By Richard Thomas Rating: B Iowa’s Cedar Ridge Distillery has spent several years perfecting their malt whiskey. They released their first batch in 2014, and each successive batch saw a major tweak in the production process. At one point, they adopted a solera system, and no two batches were ever the same when it came to cask stock choices for ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B- Founded in 2015, Still Austin Whiskey Co. entered what was already a crowded small distillery scene in the Lone Star State. When I began covering Texas craft whiskey in 2011, there were already several distilleries with in-house products on the market; that sector has only continued to grow in the years since, with new entrants ...

By Emily Mullis Rating: C+ With so many whiskey pioneers out there it can be hard to keep up with who started what, and every county seems to have its own leading trailblazer who has stamped their name on the ledger of whiskey history. What makes this fun for distillers and whiskey connoisseurs is that no matter the pioneer, the ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ The latest arrival to the double new oak aging party is Elijah Craig. This growing class of whiskey involves a special and particularly American type of maturation. The whiskey begins with a normal cycle of aging in charred, new oak barrels, and then receives a finish in a second set of new oak barrels. Only ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B In bourbon’s modern boom times, a great many lay claim to authenticity by reviving an old brand, returning to family roots or laying claim to a local tradition. Sometimes these claims are quite tenuous and cannot even be described as gimmicks, but they overlook the most authentic path of all: make good whiskey, and in ...