Reviews
Reviews of spirits, wine, and beer (and various errata like mixers and garnishes) comprise more than 80% of the content at Drinkhacker, and here you’ll find the entire Drinkhacker review archive in one place. Products are rated on a letter-grade scale that should be familiar to most, with F as our lowest, “failing” grade and the very rare A+ as our top score.
Top Reviews Posts:
Notes on Grading
How to Analyze, Score, and Review Whiskey
That’s right: White Beaujolais. It exists, though you may go your entire life without seeing a bottle of it in the flesh. Beaujolais Blanc is Chardonnay, vaguely in the style of White Burgundy, with no aging in oak at all. This is miles away from California Chardonnay, and though Louis Jadot’s 2004 Beaujolais-Villages Blanc Chateau…
Read More
On Thursday, November 20, the new 2008 vintage of Beaujolais Nouveau goes on sale, and every wine lover should make a point to try at least one bottle before ’08 is history. I got an early peek at Georges Duboeuf’s Nouveau and found it one of the most charming Nouveaus in recent memory. The Gamay’s…
Read More
What a gorgeous, lush rum this is. From the land of Guatemala comes Ron Zacapa’s old rum, aged at 8,000 feet above sea level (where the temperature averages 62 degrees) and blended from rums in the solera style. The rums in the blend range from a youthful 6 years to a hoary 23 years old…
Read More
Bourbon, by law, has to be at least 51 percent distilled from corn. In the case of Russell’s Reserve Bourbon, it seems like the other 49 percent is rye. This is a striking doppelganger to Russell’s appealing Reserve Rye, and the similarities are uncanny. And yet I found myself wishing this was a more straightforward…
Read More
It’s 78 degrees outside, and that can only me one thing: Winter is coming! Stevens Point is one of the first brewers to release its holiday brew, and this Winter Ale is a pleasing diversion from a summer of wheat bear and other lighter stuff. The initial taste is crisp and lightly sweet — not…
Read More
Malbec is a huge grape in South America, and this bottling from Chile’s Viu Manent is 93% Malbec with 7% Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s a good example of Malbec’s character, with a mouth full of dusty earth that falls back to notes of grape juice (a surprise — wine never really ever tastes like grape juice),…
Read More
Probably my favorite of the latest batch of Beaujolais is this Moulin à Vent from Potel-Aviron. It has strong Gamay character, to be sure, with that kind of funky, vegetal, anti-rust undercoating but with a tightly would core of stone fruit that elevates the experience considerably. Interesting flower notes come dangerous close to smelling a…
Read More
Tomorrow the latest James Bond movie hits the big screen, and Smirnoff is taking the opportunity to remind us of Bond’s love for vodka: He’ll be drinking the stuff in Quantum of Solace, and Smirnoff is even putting out a special Smirnoff Black vodka branded with the 007 logo, to be sold only in duty-free…
Read More
The celebrated Rhum Clement hails from Martinique, where just about everything seems to have an extra letter in it. I managed to get a small sip of the company’s top-shelf Clement XO at the recent WhiskyFest San Francisco, and the company was kind enough to fill me in on the rest of the line which…
Read More
Connemara wears that “peated” slug right on its sleeve. If the name of the spirit didn’t tip you off, this is a rarity for Irish whiskeys, which are traditionally not peated at all. The smoky peat in this 80-proof whiskey (which carries no age-statement) is immediately at the forefront on the nose and the palate.…
Read More