By April Manning Rating: C+ Not all chickens are cocks, but all cocks are chickens… When you are over 160 years old and known as The Famous Old Brand, you need a worthy back story… and this one has several.  In 1856 James A. Miller set off on the journey of producing a high-quality whiskey in Paris, Kentucky, which, as ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ The latest arrival to the double new oak aging party is Elijah Craig. This growing class of whiskey involves a special and particularly American type of maturation. The whiskey begins with a normal cycle of aging in charred, new oak barrels, and then receives a finish in a second set of new oak barrels. Only ...

By Andrew Graham Grade: B+ Let’s start off by getting technical. Scotch-makers must use 100% malted barley in their mash bill. U.S. regulations, by contrast, permit a spirit that’s just 51% malted barley to be labeled as malt whiskey. So this American malt might taste more like a bourbon, that American malt might taste more like a rye, and it ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A- One of the peculiar things about the annual release of the Michter’s 10 Year Old Bourbon and 10 Year Old Rye is that they are both annual, limited releases and both are single barrels. It’s a formula designed to, potentially at any rate, present a fairly variable flavor profile. The only thing consistent about it ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: A Given that Angel’s Envy built its house on being the folks who finish Kentucky bourbon in Port wine casks, for some years observers were asking when they would introduce a Sherry cask finished bourbon. Once that was done, most of those same observers consolidated their wish list on arguably the rarest of all the whisky ...