By Richard Thomas Rating: B KOVAL Four Grain Single Barrel Whiskey has no lead grain (i.e. no grain at 51% or higher in the mash bill). In fact, we don’t know what the exact grain recipe is, except to say it’s malted barley, oats, rye and wheat. Like everything KOVAL does, it’s a single barrel, bottled at 94 proof and ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B- OOLA is a stylishly designed micro-distillery located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district, started in 2010 by an artist and art dealer named Kirby Kallas-Lewis. Their Waitsburg Bourbon started out as a blend of sourced and in-house whiskeys, but nowadays it’s all in-house. It’s a wheated bourbon, aged for five years in standard, 53-gallon barrels. The ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Double barrel aging, or maturing whiskey in two rounds of new white oak, has become very much a thing in American Whiskey. I like to think of it as distinct from “finishing,” because the point isn’t to derive flavors from outside the traditional profiles of American Whiskey by reaching for Port pipes and Sherry casks. ...

By Randall H. Borkus Rating: C On May 9, 2018, MGP Ingredients announced the launch of Rossville Union Rye Whiskey label. Named after the original distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, Rossville Union represents a historic return to the home of crafted rye whiskey and is meant to honor a spirited tradition dating back more than 170 years in America’s original “Whiskey ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C+ You might expect Sonoma’s Cherrywood-Smoked Rye to be a variant on their house rye whiskey, but it’s actually a different animal. The flagship rye is a 100% rye that gets a finish in ex-bourbon barrels. This is a wheated and smoked rye whiskey; the mash bill is 80% rye, 10% cherrywood smoked and malted barley, ...