Mississippi River Distilling Company in LeClaire is purchasing the Artisan Grain Distillery and will be locating a new cocktail house and production facility there this summer. The building at 318 East 2nd Street in downtown Davenport was uniquely equipped to welcome the expansion of the growing distillery. “We were getting tight on space in LeClaire …
By Richard Thomas The bourbon boom was well underway when Deputy Editor Kurt Maitland and I paid a visit to Vendome Copper & Brassworks in mid-2014, but it continued to accelerate year on year in the almost eight years since then. Blanton’s was still reliably on store shelves and the so-called bourbon shortage was on …
Lost Lantern, the new independent bottler of American whiskey that launched less than 18 months ago, is pleased to announce their Spring 2022 collection, featuring four limited edition single casks from four celebrated distilleries: Smooth Ambler in West Virginia, Westward in Oregon, Frey Ranch Distillery in Nevada and Spirit Works in California. Beginning March 9, …
By Richard Thomas A few years ago, I coined the phrase “Craft Whiskey 2.0” to describe new and evolved features that defined small whiskey-makers relative to what they were in 2005 or 2010*. However, I never codified everything I meant by that anywhere, not even in my book American Whiskey, preferring to focus on the …
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 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+ 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 …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ One of the best aspects of Lost Lantern’s model is also what makes it unique: it’s a true negociant in the European sense, but plying its business in the United States. There are two things to understand about that statement to get at why it makes them unique. First, as …
