By Richard Thomas Since its inaugural batch of bourbon, Craft Barrell Spirits has become a fan favorite for its mix of blending skill, transparency and devotion to releasing uncut and unfiltered whiskeys at a fairly reasonable price. With their most recent release, the company has put twenty distinct batches of bourbon on shelves in five years. Given that you can ...

By Richard Thomas As whiskey’s popularity in America has driven enormous growth in the industry’s new secondary role as tourist destinations, it has also drawn in far more casual visitors than diehard enthusiasts. This is only logical, because while it the average tourist might only visit a single whiskey distillery in her whole life, said tourists vastly outnumber the whiskey ...

By Richard Thomas Moreso than other recent accidents, the blaze that sent 45,000 barrels of Jim Beam whiskey up in smoke has made some in the enthusiast community anxious. While much of the social media commentary lamented the loss in general and sometimes satirical terms, substantial attention was given to the worry that the fire would prompt shortages and price ...

By Richard Thomas Among all the facets of making this or that form of American Whiskey, the least understood by far is the Lincoln County Process (LCP). This is the key characteristic of Tennessee Whiskey, all that really distinguishes it as the major sub-category of bourbon whiskey. Although it has almost as many variants as practitioners in the Volunteer State, ...

By Richard Thomas If any part of world whiskey is booming bigger than bourbon, it must be Irish Whiskey. When I started The Whiskey Reviewer, there were still just four distilleries in Ireland (and that only if you count the North as part of Ireland; in whiskey terms, we always do): Bushmills, Cooley, Kilbeggan and Midleton. By the end of ...