By Richard Thomas Rating: B- When people think “corn whiskey,” they are usually thinking of a cheap, two-grain unaged and overwhelmingly corn whiskey. That is the sort of thing that gave corn whiskey a bad name, and thankfully the craft whiskey boom and its accompanying white whiskey trend are overturning it. Now there are several eminently drinkable examples of corn ...

By Richard Thomas Will Kehler and Ian Smiley, the author of Making Pure Corn Whiskey and co-author of The Distiller’s Guide to Rum, have teamed up to put their own white whiskey on the market, Manhattan Moonshine. * Reportedly Kehler and Smiley were inspired by the realization that during the Prohibition era much of a large portion of the illegal ...

By Richard Thomas When people think of craft whiskey in New York, they tend to think either of the city (Kings County,  Baron Nahimas, etc.) or of something more rural or Upstate (Finger Lakes, etc.). Yet in Rochester, the third-largest city in the Empire State, there is a singular outpost* in New York State’s busy craft whiskey scene, Black Button ...

By Richard Thomas One benefit to come from the plethora of micro-distilleries that have popped up all over America is a revival of interest in old fashioned corn whiskey. The snobs might sneer at this unaged whiskey with an mashbill that is 4/5s-plus corn, but down in the sweltering South the stuff has enjoyed a nice reputation for almost as ...

By Richard Thomas Close followers of The Whiskey Reviewer first learned of the plans of Kentucky-based animal feed giant Alltech to build a moonshine distillery in Pikeville in April, when it was reported as a bulletin for our Facebook group. Now those plans have become much more concrete, with Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear promising to spend over $13 million on ...