By Jake Emen Rating: A- Nikka Whisky owns and operates two distinct distilleries in Japan. The oldest is the Yoichi distillery, built in 1934, located near the city of Sapporo on the island of Hokkaido. Nikka’s founder, Masataka Taketsuru, had studied at the University of Glasgow and came back to Japan with the ideals of creating authentic and distinguished scotch-style ...

By Jake Emen Rating: A Nikka’s Taketsuru line consists of several ages of pure malt whiskey — unlike with Scotch, Japanese whiskey is not prohibited from using the “pure malt” label — and Nikka simply uses the term to signify a vatted malt whiskey drawn from their Yoichi and Miyagikyo distilleries. The Taketsuru Pure Malt 12 Year Old is the ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A- The interesting thing about the vatted malt line from Wemyss Malts is how different expressions under the same label can sometimes have substantially different characters. In one of those things that turns the conventional wisdom of “older whiskey is better whiskey” on its head, I liked the Peat Chimney 8 Year Old much better than ...

By S.D. Peters Rating: A- PHILADELPHIA, PA. 1795: Local farmer and distiller Philip Vigol (later Wigle) was sentenced to hang for treason. His crime: attacking a tax collector and burning his house. If, like Wigle, you were a whiskey-distilling farmer in Western Pennsylvania, it was no crime, but an act of defiance, the last resort of Pennsylvania’s rye distillers after ...

Updated December 9, 2015 By S.D. Peters Average Rating: A For Rye drinkers, Rye whiskey distilled from 100% rye was once about as rare as a 78 rpm copy of D.A. Hunt’s sole Sun Records release, Greyhound Blues. It’s still almost that rare, but whereas only one known copy of Greyhound Blues surfaced almost four years ago, several small batches ...