By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ As aged whisky expressions go these days, Bowmore 18 Year Old is an exception to the rule, bucking the trends if you will. That is because it represents taking in a statement up, rather than down or eliminating it altogether. A decade ago, it was decided to replace Bowmore’s 17 Year Old with this slightly ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ New Zealand Whisky Company is unique among independent bottlers because it exists in a country with no active distilleries, and their stock in trade is whisky made by a single distillery, Willowbank, that was shuttered in 1997. The Oamaruvian story starts with Dunedin DoubleWood, which in turn began with 200 ex-Bourbon barrels of grain whisky. ...

By Emma Briones Rating: B Every day there are more and more distilleries joining the worldwide whisky industry. Most of them have learned from the Scottish distilleries, and in Italy the Puni Distillery is one of them. Born in 2010 in the Italian Alps, the distillery has already produced three whiskies, two regular and one limited edition. Now Puni Sole ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B Clyde May’s Alabama Whiskey is a sourced-and-bottled brand released by Conecuh Ridge Distillery, and has a lengthy backstory full of twists and turns. That tale begins with the very real Clyde May, a very real and very prolific post-war era Alabama moonshiner. His fame is pegged both to his consistent, long-term productivity and the quality ...

By Father John Rayls Rating: A When it comes to the wider world of whiskeys, I enjoy, but don’t love Scotch. It’s a statement I have repeated to myself for many years. However, I may have met the single malt that brought me over in Tamdhu Batch Strength. I’m not sure it is love, but it’s infatuation at the very ...