Space—Captain Kirk’s ‘Final Frontier’ —seems to be occupying the minds of whisky distillers around the world, and three have taken practical steps to engage with the hard vacuum void that exists more than 62 miles above Earth’s sea level. First out of the blocks was Ardbeg, which in 2011 sent vials of what were described by the distillers as “Ardbeg-crafted molecules” and samples of charred oak to the International Space Station, where said vials orbited the planet at 17,227 miles per hour, 15 times a day. An Ardbeg spokesperson explains, “The vials contained a class of compounds known as ‘terpenes.’...

There’s a lot to learn about whiskey—distilleries, still geometries, types of peat, rye vs. rye malt, blends vs. singles and straights, new and old barrels—and an overwhelming number of different expressions. If you’re new to whiskey, or if you want to help someone who’s new to whiskey, it can seem overwhelming.

That’s what the creators of The Essential Scratch & Sniff Guide to Becoming a Whiskey Know-It-All were looking to overcome. Unfortunately, the book’s publisher gets it off to a bad start right away with a title that jars terribly: “know-it-all”? The implication is clear: whiskey knowledge is either made...

Shortly before Whisky Advocate managing editor Lew Bryson finished the first draft of his Tasting Whiskey book—sometime around augusti, 2013—we had a conversation about what might go into the chapter on rare whiskey collecting and auctions. Ahead of the curve, I promised him that American whiskies were going to be huge . At the time, most bourbons at auction were shabby-looking Prohibition bottles peppering the numerous pages of single malts in the Bonhams catalog.

It was written in the stars: accumulated years of over-subscribed releases of limited-edition bourbons were being received by a world waking up to the fact that...

Here’s a feel-good Friday story for you; how a Colorado craft distillery bounced back from a potentially business-ending flood and stayed on track to release their first aged whiskey. For all our friends on the East Coast today, batten down the hatches and stay dry!

Craig Engelhorn will readily admit that it takes a special kind of crazy to open a whisky distillery, given that the act is committed with the certain knowledge that it will be years before your product is ready to sell. Even so, Engelhorn and his four partners had no idea what kind of chaos awaited Spirit...

This fourth edition of Scotch Missed: The Original Guide to the Lost Distilleries of Scotland has an encouraging start, in that even the introduction is a good read. So many books are killed off by a dull intro. But the intro makes it clear that this is not just the history of whisky distilleries, but industrial, economic, and social histories too.

Townsend states plainly that he won’t describe the whisky making process in detail; but he does show how it was written about in Victorian times, quoting the florid prose of a 19 ^th century commentator. Indeed, there isn’t much...

Two weeks ago, the name ‘Michter’s’ was reunited with a tangible piece of that storied distillery’s past, the barrel-a-day distillery made in 1976, which since 2011 has been on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio making bourbon, rye, and apple brandy at the Tom’s Foolery Distillery.

“It’s more distilling capacity than I need,” says Tom Herbruck about selling the equipment to Michter’s. “This will allow us to get back to our original plan of staying very small.” Tom’s Foolery is moving soon, to a farm where they already grow grain. They will keep making whiskey and other spirits, but on a...

On september 3, Jim Beam found itself trending in social media circles for something that happened 12 years ago. The Weather Channel had posted video of the 2003 Jim Beam warehouse fire on its Facebook page that offered apocalyptic-looking, spiraling flames on a pond, with a voiceover deeming it a “ firenado .” In its post (to more than 5 million fans), the Weather Channel informed viewers that lightning struck a Beam warehouse and 800,000 gallons of the good stuff spilled into a retention pond. Weather Channel: “You have to have exactly the right conditions for something like this to happen. A...

Just a quickie here. We subscribe to the BottleBlueBook TTB updates, mostly out of curiosity. They send out a daily update on COLAs filed with the TTB. Heh. What’s  that  mean? As some of you know, the TTB is the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the U.S. federal government, the descendant of the old ATF, and responsible for approval of spirits labeling, among other things, and a COLA is a Certificate/exemption Of Label/bottle Approval, the form the TTB gets from companies looking to get a new label approved. Note that the filing of a COLA doesn’t mean...

Karuizawa has earned the title of the most expensive 700 ml bottle of whisky ever auctioned. Bonhams, Hong Kong set the record with a hammer price of HK$750,000 ($96,774) for the Karuizawa 1960 52 year old ‘The Cockerel’ 51.8%, on augusti 28 ^th 2015. The record hammer price represents an appreciation of greater than 500% over the original retail price of £12,500.

Japan took the honor from a single malt Scotch whisky. Bowmore held the 700 ml record for 680 days following the charity sale of the Bowmore 1964 48 Years Old. Christie’s sold that one-off Bowmore for £61,000 in...

We see more and more of the “store bottlings” coming up. Liquor stores are taking the time and making the investment to go to distilleries and select a single barrel to be bottled and labeled for sale at their store only; bars are starting to do it as well. We thought you might be interested in just how that happens, and when I was contacted about such a selection, it seemed like a good time to do that.

I got an email from Nick Taylor, who runs the scotch and whiskey department for Gordon’s Fine Wines & Liquors in Massachusetts (they have...

The Fall 2015 issue of  Whisky Advocate  magazine will be hitting the newsstand in early september. Here’s a sneak preview of the issue’s Buying Guide reviews; the 10 highest-rated whiskies of the issue.

#10 –  Wild Turkey Master’s Keep, 43.4%, $150

A very pricy (for Wild Turkey) 17 year old whiskey honoring master distiller Jimmy Russell. Nose is hot for the proof, with oak, dried barrel drool, warm dried corn, tobacco barn, and teaberry. Entry is not hot; rather, a thread of sweet syrup spreads out into thoroughly integrated corn and oak. Finish slides into drier oak. A fascinating...

We ran a piece by Geoff Kleinman on Portland, Oregon’s “Distillery Row” in the current issue (“Beer and Whiskey”, Summer 2015). It’s a good piece, but Geoff had a lot more material, so we decided to run it here. This is the second part, about New Deal Distillery. Enjoy!

There’s a bumper sticker commonly seen in Portland, Oregon that reads “Keep Portland Weird”. Although weird is a relative term, as one tours the many craft distilleries in Portland, it’s clear that each marses to the beat of its own drum. Portlanders aren’t concerned with what the rest of the country is...

We ran a piece by Geoff Kleinman on Portland, Oregon’s “Distillery Row” in the current issue (“Beer and Whiskey”, Summer 2015). It’s a good piece, but Geoff had a lot more material, so we decided to run it here. This is the first part, about House Spirits. Enjoy!

In many ways House Spirits Distillery been one of the more precocious of Portland’s craft distillers. As one of the early tenants of Portland’s Craft Distillery Row , House Spirits helped craft and shape the community and culture of Portland’s craft distilling scene. This was a natural outcropping of the deep roots...

First thing you need to know: this is not a story about whiskey . At least, not on the surface. It’s about gin. But it’s very much about the kind of innovative thinking small distillers are bringing to the shelf, and that encompasses whiskey. Read on, you’ll see.

I took a vacation with my family (my wife, and our two adult children) recently. We traveled to Iceland (where we visited the Eimverk distillery ), then Scotland (where we dropped in at Talisker), then wound up in Ireland. While we were relaxing in Lismore after some long driving days, I took...

Diageo’s Johnnie Walker line will see the debut of a new series of limited bottlings, the Johnnie Walker Select Casks , different wood-finished whiskies (the number of releases is unknown at this time). The first will be a Rye Cask Finish , released in september in U.S. markets. Diageo North America marketing director for Scotch whisky Brian Cox was quoted about the new series in Shanken News Daily, saying, “We’re considering Select Casks as an annual limited edition.”

The whisky grew out of Johnnie Walker master blender Jim Beveridge’s ongoing experimentation with the Johnnie Walker blends. The Rye Cask Finish...

Wa rlike destruction came to Louisville this week. When I saw the Whiskey Row ashes, the smoldering charred wood, facades holding on by historic bricks, I was reminded of the carnage of war and my personal moments in it. I was taken back to a time I once tried to forget, only to fail and be forced to deal with the memories. In Iraq, I was an Army photographer. I walked through the streets and villages, and in homes, with an M-16 slung from my side and a Nikon D1X firmly gripped, always ready to capture combat or whatever.

Halfway...

Along with the whiskey samples we get here at the magazine, we get whiskey-related gadgets. Most of them aren’t worth your time — hats with flasks and sippy straws, “whiskey pong” sets — but some of them are things that pique our interest. Those fall mainly into four categories: flasks (we’ll always try out a new flask), chilling ideas for individual glasses of whisky, apps and guides, and the new rush of wood insert ‘whisky improvers.’ We try them out, and if they’re interesting, or superior, we’ll let you know.

To be honest, most of them don’t make the cut....

Hey, remember that coffee-finished whiskey from Bowman I posted about back in mars ? Distiller Brian Prewitt was going to decide whether to bottle it or not, after tasting it.

Well…he did. It came out as Abraham Bowman Coffee Finished Bourbon, and all of it was sold at the distillery in Fredericksburg, Va. I got a sample, and while the coffee aroma isn’t that present, the coffee flavor in the whiskey is solid, and pure, and — to this coffee drinker — right tasty.

But it’s gone, as most of the Abraham Bowman line is. This set of bottlings is designed...

Known mostly for rye and bourbon whiskeys, the American whiskey genre has increasingly used a handful of Scotch whisky production techniques. We’ve seen the success of American single malts and used barrel-finish programs in bourbon and rye. Now U.S. distillers are smoking grains.

“American whiskey has been great, but it’s been like going to Baskin & Robbins and getting 31 flavors of chocolate and vanilla,” says Paul Tomaszewski, distiller and founder of MB Roland distillery in Pembroke, Kentucky. “There’s only been two kinds of American whiskey for a long time.”

Tomaszewski is among a small crop of distillers who are...

A new Canadian whisky recently introduced across America is raising a few purist’s eyebrows. Meanwhile, at home, Alberta Rye Dark Batch has become a favorite cocktail rye with Canadian bartenders. The controversy? Dark Batch is made by adding about 8% bourbon and 1% sherry to mature whisky distilled from 100% rye grain. And though Canada’s 9.09% rule allows this, it has some whisky enthusiasts scratching their heads.

We maj wonder why Canadian regulations permit distillers to add foreign spirits to Canadian whisky. I know I did. While researching my book I interviewed over a dozen retired whisky makers and though...