By Richard Thomas As The Whiskey Reviewer examined last week, counterfeit whiskey scams are on the rise around the globe, infesting both the bottom and top shelf ends of the spectrum. Heretofore, the only ways to determine whether a given bottle is a phony is to 1) identify telltale flaws on the bottle; and 2) have the whiskey tasted by ...

By Richard Thomas For years, it was my standing lament in introducing a new installment in our periodic series on bad whiskey writing that depressingly little time had passed since I had written the previous one. For once, I can report that it has been a surprisingly and refreshingly long time between this, the tenth piece on the clueless and ...

By Richard Thomas A media buzz phrase these days is how we live in a “post-truth” environment, but active disinformation (to say nothing of ordinary ignorance) has been part of modern living for decades. Marketing truth and spin are more or less the same thing, applied to different fields of endeavor. Yet going on the internet in search of reliable ...

By Richard Thomas Spring 2017 is turning out to be an unusually busy time on the American whiskey release calendar, and of particular note are a trio of ultra-aged whiskeys, either already working their way through distribution to a store shelf near you or soon will be. For those who obsess about high age statements or rare, hard to find ...

By Richard Thomas Whiskey is trendy, and plenty of women are now out there imbibing the water of life. This is now so commonplace, in fact, that whenever I see an article about “women who drink whiskey” I think “passe” and “cliched.” It’s just not as remarkable anymore. Even so, with Valentine’s Day around the corner, it bears some thinking ...