The Whiskey Reviewer A World of Whiskey, Poured Every Weekday

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Malted rye in whiskey is not a novelty anymore. It’s modern use started with that example of craft whiskey before craft whiskey became a thing, Old Potrero, which was making 100% malted rye back in the 1990s. While not quite commonplace, the use of malted rye is widespread enough that one needn’t look very hard ...

By Alex Southgate Rating: B It’s always interesting to try different blends from the same distillery. Something as small as a different choice of cask type made from the same wood stock, such as a rebuilt bourbon barrel against a hogshead made from bourbon barrel staves, can make for an immensely different scotch. Equally, the end product is very much ...

By Richard Thomas Richard Thomas, Owner-Editor I handed out a personal record of six A grades in 2020, but not a single A+, which makes both Best New Whiskey and Best To Pass My Lips hard calls to make. Frankly, my choices are easily interchangeable. Both were wonderful and both were released during 2020. Just a hair behind the two ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B It’s been several years since the world became aware of how good Japanese whisky can be, and how the category has changed in that time. The two big names, Nikka and Suntory, have found themselves painfully pinched by the depletion of their stocks of aged and ultra-aged whisky; I’ve long said that anyone who wants ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C+ Although I haven’t attended a whiskey event or a gathering of enthusiasts since the launch of my most recent book, American Whiskey, in February 2020, the internet has ensured that I still hear this outdated fallacy about craft whiskey from time to time: “all craft whiskey is aged for just months in small barrels, which ...