By Richard Thomas In American whiskey circles, few if any companies elicit the same level of suspicion as Templeton Rye. Take the company’s recent marketing exploit in turning their spent mash grain into hog feed to create “whiskey pigs.” The claim was met with a storm of derision in the blogosphere, with some questioning whether the grain in question was ...

By Richard Thomas When it comes to making the copper stills so vital to the world whiskey trade, two names stand out in the minds of whiskey fans. One is Forsyths, the Scottish copperworks that is literally a global institution. The other is more of an American classic, since its products often remain in the United States, and that is ...

By Richard Thomas One of the developments that has separated the current world whiskey boom from past growth times is that this spurt of international interest has spread not just the consumption, but the production of the stuff. Among the latest entrants to the world whiskey-making picture is Milk and Honey, the first whiskey distillery in Israel. Milk and Honey ...

By Richard Thomas Although some come to the idea of trying whiskey blending because they day dream about being a Master Distiller (in America) or Blender (in the UK), I came to it as a way to solve one of the practical problems of being a whiskey aficionado, namely figuring out to do with acquisitions that are too disappointing to ...

By Richard Thomas The “Great American Whiskey Shortage” isn’t actually a new story, since versions of it have been circulating in the mainstream press for at least the last few years. Yet insofar as the details of that story goes, the “Barrel Shortage” is definitely a new wrinkle. New oak barrels are a cornerstone of American whiskey-making, and that they ...