Review: 2019 Bannister Scheurebe Alexander Valley
We’ve covered the wines of Bannister in the recent past: Now we’re back with a look at the winery’s first ever Scheurebe bottling — and the first ever Scheurebe I’ve ever tried, actually. This Scheurebe (shoi-ray-ba) was produced from cuttings from the Roter Hang (the Red Slope) in Germany’s Rheinhessen region and it is produced…
Review: Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon 2020 Edition
For 2020’s Limited Edition Small Batch, Four Roses is again trotting out some old whiskeys to use in the blend, which again includes batches from four different recipes. This year, we’re getting a mix of 12 year old OBSV (30% of the blend), 19 year old OBSK (20%), 12 year old OESV (25%), and 16…
Review: Wines of Wente, 2020 Releases
California’s Wente isn’t sitting out the Coronavirus when it comes to innovation. The winery recently rolled out an app for voice assistants Alexa and Google Assistant, designed to help guide you through the intricacies of a Wente wine tasting. We don’t review apps here so much, but we do like to pop open the vino,…
Review: Longmorn 16 Years Old
Longmorn is another distillery whose primary existence is utilized for blending (often in parent company Pernod’s Chivas line), or for independent bottling. The Scotch Malt Whisky Society are quite the fans, with bottles turning up on their website for purchase every now and again. Today we take our first look at a distillery-released bottling with…
Review: Deanston Virgin Oak
The southern Highlands’ beloved Deanston keeps an established reputation for producing an enjoyable dram through 12 and 18-year expressions of consistent quality. However, they also have a penchant for respectable limited-run releases that pop up from time to time. There’s a Kentucky Cask-matured expression which I hope would appear on the shelves of my local…
Review: Bender & Cohen Double Barrel Rye
If you recall Bender’s Rye, you know half the team behind Bender & Cohen, which recently added the latter’s name to the brand for Bender’s “experimental playground,” which will be used for oddball, small batch releases — the first of which is this double-barreled rye. Bender & Cohen Double Barrel Rye is made on San…
Review: Glenkinchie 12 Years Old
Glenkinchie is another distillery in Diageo’s rather expansive portfolio that doesn’t receive a lot of love or attention from corporate headquarters. It doesn’t have the hype multiplier of a Lagavulin, nor the cult fanaticism of a Port Ellen. The humble little Lowland operation which, according to my faithful 2020 edition of the Malt Whiskey Yearbook,…