By Richard Thomas Often commented upon in the media is how the complexion of whiskey-making is changing, and that more women and people of color are taking leading roles in this. It’s true, but I often think that the focus on folks occupying big corporate positions or those who left big corporate careers to do start-ups misses the point. Just ...

By Kurt Maitland Today, we talk to friend and fellow author, Amanda Schuster about her latest book–Drink Like a Local: New York. As cities have opened up and we continue to venture out, we are finding that the drinking landscape has changed. Some old favorites are now gone, and new places have sprouted up. Here in NYC, there couldn’t be ...

By Richard Thomas I observed a few years back that whisk(e)y enthusiasts were living in a time of the changing of the guard, when well-established whiskey-makers were retiring from long-held posts. The best examples of this lately were in 2020, with Chris Fletcher succeeding as Master Distiller at Jack Daniel’s and Kevin O’Gorman rising from Master of Maturation to Master ...

By Richard Thomas The bourbon boom was well underway when Deputy Editor Kurt Maitland and I paid a visit to Vendome Copper & Brassworks in mid-2014, but it continued to accelerate year on year in the almost eight years since then. Blanton’s was still reliably on store shelves and the so-called bourbon shortage was on everyone’s lips (the Bizarro World ...

By Richard Thomas Even though Japan is routinely listed as one of the five traditional whisky-making regions/countries (along with Ireland, Scotland, Canada and the USA), the sheer quality of its whiskies remained under the popular radar for decades. That came to an end in the mid-2010s, but something interesting came hand-in-hand with the craze for Japanese whiskies: a stronger interest ...