By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Making its way to or reaching shelves right now is the latest batch of Booker’s Bourbon for 2022. This one is dubbed The Lumberyard Batch, referring back to the time that Booker Noe worked in a lumber yard prior to entering the family trade at Jim Beam and embarking on …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Dublin’s Teeling Whiskey Company has launches a new series, called the Wonders of Wood. Obviously built around the theme of what wood choices do in barrel aging, this first installment is aged in new Chinkapin white oak. This is a varietal from Eastern and Central North America, noted for its …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ The Whiskey Reviewer is 11 years old now, so it predates most of the annual limited edition bourbon series currently on the market. So, when something like Blood Oath Pact No. 8 shows up at my house and I hold the bottle in my hand, all I can do is …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ One of the best aspects of Lost Lantern’s model is also what makes it unique: it’s a true negociant in the European sense, but plying its business in the United States. There are two things to understand about that statement to get at why it makes them unique. First, as …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- California’s St. George Spirits is an example of what I call craft distilling before there was craft distilling. Founded by Jörg Rupf in 1982. After spending a decade in brandy-making, ex-nuclear scientist and former brewer Lance Winters showed up on Rupf’s doorstep, looking to make whiskey and with a bottle …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ The latest batch of single cask bottlings from Lost Lantern includes some real lovelies, and among them is the bourbon from Boulder Distillery. That Colorado distillery was started by Scotsman Alastair Brogan, who brought Scotch-style whiskey-making to the Rocky Mountains, complete with a Forsyths-made copper pot still. That Scottish style …
By Richard Thomas Rating: A- I find myself rather dismayed, sitting here in January 2022, that the autumn release of the George Dickel and Leopold Brothers collaboration blend did not garner more of a buzz among enthusiasts. It certainly got attention from us booze writers, but I didn’t see much enthusiasm expressed on forums and …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B- As a distillery located amid the various state and federal parklands preserving redwood forests, Redwood Empire draws heavily on forest imagery in naming its whiskeys. Their bonded rye was named after a famous redwood tree, Rocket Top; their bonded bourbon is named for North America’s biggest bear, the grizzly (this …
By Richard Thomas Rating: B These last few years, it seems like everybody (even slightly) famous thinks they can start up a spirits brand or merit having an expression named after them. At this point, I am so sick of seeing adds for Proper Twelve that I would gladly watch Floyd Mayweather whup his ass …
By Randall H. Borkus Rating: B+ This 2021 bottling is the first release of US*1 Toasted Barrel Finish Bourbon in three years. The Toasted Barrel expression is distinctive from the standard US*1 Bourbon as it undergoes a second round of maturation, following its initial rest (my best guess 6-8 years) in an American charred oak …
