WhiskyCast

This week, our Happy Hour Live webcast focused on sustainability in the whisky industry. After all, we want to be able to enjoy a dram with our grandchildren when they're adults years from now, right? Shanna Farrell's new book "A Good Spirit" looks at distillers taking sustainability seriously, while Susannah Skiver Barton's latest article for VinePair covers the growing shortage of new whiskey ba...

Daithi O'Connell thought he wanted to own his own distillery, and almost pulled the trigger on building one. He thought better of it at the last minute, and decided to go the independent bottler route instead. He launched W.D. O'Connell Whisky Merchants in late 2019, shortly before the pandemic, and that turned out to be an even more well-timed move. He'll explain why on this week's WhiskyCast In-...

Dr. Don Livermore is the master blender at Hiram Walker Distillery in Windsor, Ontario, and the winner of numerous awards for his Canadian whiskies over the years. He's also a whisky nerd, as we proved during our #HappyHourLive webcast the other night. You can catch the fun each Friday night on the WhiskyCast YouTube channel, our Facebook page, Twitter, and Twitch.

Tickets for this year's Spirit of Speyside Festival go on sale next Monday (March 7), and festival organizers are hoping for a return to normal after two years of pandemic-caused cancellations and postponements. We'll talk with the festival's new volunteer chairman, George McNeil, about plans to hold a traditional Spirit of Speyside Festival from April 27 through May 2, along with some of the chan...

St. George Spirits in Alameda, California is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and is one of the pioneers of the U.S. craft distilling movement. In addition, it was one of the first distilleries to make an American single malt whiskey 20 years ago this year - a whiskey that came out of a job interview. We got the story behind that job interview from Master Distiller Lance Winters and Hea...

It's been 24 years since Gordon & MacPhail reopened the historic Benromach Distillery in Forres, Scotland to make a "traditional" style of Speyside single malt, and 124 years since the distillery opened for the first time. Neither distillery manager Keith Cruickshank nor Gordon & MacPhail's Richard Urquhart were around for that first opening, but both were on hand in 1998. We'll talk with them abo...

It's been more than a decade since Bill Samuels, Jr. "retired" as chairman of Maker's Mark and turned the reins over to his son Rob, but the 82-year-old Bourbon legend seems just as busy today as ever. He joined us from his office at Maker's Mark headquarters for the #HappyHourLive webcast the other night for a wide-ranging discussion of everything from his early days to being a mentor for today's...

It takes guts to put your whisky up against those from around the world in blind tastings and agree to publish the results no matter what, but the verdict is now in for The Judgement of Westland. Around 2,000 people tasted Westland's American single malt against competitors from Scotland, Australia, and India over the last four months, and in the end, all four malts were separated by just a fracti...

Time for our annual visit with the guys from "Off Track with Hinch & Rossi" podcast for a virtual whiskey tasting session. IndyCar veterans Alexander Rossi and James Hinchcliffe joined us for the #HappyHourLive webcast, along with producer Tim Durham and their special guest, Marco Andretti. We tasted the Heaven's Door Redbreast Edition Bourbon, the Dickel/Leopold Bros. Rye collaboration, Redwood E...

Jeff Arnett left Jack Daniel's nearly 18 months ago with a desire to create his own whiskey brand, and that's just what he and his partners have done with the new Company Distilling. With one Tennessee distillery already in operation, a second under construction, and plans for a third in the works, Company Distilling has high hopes for the future. We talked with Jeff about that future and his past...

It's been nearly two years since Uncle Nearest and Jack Daniel's joined forces to create the Nearest and Jack Advancement Initiative with a goal of creating new opportunities for people of color in the spirits industry. The Initiative's business incubator program has just graduated its first company after working with Du Nord Social Spirits for more than a year. The Minneapolis distillery was dama...

Our live webcast with Clay Risen of the New York Times and Maggie Kimberl of American Whiskey Magazine went all over the place, with everything from winter weather to fake whiskies and much more! Join us each Friday night at 5:00pm New York time (22:00 GMT/UTC) for our live shows on the WhiskyCast YouTube channel, our Facebook page, Twitter, and Twitch.

Fakes have been plaguing Scotch Whisky collectors for years, but the rising boom in Bourbon's popularity means more demand than supply -- and that's where counterfeiters see a chance to make money. With empty bottles available for sale online, it's not that hard to create a fake Bourbon...until you get a call from Adam Herz. He's a Los Angeles-based whisky collector who's become an expert in the a...

That Boutique-y Whisky Company releases some of the most unique single cask whiskies on the market, and we're joined this week by Sam "Dr. Whisky" Simmons and Dave Worthington for whisky talk, games, and much more! Join us each Friday night at 5:00pm New York time (22:00 GMT/UTC) for our live shows on the WhiskyCast YouTube channel, our Facebook page, Twitter, and Twitch.

There was a time when farm distillers dominated whisky production until the advent of large-scale commercial distilling more than 150 years ago. Now, the boom in craft distilling has created a whole new crop of "grain to glass" farm-based distillers like Frey Ranch in Fallon, Nevada. Colby and Ashley Frey founded the distillery in 2013 on the farm east of Reno where Colby's family has lived for ge...

Our Friday night #HappyHourLive webcasts are back! This week's show features Billy Abbott, author of the new book "The Philosophy of Whisky," and Canadian Whisky Awards founder Davin de Kergommeaux. Davin handed out the 2022 Canadian Whisky Awards the night before our webcast, and we'll discuss the winners along with the state of Canadian Whisky. Join us each Friday night at 5:00pm New York time (...

A century ago, Masataka Taketsuru was using the lessons he learned during his time in Scotland to build Japan's emerging whisky industry armed with a notebook full of information. While that notebook remains in Nikka Whisky's archives, it's now been translated into English for the first time. Ruth Anne Herd and Professor Alan Wolstenholme teamed up for the translation, and there's a family connect...

The excisemen of Scotland's past never found all of the illegal whisky stills being used around the country, and traces of those illicit distilleries can be found to this day...if one knows where to look. Derek Alexander knows, and he's on a mission to uncover as much of that history as possible in his role as an archaeologist with the National Trust for Scotland. His search started two decades ag...

We'll start the New Year off with an anniversary...the 1oth anniversary for the New York Distilling Co. in Brooklyn's North Williamsburg neighborhood. Allen Katz and his partners opened their distillery in what was at the time a fairly run-down neighborhood, only to see gentrification take shape around them. As Allen discloses on WhiskyCast In-Depth for the first time, that's forcing them to make...

OK, the headline is a tease...of course Dr. Nick Savage is a whisky maker. In fact, he's been the master distiller and blender at Scotland's Bladnoch Distillery for the last couple of years. He's just created the latest three Bladnoch single malts, and joins us on this week's WhiskyCast In-Depth. Speaking of heroes, though...there are a lot of them in the whisky world, and many of them helped rais...

There are plenty of collaborations between whisky makers and the entertainment world, from singers and bands to actors who want to make their own whiskies. What's the key to making one of these collaborations work? We'll find out from Balcones Distilling's Jared Himstedt, who just released the Tres Hombres Texas Whisky collaboration with the members of ZZ Top. We'll also taste several other "celeb...

Ian Buxton is back with another edition in his popular "101 Whiskies" series, "101 Craft and World Whiskies to Try Before You Die." This time, he's defining craft whiskies using a similar standard to the classic one for obscenity: "I know it when I see it." Of course, that's tongue-in-cheek, and as Ian points out on this week's WhiskyCast In-Depth, the line gets blurrier all the time. In the news,...

John Campbell shocked the Scotch Whisky world a couple of months ago when he disclosed his plans to leave Islay's Laphroaig Distillery after 27 years, with the last 16 as distillery manager. At the time, he wouldn't say what his future plans were...but now, he's joined the young Lochlea Distillery as its production director and master blender. John's very first interview after confirming the move...

Bourbon is booming, and perhaps no distiller is riding the waves of the Bourbon boom more aggressively than Bardstown Bourbon Company. Over its first five years of production, it's expanded to the point where the distillery is now one of the ten largest distilleries in the United States and sought out by potential collaborators of all kinds. Those collaborators range from Hall of Fame distillers t...

The grain used to make many of today's whiskies isn't always picked for its flavor, but that's not the distiller's fault. Blame the commodity grain system, in which the largest grain customers determine what types of rye, corn, wheat, and barley are most widely planted by farmers. It's the Golden Rule, in which the one with the most gold gets to call the shots...and distillers aren't the ones with...