By Emma Briones Rating: B+ There’s a special magic when it comes to listening to music on vinyl instead of a CD. A different sound, and active listening. In whiskey, we also find different types of spirit: the easier blends and the more complex expressions. But there’s something that works for both whiskey and music: old classics never die. That’s ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Ever since Andy and Charles Nelson launched Belle Meade Bourbon and began working on reviving Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery in Nashville, I have been patiently waiting the taste their properly matured, in-house whiskey. Peeks first came in their white whiskey, followed by a two year old whiskey from their first production run, aged in 30-gallon ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B A couple of months ago, I was at an event sponsored by a whiskey club and asked to give a few impromptu remarks. I decided to address my notion of Craft Whiskey 2.0, and was later asked about a feature of that concept: the gaining maturity of whiskey made by small distillers, best exemplified by ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A- The Tomatin-Glenlivet Distillery is named for the village of Tomatin, plus the common practice 19th Century of tying the name Glenlivet onto things. If you making a study of distilleries in Scotland in 1897, when Tomatin was founded, you would have found quite a few this-Glenlivet and Glenlivet-that distilleries, and none of them had anything ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B Located in the Appalachian foothills of Virginia, not all that far from Charlottesville, Virginia Distillery made its initial reputation for skillfully created hybrid whiskies: they blended their youthful in-house American single malts with imported Scottish malts, and then gave the hybrid a “marriage” (secondary finishing) in used-but-native Virginia casks. An example is their Cider Cask ...