By Richard Thomas Rating: xxx Dewar’s is a pretty familiar sight in the United States, as well it should be: it’s the second-best selling Scotch Whisky brand in the country, and that country happens to be the world’s most lucrative whiskey market. Less well-known are the single malts (or grain whiskies for that matter) that …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B- As covered in previous Broken Barrel reviews, the company’s gimmick is stave inserts, which they have trademarked as an “Oak Bill.” This puts a particular twist on the secondary maturation process, commonly referred to as finishing. Whereas conventional finishing involves transferring the whiskey from its original, primary cask to another …
By Emma Briones Rating: B Today, almost all distilleries start by learning from others. Some do it from a distance, others ask for help directly or use whiskeys from others to learn how to mix or tune. And what it does is enrich them all. To those who learn and those who teach. Some decide …
By Douglas Fraser Rating: B+ In an international and antipodean collaboration between the state of Vermont, USA and Sydney, Australia comes a rye whiskey barrel aged coffee liqueur. Mr. Black X Whistle Pig Barrel Aged Coffee Liqueur is the creation of stunning pairing of Mr. Black Coffee and Whistle Pig Rye Whiskey. This liqueur pairs …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B Every cask strength batch is a limited edition release in its own right, and always has been. The batching may be the same, drawing on similarly aged and warehoused stock every time, but the very word “cask strength” points right to the fact that each batch will always be a …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B- A little background about Broken Barrel before we get to their Heresy Rye. This story starts with Seth Benhaim, who started his own liquor company with Infuse Spirits in 2012, at age 29. As the name implies, that company was about a line of infused vodkas. Benhaim built on that …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Ever since Andy and Charles Nelson launched Belle Meade Bourbon and began working on reviving Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, I have been patiently waiting the taste their properly matured, in-house whiskey. Peeks first came in their white whiskey, followed by a two year old whiskey from their first …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B A couple of months ago, I was at an event sponsored by a whiskey club and asked to give a few impromptu remarks. I decided to address my notion of Craft Whiskey 2.0, and was later asked about a feature of that concept: the gaining maturity of whiskey made by …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ It is such a fixture of Craft Whiskey 2.0 that I get tired of saying it, only to find that saying it is necessary: whiskey made by small distillers is now properly mature more often than not. Many of the bottles coming out of Pittsburgh’s Wigle Distillery are a perfect …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Seeing as how I was down in the Brooklyn Navy Yard just a few days ago, enjoyed a warm cocktail on a frigid, pre-Snowpocalypse 2022 day, it seems like as good a time as any to address Kings County Distillery’s Empire Rye. It’s a good example of one of the …
