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First White Whiskey, Now Brown Gin: Beefeater Joins the Unusual Aging Trend

Today Beefeater annouced the launch of Burrough's Reserve, a gin aged in Lillet barrels. It comes as part of a larger trend of reversing the traditional aging times of spirits and cocktails. White whiskies have been a huge trend for several years, mostly led by the craft distilling movement. The small batch distillers couldn't afford to wait for their whiskies to fully mature before selling them, so they all started selling young, barely, or not-at-all-aged spirit. The trend became so big that the major brands couldn't ignore it. Even Jack Daniels and Jim Beam released young/unaged whiskies at the end... Read more →

Brown-Forman Cooperage Pics and Videos

The Brown-Forman Cooperage is located in Louisville, Kentucky. There they make the barrels for Jack Daniels and their other brands. Below are some pictures from my visit. You can read about what I saw in my story for CLASS Magazine here. Below are a couple of videos. The first is the machine that puts hoops around barrels. The second video is of the charring process of the barrels. Fire! Read more →

The American Whiskey Trail: History in the Making

A few weeks ago I traveled along the American Whiskey Trail, from Washginton DC to Tennessee to Kentucky. While I'll have a lot more to write about the whiskey distilleries I visited, here's a first story in CLASS Magazine about the rest of the trip: the historic sites, copper still makers, and cooperage. The highlights of a trip through America's whiskey distilleries are, of course, the distilleries themselves: the contrasting scales of operations in Tennessee of the George Dickel distillery and its neighbour Jack Daniel's; the gleaming new Wild Turkey distillery in Kentucky; the idyllic village-like setting of Maker's Mark;... Read more →

Videos of Recharring Barrels at Hakushu Distillery

On my visit to the Hakushu distillery in Japan we watched a guy recharring ex-bourbon barrels. Recharring is when you refresh a barrel by burning the inside of a previously-used cask to give it additional life for aging spirits. In this first video, we watch the recharring process while Mike Miyamoto explains that whisky aged in recharred barrels is more astringent than whisky aged in non-recharred barrels. In this second video, we watch the rechar guy put out the flame with one scoop of water. Read more →

A Visit to the Yamazaki Distillery in Japan

Yesterday I wrote about visiting the Hakushu distillery in Japan. Today I'll write about Suntory's other single-malt distillery, Yamazaki. It is located between Kyoto and Osaka, at the convergence of several rivers. I believe they said the distillery welcomes 100,000 visitors each year. (Mount Fuji as seen from the train to Kyoto.) The Yamazaki distillery was built in 1923 and launched its first whisky, the White Label, in 1929. That whisky is still made today. The distillery location was chosen because of its water (as are most distilleries), also sought out by Sen no Rikyo, the inventor of the Japanese... Read more →

The Mysteries Wood Maturation at Tales of the Cocktail

Here are notes from the Mysteries of Wood Maturation seminar at Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans. "We want to keep the character of the base spirit, but we don't want to have vinegar. Wood helps us do that. It takes some of those acids out that we don't want." Dale DeGroff "We don't really know how far back barrel usage goes." Doug Frost. Theoretically you could throw it off a boat and it would float for a while. One person can roll it up a hill. "The very idea of bending staves is not way out -... Read more →