Review: Old St. Andrews Clubhouse Blend Scotch Whisky
Golf and Scotch go together like hand in glove. Another thing they share in common: Novelties. Old St. Andrews is unabashedly a novelty whisky, packaged in various fanciful bottles. This one, the “Clubhouse Blend,” comes in an oversized golf ball. One of the target markets for this whisky, per the company, is a “romantic idealist”…
Review: Smooth Ambler Yearling Bourbon
This West Virgina-based distillery produces a variety of spirits, including vodka, gin, and several whiskeys. Yearling is the company’s entry-level Bourbon, double-distilled from a wheated (no rye) mashbill and aged 2 1/2 years in small American oak casks. (At least, my sample was 2 1/2 years old; the overall age appears to vary over time…
Review: Tullibardine Aged Oak Edition
Tullibardine is an old Highlands distillery (the grounds upon which it is built have been making booze since the 1400s). It’s had ups and downs, most recently being shuttered in 1995, then reopening in 2003 under new (independent) ownership. The distillery is now releasing whiskys produced since the reopening of its doors. This release, Aged…
Review: Patron Citronge Orange Liqueur
Tequila, lime, triple sec – That’s a margarita. So why not use a triple sec that’s made in Mexico, since presumably those distillers know best how the drink should be put together, right? That’s the basic idea behind Patron Citronge, essentially a triple sec (and not, it should be pointed out, a tequila-based product). This…
Wine Gadget Review: Air Cork
Drinking newly opened wine: Fun. Drinking three-day-old wine: Less fun. Myriad tricks to preserve opened bottles of wine exist, ranging from vacuum pumps to nitrogen gas sprays to using smaller bottles to store leftovers. All are designed with a single goal: To get oxygen out and keep it out. In my (exhaustive) experience, the best…
Tasting the Carmenere Wines of Casa Silva, 2012 Releases
Frequently confused in Chile with Merlot due to its strikingly similar appearance on the vine, Carmenere is actually a classic wine of Bordeaux — where it was once the sixth grape used for this most classic of wines. (Carmenere is still permitted in blends there, but no one, to my knowledge, actually uses it.) Today…
Review: Bai and Bai5 Antioxidant Infusions Beverages
The world of health-focused juice blends is an ever-expanding one, and quality is all over the map. One of the better ones out there is Bai, and we tasted a sampling of juices including both Bai (traditionally sweetened with organic cane juice) and Bai5 (sweetened with low-cal erythritol) products. All Bai products are spiked with…
Review: Vikingfjord Vodka
This vodka hails from Norway where it is distilled from potatoes and made with “pure glacial water” from up there in Scandinavia. Mild nose, much less powerful than you’d expect from a potato spirit, which is typically more of a bruiser in the aroma department. That follows through to the body, which offers quite a…
