By Richard Thomas During a Zoom tasting of the Four Roses Small Batch Limited Edition 2025, Master Distiller Brent Elliott revealed that not only did his distillery have a new mash bill, but they had two and had already put barrels of the new whiskey onto their ricks. Until very recently, Elliott and his predecessors …
By Richard Thomas The Bourbon Boom is over. Although just how bad the current whiskey sales slump is unclear to outsiders, the slump is very real. Attending this slump is the bursting of the investment bubble that led so many tech\finance bros to sink their excess cash into barrels of whiskey and warehousing ventures, while …
Purchase a copy of Mother of Bourbon on Amazon. By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Although I would not describe Mary Dowling as the literal mother of bourbon, the subtitle of this new book from Rabbit Hole founder Kaveh Zamanian and author Eric Goodman is certainly true enough. The story of Mary Dowling has been quite neglected, …
By Richard Thomas The other day my inbox had a share in it, a video short from the TikToker Barchemistry about frothing whiskey to improve its taste. The idea is to use a milk frother, the sort of device that an avid home barista ought to have handy, to give the liquid a vigorous stir …
The American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) today announces the election and installation of Jordan Cotton of Cotton & Reed (DC) as the President of the Board of Directors. He has served as a member of the organization’s Board of Directors since 2023, and has been a key ally on the ground in Washington, including chairing …
By Richard Thomas Buffalo Trace Distillery draws in some 340,000 visitors annually which places it among the most visited distilleries in the world. For most of those visitors, the distillery’s location on the banks of the Kentucky River is one of its most bucolic features; indeed, the distillery itself figures prominently for kayakers and boaters …
By Richard Thomas When Maker’s Mark released Maker’s 46, it was a major landmark for Kentucky bourbon. Since its inaugural release in 1953, the only product the Loretto, Kentucky company had ever sold was its flagship expression, Maker’s Mark itself. Five decades passed between Bill Samuels, Sr. starting the family business over again, famously burning …
Heaven Hill marked a historic milestone yesterday with the first barrel filled at the new Heaven Hill Springs Distillery in Bardstown. Nearly three decades after a fire destroyed the original facility, the event celebrates the return of distilling to the Bourbon Capital of the World and ushers in a new era for Heaven Hill as …
By Randall H. Borkus Rating: A Richard Thomas, is my friend, managing editor and the owner of the online magazine The Whiskey Reviewer. He released a book last month called Whiskey Stories: The True Spirit Behind the Labels. This is not Thomas’ first book, so here we have a seasoned, or shall I say well-aged …
By Richard Thomas In my new book Whiskey Stories (due out March 4), I made some observations on the attention given to Nathan Green, the slave (later freedman) who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey, and the rise of African-American distillers before, during and after the spotlight was placed on Green’s story. As part of …
