By Alex Southgate Rating: B This review reaches into Speyside, and brings back one of my bigger love/hate relationships. I’m more of an Irish Whiskey fan, and the biggest reason for this is peat. I just don’t have a great fondness of peaty whiskies. The smokiness in heavily peated whiskies is something that I find …
By Richard Thomas Rating: Blue Note is a brand from B.R. Distilling Company in Memphis, Tennessee, which was founded in 2014 and the oldest whiskey company currently operating in that city. Their whiskey is distilled under contract with Bardstown Bourbon Company and then shipped to their Memphis facility for maturation. B.R. Distilling is also the …
I’d like to thank Heaven Hill for providing this review sample with no strings attached
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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 Randall H. Borkus Rating: A Longrow is named after a distillery that was once located next to Springbank Distillery in Campbeltown, Scotland. The original distillery was founded in 1824 by John Ross and closed in 1896. The property was later incorporated into Springbank, and Longrow’s old warehouse now houses Springbank’s bottling hall. In the …
By Randall H. Borkus Rating: A This 2024 release of US*1 Toasted Barrel Finish Bourbon is the latest in ten years of the label. The Toasted Barrel expression is distinguished from the standard US*1 Bourbon by its double new oak treatment: a second maturation round in a toasted barrel, following its initial rest in a …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B- When I sampled Gentleman Jack and took my notes some days ago with an eye on making it my last review work of 2024, I did so expecting to revise and update a review from more than ten years ago. I took it completely for granted that either I or …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B The Balmoral Hotel has been with us for more and a fixture of Edinburgh than a century, but it’s whisky bar–approrpriately named SCOTCH–has only been around for a decade. Nonetheless, that is long enough for Head Whisky Ambassador and Bar Manager Cameron Ewen and Moa Reynolds, a Swede now writing …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B Louisville’s Rabbit Hole Distillery is both one of the newcomers to Bluegrass whiskey and at the same time part of its new class of medium-sized distillers (distinct from both the legacy and new “Kentucky Majors” and the small producers typically associated with craft whiskey). Considering the company went from foundation …
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 …
