I’ve just returned from Kentucky where this last week we conducted the annual barrel picking endeavor. Visits to Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, Jim Beam and Wild Turkey yielded multiple barrel picks that I’m very excited about. The week started …
Last Thursday I conducted a tasting at Jack Rose Dining Saloon in Washington D.C. A financial consulting firm I’ve done business with for a number of years asked that I host a tasting event for their male clients. Throughout the year they d…
Crusaders, sincere apologies for the delay on getting this one out, but we had a great deal of technical difficulty in post production. If you notice anything abnormal in the cast itself, that’s probably why. And by abnormal, I don’t just mean our usual abnormal selves! In this Around the Barrel, we talk through our…
Two weeks from today I’ll be headed down to Kentucky for the annual barrel pick festivities. I recognize that I neglected to write much about last years picks and hope to remedy that this year.We moved the arrival date a number of weeks to May in…
I’ve been smoking cigars regularly for about 9 years. Prior to that, a cigar would be enjoyed during a round of golf or maybe while mowing the lawn. Since 2006, I’ve enjoyed some very fine domestic and cuban expressions and like whisk…
A friend and fellow bourbon media colleague, Bill of Modern Thirst, started a group project of sorts with us and several other bourbon media folk. The premise is easy to envision: What would you buy if you had a Benjamin, a $100 bill, to spend on bourbon at the store? Rules: Disregard sales tax, only bourbon,…
Recently the guys at Modern Thirst proposed a nearly impossible question to a slew of bourbon writers, “If you had $100 to spend on American whiskey, what would you buy right now at your local store?” This sounds like an easy question, but the more I thought about it, the harder it became. Am I…
As part of the administrative tools available via the blog provider, I can see keyword searches you all put into the Google Machine or other browsers and clearly readers are questioning the possible demise of the age statement. Within the last co…
The internet has been all a-twitter lately about various forms of expedited aging in whiskey and bourbon. A majority of the discussion has been about whether or not these accelerated products can still meet the legal definitions of Kentucky Bourbon, Straight Bourbon, or even just plain Bourbon (for more on that aspect, check out Fred…
If there is one family that could be called the royal family of bourbon, it’s the Beams. For seven generations, starting with Jacob Beam after moving to central Kentucky in 1788, the Beam family, in one way or another, has had a hand in just about every major brand of bourbon out there. Yes, including…
