By Michael Cervin Rating: A From Islay comes this Single Malt Scotch Whisky. Ardbeg opened its doors in 1815 and has long been one of the peatiest, smokiest and complex of the Islay malts. During the 1980s and 1990s, Ardbeg stumbled financially and was on the brink of folding. The Glenmorangie Company bought Ardbeg in 1997 and since then, the ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B The first batch of Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond of the year, the Spring Batch, didn’t reach me until the very last days of spring. By then I was on the cusp of my prized summer custody of my son, which this year entailed several weeks of full-time Daddy Daycare. That consequently throttled down on ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ May 2019 seems like another world to me now, but little over a year ago I was visiting in New York and took the opportunity to call upon Breuckelen Distilling. Started in 2010 by Brad Estabrooke, the distillery occupies an industrial studio, making very efficient use of a rather modest space. Despite the space constraints, ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A- Hard on the heels of the return of the classic Knob Creek 9 Year Old Small Batch Bourbon, Jim Beam has gone one better and introduced Knob Creek 12 Year Old as a permanent brand extension. Five years after the bourbon world went hysterical with talk of a shortage that was going to wipe all ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Back when croaking “craft whiskey sucks” was a thing in blogs and forums, I often found myself occupying a space between said croakers and the sometimes too-superlative coverage got in the major media. The latter often misunderstood who they were writing about and what made them special; the former regularly confused “different” or “not famous” ...