By Richard Thomas The American craft whiskey boom and the widening interest in home distilling has created a demand for stills and other distillation items on a scale that simply did not exist 15 years ago, leaving established copperworks shops such as the famed Vendome of Louisville, Kentucky with waiting lists stretching out more than a year. A crop of ...

By Richard Thomas A common daydream for many a whiskey drinker is buying a whole barrel of their favorite standby and taking it home, and if cost were no object (a standard barrel of even an ordinary whiskey can run to several thousand dollars) many would make that daydream into reality. Private barrel programs are often seen as a gateway ...

The WR Chats With Edrington’s “Malt Master” By Richard Thomas As the Master Blender for the Edrington Group, Gordon Motion had been the man behind the flavor profile of many high profile Scotch expressions in recent years, what with The Macallan and Cutty Sark as part of his purview. However, it’s Motion’s work with The Famous Grouse that is the ...

By Richard Thomas Ireland used to have the smallest distilling sector of the major, traditional countries, with just three big plants in operation: Bushmills, New Midleton (Jameson, among others), and Cooley. By the end of 2015, that number should climb above a dozen. Ireland is certainly in the midst of a major round of distillery construction, so the only real ...

By Richard Thomas Small business is as American as apple pie, so it might seem strange to ask who doesn’t support the very idea of a craft whiskey sector. After all, even the harshest criticisms of the new micro-distilleries haven’t gone so far as to condemn the sector wholesale. Clay Risen probably came closest with his claim to have never ...