Corrected November 24, 2020 By Richard Thomas Rating: B- In one respect, 2020 is the year I’ve been waiting for, because it was the year that the American craft whiskey sector was finally deep enough to allow for the return of the whiskey negociant. The Scotch whisky industry emerged from the trying times of the first half of the 20th ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Barrell Craft Spirits new Private Release series is built around the concept of building 24 separate and distinct whiskeys with common roots. All the AH releases use the same blend of “Kentucky Whiskey,” the oldest constiutent of which is an 18 year old, and giving them barrel finishes before bottling at cask strength. That is ...

Updated January 14, 2022 By Richard Thomas Average Rating: A-/B+ The sheer sucktitude of 2020 is the stuff of memes and jokes, and I’m left to wonder if the year will go down as a watershed to be fictionalized, romanticized and studied or if it will become the kind of thing we’ll all be so eager to forget that we ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B The first in the 48 (yes, that number is correct) permutations of Barrell Craft Spirits‘ BH Private Release series took an 18 year old Kentucky whiskey and finished it in a Sauternes cask. For casual drinkers and narrowly obsessed bourbon enthusiasts, some explanation is needed for those two terms. “Kentucky whiskey” is usually a euphemism ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ I look forward to new releases from Craft Barrell Spirits because they are always cask strength and consistently in the B+ category. In the uncommon event a release doesn’t receive that scoring, it is more often an A- than B. Lately the company has given me something else to look forward to, as it does ...