By Emma Briones Rating: A- Each year, Diageo launches a series of rare whiskies under its “Special Releases” collection. The collection is made up of single malts that are rare and quite special, due to their limited availability, high quality and, some times, strange characteristics. One of the latter is an unpeated version of an Islay classic: Caol Ila Unpeated ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBCo) has added a new expression to their periodic Collaboration Series, The Prisoner. It has much in common with the preceding release, Phifer Pavitt Reserve: it’s based on a 9 year old Tennessee-made bourbon, which has been given an extra long finish of 18 months in wine barrels. In this case, that ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ It having been five years since my first look at the cask strength version of one of the best-named whiskeys around, I decided it was time to come around again. Much has happened with the brand during that interval: the makers at Walsh Whiskey formed a partnership to build a distillery; built and opened that ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A Among that part of the whiskey enthusiast community that mirrors the Star Wars fanbase in most respects, there was a lot of grumbling when Heaven Hill converted the Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond into an aged, premium and bi-annual limited edition expression. They croaked that it was another example of taking discontinuing one of their ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Brooklyn’s Widow Jane is one of many small distillers who mixes the trade of the negociant—acquiring, aging and blending whiskey stock for their own brands—with being a small distiller in their own right. Most of what one sees from Widow Jane is of the sourced variety, and their The Vaults series is based squarely on ...