By Richard Thomas Rating: B- Breuckelen Distilling, with its spin on spelling “Brooklyn,” was started by Brad Estabrooke, a former securities trader at Deutsche Bank. Similar to the origin stories of many craft distilleries, Estabrooke left a white collar career that had nothing to do with the booze business to get into spirits making. If that sounds peculiar and predestined ...

By Father John Rayls Rating: B+ Delaware’s Painted Stave Distilling and Fordham & Dominion Brewing Co. have gotten into the thing, not new but not altogether well-established either, in producing a whiskey distilled from beer, in this case an Imperial IPA. The result is Double TroubleD, initially released in 2015. My particular bottle came from the October 2016 release, bottle ...

By Father John Rayls Rating: B+ Braddock Oak Single Barrel Rye Whisky (spelling is a nod to their Scottish heritage) is distilled and bottled by Catoctin Creek Distilling in Purcellville, Virginia. Scott and Becky Harris founded the distillery in 2009 and produce various ryes, brandies, gin and even an unusual rye white dog. They pride themselves on using all organic ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C+ Seeing as how I was in the middle of working on a few different selections from seminal upstate New York micro-distillery Tuthilltown and had a pending review with distillery founder Ralph Erenzo and news just broke that William Grant & Sons had finally completed their 2010 acquisition of the Hudson brand by adding the distillery ...

By Randall H. Borkus Rating: B- Widow Jane Distillery is the specialty distillery out of Red Book, Brooklyn, owned by chocolate-makers Cacao Prieto.  Cacao Prieto, in turn, was founded by Daniel Prieto Preston, an inventor and aerospace engineer, whose family heritage goes back 100 years of farming organic cacao in the Dominican Republic. Their spirit expressions are largely not distilled ...