By Richard Thomas Rating: A Jim Beam’s grandson, the late Booker Noe, introduced his namesake bourbon in 1988. The original Booker’s started out as bourbon hand-selected by Noe and bottled straight from the cask, which was then given out only to a select group of close friends and family. The practice of creating what amounts of a private reserve of ...

Updated July 25, 2023 By Richard Thomas Average Rating: C Four Roses Kentucky bourbon traces its history back to Rufus and Origen Rose, two brothers joined with their sons to open a family distillery in 1888. The Four Roses Distillery settled in 1910 into the Spanish Mission-style building outside Lawrenceburg, Kentucky which has remained its home ever since, and is ...

by Richard Thomas Rating: C The green bottle and yellow label of Justerini and Brooks is one of the world’s most iconic mass-market scotch labels, with the big red “J&B” at least as well-known as the strolling, top-hatted gentleman of Johnny Walker. However, J&B has nothing like Johnny Walker’s high-end (albeit still blended) line of scotch, and its 15 Year ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B Updated August 11, 2014 Woodford Reserve is the product of the revived Labrot and Graham Distillery, a National Historic Landmark located in Central Kentucky. While this fine example of straight bourbon whiskey did not enter the market until the 1990s, the distillery dates back to the very roots of bourbon in the Bluegrass in the ...