Featured Issues

— No. 142 —

Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve

Well, we were lucky enough to get our hands on a bot­tle of Pap­py Van Win­kle’s Fam­i­ly Reserve 15 year, which some say is the best of the prod­uct line. It was­n’t an easy task secur­ing a bot­tle that’s for sure. This line of wheat­ed bour­bon has a cult-like fol­low­ing. The craze got its start in 1998 when Van Win­kle 20 year was sub­mit­ted to the pres­ti­gious Bev­er­age Tast­ing Insti­tute. It received an unheard of rat­ing of 99 out of 100.

— No. 141 —

Willett Exploratory Cask Finish (XCF) Version 1.0

XCF) Version 1.0">

I love that the Wil­lett team is get­ting cre­ative with this new Explorato­ry Cask Fin­ish (XCF) prod­uct line. Ver­sion 1.0 is a sev­en-year-old rye fin­ished in Cura­cao casks. The rye was dis­tilled by MGP of Indi­ana (I know, I know…) and then aged in Wil­let­t’s ware­hous­es for sev­en years in Amer­i­can white oak bar­rels with a #4 char.

— No. 139 —

Willett Distillery

I recent­ly had the expe­ri­ence of fol­low­ing around the dis­tiller of my favorite dis­tillery with my bud­dies and some cam­era equip­ment. We were there when the dis­tiller opened the doors until he packed it up for the day. Wil­lett was nice enough to give us free rein of the grounds and we got to wit­ness each nuance of the process.

— No. 136 —

Aperol Falernum

A while back I saw an arti­cle in “Art Culi­naire Mag­a­zine” with a few Aper­ol cock­tails and an Aper­ol faler­num recipe. The recipe came from Jane Lopez, Bev­er­age Direc­tor at The Cat­bird Seat, in Nashville, Ten­nessee. I thought this was a great idea and decid­ed to make my own twist. I used my go to faler­num recipe as a start­ing point, but omit­ted the fresh juice to help pro­long the liqueur’s shelf life. I also cut back on the cloves because my original …

— No. 134 —

The Fencer

  • 1 1/2 oz Blue­coat Gin
  • 3/4 oz Coc­chi Americano
  • 1/2 oz Campari
  • 1/2 oz grape­fruit hop syrup
  • 2 dash­es of Post Pro­hi­bi­tion Pick Me Up Bitters
  • Gar­nish with a grape­fruit twist
— No. 133 —

Grapefruit Hop Syrup

Inspired by my recent hob­by of home brew­ing, I cre­at­ed a unique grape­fruit hop syrup to exper­i­ment with. IPAs that have a strong grape­fruit palette are my favorite. I’ve found that cas­cade and amar­il­lo hops have a nice grape­fruit and cit­rus pro­file to them and I want­ed to try this fla­vor com­bi­na­tion in cock­tail recipes.