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: B Out this month is a new offering from Newport’s New Riff Distillery, part of the Northern Kentucky enclave of distilleries. This story starts when New Riff began mashing and distilling a 100% malted rye in 2014. The first batch of this was released a year ago, which was also when …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B- Rochester’s Black Button Distilling has a foot in two different camps when it comes to bourbon. One foot is in the craft sector, where they have released a flagship four grain bourbon. The other harkens back to a older and more traditional time, when New York was one of the …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B West Virginia’s Smooth Ambler became a fan favorite from the start, establishing a reputation for transparency early on. The company was one of the first to ply the now well-trodden path of starting a whiskey business as a bottler of sourced stock, build a brand, and then transition into becoming …
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 …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ If you read my work, then you are probably familiar with Indiana’s Starlight Distillery through Lisa Rope Wicker’s past work with them, that being how I usually make mention of them. The distillery was started by Ted Huber as an outgrowth of his orchard and winery, the latter being a …
By Douglas Fraser Rating: A- Ed Belfour is a Hall of Fame NHL Hockey Player who was lucky enough to be a part of two Stanley Cup Championship winning teams. An avid whiskey fan with a strong palate too, he has now found a new venture in the bourbon business. This new spirits company, is …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B Located in the Appalachian foothills of Virginia, not all that far from Charlottesville, Virginia Distillery made its initial reputation for skillfully created hybrid whiskies: they blended their youthful in-house American single malts with imported Scottish malts, and then gave the hybrid a “marriage” (secondary finishing) in used-but-native Virginia casks. An …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ This most recent release from the skilled folks at Barrell Craft Spirits is drawn from 6, 7, 10, 15 and 16 year old barrels sourced from the (now familiar) states of Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee. The company says the 6, 7 and 10 year old bourbons were of two groups, …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B One of the best outcomes of American whiskey becoming a truly national industry, with distilleries producing coast to coast for the first time in our history, is the creation of so many regional styles and appellations. One such is Empire Rye, a New York State appellation created by a growing …
