By Randall H. Borkus Rating: A Barrell Craft Spirits launched Dovetail, a blend of bourbon and whiskey expressing the company’s favorite sources and flavors, in 2018. For 2022, they have released an ultra-premium Gray Label expression using the same blending. Here Barrell Craft Spirits chose older and rarer barrels with some of the spirits aged …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A Summertime had been a pretty sleepy season on the whiskey release calendar. Autumn is the time of year most of the exciting one-shot releases and fan favorite annual editions come out, running right up to Christmas. Springtime also has some buzz, especially in Europe. Perhaps because summer isn’t considered “whiskey …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Making its way to or reaching shelves right now is the latest batch of Booker’s Bourbon for 2022. This one is dubbed The Lumberyard Batch, referring back to the time that Booker Noe worked in a lumber yard prior to entering the family trade at Jim Beam and embarking on …
By Kenrick Thurston-Wilcox Rating: A Leopold Bros Three Chamber Rye is the culmination of research, patience, and the idea to look to the past to see what could be done differently. This is an attempt to create something that has not been on the market in almost a century; to transport people back to a …
By Douglas Fraser Rating: A- Barrell Craft Spirits is an independent blender and bottler of whiskeys and other spirits, based in Louisville, KY. So far, they have created 32 unique batches of their signature bourbon, all bottled at cask strength. Each release is its own different expression, as they are drawn from different distilleries, and …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Hybrid whiskeys were quite the thing several years ago. This category includes any blend made from two or more distinct types of whiskey, with the first major example in the United States probably being the reportedly accidental creation of Wild Turkey Forgiven, a bourbon-rye hybrid. Virginia Distilling Company’s initial line …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- These last few years have seen Colorado-based Laws Whiskey House build on the age of their bonded whiskeys, year by year. I have enjoyed watching the progression and the results of this so much that I am thinking I need to time a 2023 visit to the Centennial State to …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Smoking grain has been a widely embraced practice in American craft whiskey for more than a decade now. Darek Bell, co-founder of Nashville’s Corsair Artisan Distillery, wrote an entire book on the subject. In the Southwest, smoking with mesquite has become a regional signature. Some distillers have taken to importing …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A Whenever a new annual limited edition series gets started, I cross my fingers and hope the list of hard-to-get bottles has finally reached critical mass. It’s a dream of mine: that someday soon, there will be so many of these expressions out there that demand will break and one might …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Laws Whiskey House got to my house, I thought “in a few years, I will need to stop talking about mature craft whiskey and start talking about middle-aged craft whiskeys!” That would be because this third batch of the Colorado distillery’s San Luis Bonded Rye is seven years old. Who …
