Updated December 4, 2017 By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ “Small batch” is an ill-defined category in whiskey, and the best way to think of the definition is to apply it literally: said whiskey is made in small batches. Heretofore, the term was used exclusively in America and applied to bourbon and rye, but now Ireland’s Jameson Distillery is getting in ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C Sometimes Irish whiskey is parsed along sectarian lines, and with its distillery in County Antrim of Northern Ireland, Bushmills is firmly on the protestant side of that whiskey divide. The Bushmills Old Distillery Company opened in the 1780s, and while it has suffered from periodic closures during its storied history, it remains the oldest licensed ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C+ It used to be that there were only two choices in Irish whiskey, Catholic (Jameson’s) and Protestant (Bushmills). Yes, there were always many more labels than just those big two on the market, but these were always very hard to find just about anywhere outside of the British Isles. Clontarf changed all that, and Clontarf’s ...