Category: regulators

Eight Special Single Malts…and a Cowboy Bourbon

We’ll have a double feature on this week’s WhiskyCast In-Depth, as Diageo’s Dr. Stuart Morrison joins us to detail this year’s Special Releases series –… Read More

We’ll have a double feature on this week’s WhiskyCast In-Depth, as Diageo’s Dr. Stuart Morrison joins us to detail this year’s Special Releases series – including a Lagavulin finished in tequila casks – and Donnis Todd of Texas’s Garrison Brothers Distillery gives us a preview of this year’s Cowboy Bourbon. It’s an uncut, unfiltered whopper of a Bourbon at 70.45% ABV! In the news, the TTB avoids being caught up in a U.S. government shutdown after Congress passed a short-term budget extension. Kentucky regulators want to shut down two of the state’s biggest buyers and sellers of vintage spirits over liquor law violations, and Scotch Whisky tourism has recovered from the pandemic. 

Episode 1024: October 1, 2023

Links: Diageo Special Releases | Garrison Brothers Distillery | Lexington Herald-Leader | Buffalo Trace | Whisky Auctioneer | Slane Irish Whiskey | Scotch Whisky Association | Wiggly Bridge Distillery | Blackened Whiskey | Ballantine’s | Duncan Taylor | Russell’s Reserve | Bunnahabhain | Dewar’s | Jack Daniel’s

Oregon Scandal Costs Liquor Regulators Their Jobs

February 19, 2023 – There’s a scandal brewing in Oregon, where both the executive director and chairman of the state’s liquor control board have resigned under pressure from Governor Tina Kotek. Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission chairman Paul Rosenbaum resigned Thursday following the ouster of executive director Steve Marks. Marks was one of several OLCC executives implicated in an internal investigation last year that found they had diverted bottles of Pappy Van Winkle and other rare Bourbons from retail sale for their own use The Oregonian newspaper broke details of the internal probe, which also found that the agency executives paid for Read More »

February 19, 2023 – There’s a scandal brewing in Oregon, where both the executive director and chairman of the state’s liquor control board have resigned under pressure from Governor Tina Kotek. Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission chairman Paul Rosenbaum resigned Thursday following the ouster of executive director Steve Marks. Marks was one of several OLCC executives implicated in an internal investigation last year that found they had diverted bottles of Pappy Van Winkle and other rare Bourbons from retail sale for their own use

The Oregonian newspaper broke details of the internal probe, which also found that the agency executives paid for the bottles and denied selling them on the secondary market.

Oregon’s attorney general has launched a criminal investigation to see whether any state ethics laws were broken.

Links: The Oregonian