By Richard Thomas Rating: A- In September 2025, Heaven Hill returned to its historic roots in Bardstown, Kentucky in grand style. Although the company never left Bardstown after the disaster of the 1996 fire that destroyed their distillery, the locus of Heaven Hill operations clearly shifted to Shively after the purchase of the Bernheim Distillery. …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- To a bourbon fan, end of summer means more than more pleasant weather and the disappearance of mosquitoes. Autumn brings with it the annual limited edition release season, when all the most ardently sought, annualized whiskeys come out. Every year for the last eighteen years, the end of summer marked …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- This is one of those whiskeys that I feel should need no introduction or summary, but that said: it is among my personal favorites, one of the expressions I point to as being undoubtedly worth the (official) asking price. I’ll start with the mash bill. At a time when the …
By Randall H. Borkus Rating: A In late March 2025, Michter’s Master Distiller Dan McKee and Master of Maturation Andrea Wilson approved the release of Michter’s 10 Year Single Barrel Bourbon. “Rather than on a strict age schedule, at Michter’s we bottle whiskey when our production team deems it fully matured. This continues the standards …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- During the 2010s, Utah’s High West made a splash with whiskey nerds for their transparency. Although they were a negociant (or non-distiller producer, as bloggers who didn’t know there was a better term already in use in whisky circles preferred to call such a company), they had two characteristics that set …
By Kurt Maitland Rating: A Old Forester is a well known (one could safely say iconic) brand of Kentucky straight bourbon whisky produced by the Brown–Forman Corporation. It was the first bourbon sold exclusively in sealed bottles, first bottled and marketed in 1870 by the former pharmaceutical salesman turned bourbon-merchant prince, George Garvin Brown. The …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- The Non-Distiller Producer (NDP) called 15 Stars is a post-Pandemic foundation. Started in 2021 by a father and son team, Rick and Ricky Johnson, their first bottlings came out in late 2022. The Johnsons are a Columbus, Indiana family that is best known for their ownership of Black Jewell Popcorn, …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- In the latest release from its Orphan Barrel series, drink conglomerate Diageo returns the series to its roots by delivering an ultra-aged bourbon in the form of Fanged Pursuit 17 Year Old. The word about how Diageo sourced this is obscure, but the company says it came from two separate …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- For a long time, the only brand in the Jim Beam portfolio that was more neglected than Old Grand-Dad was Old Overholt. The only two expressions in the line were the namesake standard and Old Grand-Dad 114, a favorite budget buy among fans of high rye bourbon. What is more, …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Technically, the second round of 2024’s Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond still came out in the autumn: even if bottles didn’t reach shelves (or samples reaching reviewers) until it was officially early winter, the actual announcement was on December 12. For those who are not very aware of the calendar, winter …
