By Richard Thomas Given that one of Corsair Distillery’s principal claims to fame is its Triple Smoke Whiskey, it’s not surprising that one of co-founder Darek Bell’s books on craft whiskey-making would be about smoking it up. In Fire Water, Bell has penned a guide on the methods and materials of smoking grain for making whiskey, and in essence recounts ...

By Richard Thomas America’s two major whiskey states are Kentucky and Tennessee, and only one distillery straddles them: Corsair. With stills in Nashville and Bowling Green, Corsair is a micro-distillery surrounded by the majors. If that weren’t enough of a bold statement, Corsair’s innovative approach to whiskey-making has earned it a place in the forefront of the craft whiskey movement. ...

By Richard Thomas In the vein of how childhood favorites like comic books have become adult mainstream, scratch and sniff has made a comeback and embraced booze. This explains how a book about hard liquor, like Richard Betts’s The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming A Whiskey Know-It-All, can have the sort of illustrated, children’s book style that would make ...

By Richard Thomas Just as the whiskey boom has become so large as to support plenty of new books about bourbon and moonshine, the micro-distilling movement has become such a tidal wave as to prompt its own crop of books. The difference is that whereas whiskey boom books fall into the category of popular non-fiction, micro-distilling books are technical and ...

By Richard Thomas When it comes to Scotch whisky experts, they don’t come as august or as understated as Charles MacLean. His list of honors and accomplishments is a long one, including being named as a Keeper of the Quaich in 1992 and then elevated to Master of the Quaich in 2009. Most are familiar with him from his playing ...