By Debbie Shocair Rating: B- When I wrote this it was the season for Easter candy, endless varieties of chocolate eggs, and…. chocolate whiskey. Easter is gone now, but the lingering pleasure of seasonal chocolates lives on for some weeks in our cupboards, and Ballotin Original Chocolate flavored whiskey is a fine and tasty grown-up accoutrement to your spring stash ...

Mackmyra, the pioneering Swedish whisky distillery, has launched Ten Years, their first single malt bearing an age statement released for general sale. It will be available in Sweden and selected export markets. Ten Years has been matured in ex-bourbon casks as well as new American oak casks that held Oloroso sherry for some months. The whisky is created from the ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B- As always, part of the fun with these Barrell Bourbon bottlings is looking at the stats and trying to connect the dots. Barrell Whiskey Batch 003, distinct from Barrell Bourbon in all probability because it was aged in ex-Bourbon barrels rather than new barrels, was made in Tennessee. Read into that what you will, but ...

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 ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B Upon receiving an invitation to go to Le Claire, Iowa for the bottling of this year’s Four Kings Collaboration Whiskey, I had to resist joking that it was the 4×4 release, as this was the fourth time at bat for the “Four Kings” of Mississippi River Distilling, FEW Spirits, Corsair Artisan and Journeyman. Having seen ...