Tag: Whiskey Wednesday
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Drinking Poetic (on a Wednesday): The Los Angeles Sour
The Los Angeles Cocktail is terrible and is a perfect example of a bad drink that survives because it’s old. Buried within the pages of the Savoy Cocktail book, one of the quintessential drink tomes of the Golden and Modern cocktail age, is a drink that reads like a New Yorker describing their “totally real” visit to…
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Whiskey Wednesday: The Old Bushmill’s Story
Irish Whiskey is my least favorite category of whiskey. To be fair that’s only because I think about Canadian Whisky so infrequently that I genuinely forget that it’s a thing. Yet, there are some true gems in the category. Redbreast should be a staple at any bar. Tyrconnell Madeira Cask is one of my favorites…
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Whiskey Wednesday: A Tale of Two Elmer’s
I received a text this week from a friend that without preamble said, “Did Elmer T. Lee get worse?” My gut reaction was, “Of course not! How dare you besmirch the name of the dearly departed father of modern Bourbon!?” After calming myself with a hefty dram I remembered that despite centuries of…
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Whiskey Wednesday: Hitting Johnnie Green’s Stride
Johnnie Walker is a striding behemoth, straddling the world as the number one selling Scotch whisky brand. It’s so popular that “What makes Johnnie Walker Blue the best?” is a Google search autocomplete. It’s so popular that due to knockoffs and literal bootlegs there are more bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label sold in India every…
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Whiskey Wednesday: Dry(ish) January
On January 16th, 1919 Nebraska became the 36th of the 48 states that composed these United States of America at the time to ratify the 18th Amendment thus beginning the “noble experiment” that was Prohibition. While Congress didn’t ratify the Amendment until January 29th, and the sale of alcohol wasn’t made fully illegal until January 20th, 1920,…
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Whiskey Wednesday: A Midwinter’s Night Dram
When it comes to the whiskey world the two most maligned words are “sourced” and “blended.” Yet, one of the most respected distilleries to come out of the past decade of craft distilling is easily Utah’s own High West, a distillery that exclusively bottles “sourced” and “blended” whiskey. So how did they rise above? Honesty,…
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Whiskey Wednesday: Heaven Hill 27 Year Old Barrel Strength
Reinvention is the key to longevity. No matter how often you hear something being touted as “Old Fashioned” chances are it’s actually an update on an old technique or just straight up marketing. We are constant victims of nostalgia, even the term “Old Fashioned” implies a dissatisfaction with the modern. Yet as much as we…
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Whiskey Wednesday: Repeal Day
With all the excitement, food, and celebrations that are crammed into the space between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day you can be excused for not noticing that noted scoundrel and always bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler managed to squeeze a completely new holiday in there: December 5th, Repeal Day. Repeal Day is the Hallmark Card Holiday of…
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Open Bottle: Nineteen Eighty-Four JURA
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Released in 1949 George Orwell’s masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four often feels as alive and resonant as it must have when it was first published. Reading the headlines it feels like doublespeak, Big Brother, and New Speak have leapt from the lexicon of…
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Whiskey Wednesday: Elijah Craig: NoMad Edition
I sat down and did this almost exactly a year ago and it’s time again for the annual arrival of a privately selected Elijah Craig Barrel. This one, like all of them, is special because it is a 100% unique bottling but it’s also the culmination of an insane year. Elijah Craig is the whiskey…
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