Review: High Goal Luxury Gin
You’ve certainly had gin before, but have you ever had a luxury gin? Neither have I, but it looks like that changes today. High Goal Luxury Gin is produced by Grain & Barrel Spirits (of Chicken Cock Whiskey fame) in beautiful and old-monied Charleston, South Carolina, where one might imagine a certain tier of drinkers…
Review: 2020 Highlands 41 Pinot Noir and Black Granite Red
If there is one thing I truly regret not doing sooner, it is aggregating marketing slogans from wine companies imploring me to pursue a different lifestyle than my current and satisfactory mode of operation. Throughout my wine-scribing adventures, I’ve been urged, via various means of stylish typography, to “Live Out Loud,” “Chase Life Meaningfully,” “Pursue…
Review: Yellowstone 150th Anniversary and Limited Edition Kentucky Straight Bourbon 2022
Yellowstone puts out a Limited Edition bottling of its whiskey every year, but for 2022 we’re checking this out alongside another special release, a special version of its Yellowstone Family Recipe 6 Years Old, bottled to honor the namesake national park and its 150th anniversary. The former is new, but the latter came out way…
Review: Himbrimi Winterbird London Dry Gin
Iceland doesn’t make just vodka anymore. The global craft distilling craze of the past decade has brought us all types of Icelandic spirits, most recently Himbrimi Gin. Distilled at Brunnur Distillery in the tiny island nation’s capital city, Reykjavik, this gin, named for Iceland’s loon bird, comes in two styles, Old Tom (which remains something of…
Review: Valcan Cellars 2016 Pinot Noir and 2017 Syrah
With over 20 years of experience making wines in both Argentina and Oregon, Juan Pablo Valot and Doris Cancel’s Valcan (a portmanteau of their surnames) brand offers quite a variety from which to choose at their Corvallis base of operations, including a “bare” Malbec which I hope to try in the near future. But for…
Review: Redwood Empire Grizzly Beast and Rocket Top Bottled in Bond Batch #2
Redwood Empire’s bonded bourbon and ryes — Grizzly Beast and Rocket Top, respectively — only arrived earlier in 2022, but now the company is back with a second batch of whiskeys, albeit slightly different from the first batch. These are fully produced “grain to glass” offerings made entirely in California and in keeping with the…
Review: Pigeon River Tennessee Whiskey
The Covered Bridges Whiskey Company (TCBWC) is best known for its Ruddell’s Mill Kentucky bourbon. Now its out with a companion brand, Pigeon River, which is a sourced Tennessee whiskey made with the Lincoln County Process of undergoing charcoal filtration before it is aged. There’s a lot of info provided about the Pigeon River Bridge,…
Review: Wines of San Simeon, 2022 Releases
It’s been a few years since we’ve looked at offerings from this sublabel of Riboli Family Wines, which makes a wide variety of wines sourced from various regions in California. Let’s have a look at three of their more recent releases. 2021 San Simeon Pinot Noir Monterey – Mildly earthy at first, but after a…
