbon we are talking about, no…
In June 2008, the second year of this blog, I wrote a post about Chicago theater based on a performance I had attended the night before, and on an article that day in the Chicago Tribune.As it happened, the artistic director of the theater company that…
The Edith Farnsworth House. Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1951, on the Fox River just outside Plano, Illinois.The Edith Farnsworth House is one of the most significant buildings of the 20th century. It is one of the jewels of the Chicago area an…
As I recount in the new issue of Bourbon+, the 1980s were the worst of times for American whiskey. Sales were off by half, from a high-water mark more than a decade in the past. Producers at first believed the decline would be temporary, a hiccup…
The 2017 World Championship Bourbon Barrel Relay® Race at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, Bardstown, Kentucky.The World Championship Bourbon Barrel Relay Races are the highlight of the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown. Teams or indivi…
1995 ad from Smirnoff’s ‘Message in a Bottle’ campaign.In 2020, federal regulators in the U. S. dropped the rule that vodka has to be “without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.” Since they didn’t change the definition of vodka, this m…
The Wigle Whiskey production team (left to right) Richard Platania, Brian Waryck, Michael Foglia, and (center) Rachel Bateman, Taylor Bostock. Pittsburgh-based Wigle Whiskey won 28 medals, the most of any distillery, at the American Craft Sp…
The original Jacob’s Well Bourbon (c. 1997)In their promotion for Hardin’s Creek, a new brand from Beam Suntory, they write this: “There’s a mantra in the Beam family: True legacy is never finished.”That statement may be truer than its writer int…
Grave of James Christopher Crow; Versailles Cemetery; Versailles, Kentucky.Although death is always the end of something, it can cause something else to begin. That is what happened when James Christopher Crow, 67, died in Woodford County, Kentuc…
Bound by a NDA, or lying?A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract covering confidential information the parties wish to share with each other, but with restrictions on wider sharing. In the whiskey world, when you try to find out who made s…
