“Some people like our stuff and some people don’t, and that’s just fine with us.” – Gary Fleshman, General Manager, Rogue Ales It was a pretty strong statement that started off my tasting of Rogue Distillery‘s spirits. Best known for their micro-craft beers (like the Dead Guy Ale), Rogue has made a move into the spirits space with a line [...]

Up in the middle of upstate New York, a little off to the eastern side, is a collection of long, thin, finger-like lakes called, appropriately enough, “The Finger Lakes”. It was at the base of one of these lakes (Lake Cayuga) that I spent my college years.  The region is gorgeous (the official town slogan is “Ithaca is Gorge-ous” after all the [...]

I continue my adventures with “White Dog” or white (unaged) whiskey  with Charbay’s Doubled & Twisted Light Whiskey distilled from bottle ready IPA beer. Doubled & Twisted  has a sweet and florally nose with just a hint of hops. There and ever so slight hint of yeastiness. It’s the kind of nose that you want to linger on and really take in. As complex [...]

I’ve been making my way through Max Watman’s Chasing The White Dog, when on page 181 I realized that Watman had written perhaps the finest paragraph about Whiskey I had ever read. It sums up my feelings about whiskey so well I just had to share it: To say a whiskey is the best I’ve ever had is impossible – [...]

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working my way through a ton of Irish Whiskey with tasting partners Lance Mayhew and Jacob Grier. Together we’ve tasted over 20 different Irish Whiskeys. A common thread ran through all these spirits – smooth and sweet with a medium to short finish. This class of whiskey is fairly easy drinking, perhaps a [...]

I’ve heard a lot about adding a few drops of distilled water into whisky but I don’ think I’ve ever heard it as eloquently put as this from Peter Zimmermann, Master of Whisky. With regard to cask strength whiskies, I typically present them in a Glencairn glass or a small stemmed tulip glass. It is important to have glassware that [...]

It’s unfortunate that Irish whiskey is often seen as the ugly little red headed step child of the whiskey world. Irish whiskey used to be the widest consumed form of whiskey in the world, but a trifecta of misfortunate events (including prohibition in the US, getting cut off from serving the British empire and missing the boat on the column still) relegated Irish whiskey to [...]

On of the unfortunate things about living in a state with extremely tight liquor control is that there are spirits which you simply can’t find for sale. There was a period of time in Oregon when green chartreuse wasn’t being sold because the Oregon Liquor Control Commission had thought that yellow and green were basically the same thing and filled orders just for yellow. In Oregon [...]

White dog is the pure distilled spirit made from fermented grain.  This clear high proof spirit is ultimately put into barrels and aged to become the golden whiskey most people are familair with. For some this interm distilled spirit IS the final product and if it is produced from an illegal source it’s commonly referred to as ‘moonshine‘. The illegal [...]