By Richard Thomas US President Joe Biden and European Commission head Ursula van der Leyen announced this past Sunday that an agreement has been reached ending the trade conflict begun by former president Donald Trump in 2018. The trade difficulties began when the US imposed a 25% tariff on European steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum, measures which most ...

By Richard Thomas One of the topics I sometimes hear discussed by the whiskey fandom in America is how variable the flavor profile of a cask strength brand can be. Note that this is a peculiarly American subject, not because there aren’t so many cask strength Scotch whiskies in regular release, but because Americans seem to be much more in ...

By Richard Thomas No sooner was the craft distilling boom a clear phenomenon in the United States than certain pundits began to wonder aloud and in print “when is the craft spirits bust coming?” That line of thinking wasn’t necessarily hostile, seeing as how the boom and bust cycle of business is an axiom. It’s a fair question. Indeed, it ...

By Richard Thomas If you have been a whiskey enthusiast for a long time, then you have watched as the world’s whiskey boom keeps on gaining momentum. Even the coronavirus pandemic seems to have been little more than a hiccup. The newcomers from a decade ago are now well-entrenched fixtures, more newcomers (both individual distillers and entire countries) have kept ...

A Chat With The Author Of A Long Stride: The Story Of The World’s No. 1 Scotch Whisky By Kurt Maitland KM: First off, tell our readers a bit about yourself NM: I’m a historian by training. I joined United Distillers in 1990 to help them set up an archive of material relating to their brand-owning companies. Somehow, I became ...