Review: South Hollow Spirits Dry Line Gin
Massachusetts-based South Hollow Spirits focuses on rum, but it also makes gin, particularly this bottling, which is, like its rum, made from 100% sugar cane. More specifically, here’s the full process: Dry Line Cape Cod Gin is a small batch, twice-distilled spirit made from organic sugar cane juice. The sugar cane juice is fermented for three…
Review: Jim Beam Double Oak Twice Barreled Bourbon
Take a four year old Jim Beam and put it into a newly charred barrel (for indeterminate time) and what do you get? Jim Beam Double Oak, a twice-barreled bourbon that attempts to up the ante on the aging process through another spin through the rinse cycle. This of course isn’t a new idea. Maker’s…
Review: The Exceptional Blend – Blended Scotch Whisky
First there was The Exceptional Grain. Then came The Exceptional Malt. Now, of course, the trilogy is complete: The Exceptional Blend, which combines the best of both the grain and malt worlds. For those unfamiliar, The Exceptional is a line of small batch Scotch whiskies from Don Sutcliffe, managing director of Craft Distillers, and Willie…
Review: Pasote Tequila, Complete Lineup (2016)
Sonoma-based August Sebastiani’s 3 Badge Beverage Corp. (the new name behind Kirk & Sweeney rums, Uncle Val’s gins, and others) has launched its first tequila: Pasote, which is made by Felipe Camerena in the Los Altos region of Jalisco. Made in part with rainwater instead of just spring water, it’s made using traditional methods and…
Review: The Glenrothes Bourbon Cask Reserve, Sherry Cask Reserve (2016), Vintage Reserve, and Peated Cask Reserve
It’s a quartet of Glenrothes single malts today… all part of the new Reserve Collection that Glenrothes formally launched in 2015. These all arrive as new Malt Master Gordon Motion takes over from the venerable John Ramsay. The first three whiskies reviewed here — Bourbon Cask Reserve, Sherry Cask Reserve, and Vintage Reserve — are each available…
Review: Stillhouse Moonshine
It is either incredibly ballsy or impossibly stupid to package your new moonshine in the same type of stainless steel container that paint thinner comes in, but whatever the case I’m giving Stillhouse Spirits (which recently relocated to Columbia, Tennessee) credit for taking a huge risk and doing something unique. This 100% unaged corn whiskey…
Review: 2013 Resonance Pinot Noir Resonance Vineyard
Resonance Vineyard is a sleepy property in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where it’s been selling fruit to various local vintners for decades. That changed in 2013, when the property was sold to famed French wine operation Maison Louis Jadot with the intent of making an estate pinot out of it — the company’s…
Review: BridgePort Brewing Cream Ale
This is Portland-based BridgePort’s first cream ale, a lighter style of beer that’s brewed with ale yeasts plus sees the addition of Nugget, Meridian, and Mosaic hops. Cut with malted wheat and flake oats, it is designed to have a creamy body (hence the name) and quite low, lager-like bitterness. Previously available only at the…
