Review: Buffalo Trace Distillery Single Oak Project Bourbon Round Four
Once more into the breach? We’re a quarter of the way into the Buffalo Trace Single Oak Project, with the fourth round of 12 Bourbons released this month, bringing the total to 48 out of 192. Need previous coverage or a baseline of what this experimental series is all about? Find it here: Round One…
Review: Avery IPA
Avery alludes to the traditional objective of IPAs (English breweries used to load their beers with hops to help preserve it during the long journey to India) with the rustic, global label on this brew, and one gets the idea that this could probably endure the journey across a few oceans. Thankfully, this Colorado brewery…
Review: C by Courvoisier Cognac
All brands must expand, and Courvoisier has been on a tear lately. First Courvoisier Rose, now C by Courvoisier. Unlike the Rose, C is a full Cognac, blended from spirits produced from grapes from 50 winegrowers in the Fin Bois Cru, a somewhat lesser Cognac region surrounding Grand Champagne and Petite Champagne. That’s understandable: There…
Review: Benromach Origins, Batch #1 Golden Promise 1999
We’re doing things a little backwards here. We’ve already reviewed Benromach’s second Origins series experimental Scotch whisky, and we’re backtracking to get to its first, Golden Promise 1999. What is Golden Promise? A special type of barley developed in 1965, and one of the most popular in Scotch whiskeys. The Golden Promise used in this…
Review: Wines of Pali, 2010 Vintage
Pali operates in Lompoc but bottles single vineyard wines — primary Pinot — from all over the west coast. Recently it launched a cuvee program to bring more affordable, region-specific wines to the masses in higher volumes than it can do with its single vineyard wines. We tasted three of the newly released 2010 bottlings.…
Review: Liber & Co. Spiced Tonic Syrup
Austin-based Liber & Company trucks in a pretty narrow world: Artisinal, spiced tonic syrup. Liber & Co. sent us samples of their new product and it’s certainly nothing like your bottle of Schweppes. A ruddy orange, and indeed a tonic syrup, not a tonic “water.” Made with crushed herbs, spices, and cinchona bark, it is…
Tasting the Wines of Vidal-Fleury, 2012 Releases
Guy Sarton du Jonchay has been the winemaker at the Rhone Valley’s Vidal-Fleury since 2008, but his roots in the wine business run deep. For decades he’s been making wine in France and in Argentina. Happenstance has brought him home to France where he’s overseeing 80,000 cases of wine from Vidal-Fleury’s 19 AOCs each year.…
Review: Mandarine Napoleon Liqueur
Was Napoleon an orange liqueur man? My sources say he drank Burgundy and Cognac — like a good Frenchman should — so how would he feel about an orange liqueur being sold in his name? Well, guess what: This liqueur was made especially for Napoleon Bonaparte, and wasn’t offered to sale to the public until…
