By Richard Thomas Few people wear as many hats in the whiskey business as Allison Patel. After starting the whiskey import-export firm Local Infusions and becoming a whiskey blogger, Patel made the leap into founding her own label, Brenne single malt. Offhand, I can think of half a dozen people who have filled two of those roles at different times, ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Part of having a whiskey tradition is having a region or regions where the bulk of whiskey-making takes place. Britain might have English and Welsh whiskey, but Scotland is where it’s at. Whiskey making the United States has spread to almost all of the 50 states in recent times, but Kentucky and Tennessee are still ...

By S.D. Peters Rating: A From Cognac, France, by way of an  inspired collaboration between whiskey importer and blogger Allison Patel and “a 3rd generation Cognac distiller,” comes this unique single malt. Brenne French Single Malt is a new venture – Allison’s first expression, Estate Cask, was released in late 2012 – and, being French whiskey (read: a rarity in ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ The whiskey boom has been underway for several years now (two decades by some accountings), and with it has come both the opening of many new distilleries, as well as interest in whiskey-makers in some out of the way places. I think a common mistake among whiskey fans is to assume that just because a ...