Rated A
Reviews of spirits, wine, and beer (and various errata like mixers and garnishes) comprise more than 80% of the content at Drinkhacker, and the A rating represents the cream of the crop — excellent products with only minimal flaws. On a five-star scale, these products would score 4.5 stars. On the traditional 100-point scale popular with many wine and spirits graders, these products would merit scores of 94 to 97 points.
Diageo’s Special Releases — its most prized Scotch whiskies in limited run formats — are here for 2022. And while you can try to ignore the insane messaging — with taglines like “the enchantress of the ruby solstice” — and the out-there bottle artwork, you certainly can’t ignore what’s in these bottles — all hitting…
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The American Single Malt market has been exploding in recent years in a trend that was acknowledged back in July of this year by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) when they officially agreed to recognize the unique category. Well, now Jack Daniel’s is joining the fray as they just unveiled their…
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Just when you think WhistlePig’s “Boss Hog” releases can’t get any weirder, they raise the bar again. Or at least they move it to entirely different building. For 2022, the Greek muse-inspired “Siren’s Song” starts as a standard WhistlePig rye which goes from its standard bourbon barrels into two types of finishing barrels: Greek fig…
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Dublin’s Teeling Whiskey continues its run of ultra-limited, crazy rare bottlings, the latest being this, a single malt aged distilled in 1990, matured in bourbon barrels for 28 years, and finished in a single Portuguese Purple Muscat French Oak cask for an additional four years, bringing the grand total up to 32 years of age.…
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Here at Drinkhacker we’ve previously covered Calumet “Single Rack Black” at 15 years old, which hit in 2021. Now, the whiskey’s a year older, and the label has been updated appropriately. At the time Monica noted two things that continue to be true – the company behind this expression isn’t very well known and offers…
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2022 has been another big year for tequila, with extra-old expressions coming from every corner – and spending time in all manner of barrels – as well as cristalino bottlings becoming suddenly, incredibly popular. Mezcal continues its rise in popularity, with celebrity mezcal now becoming a thing. We drank a lot of tequila and mezcal…
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Twelve years ago (though I thought it was in 2013, 9 years back), Wild Turkey put out a whiskey that was pretty groundbreaking at the time, blending bourbon and rye and claiming it was all the result of a happy mistake. Forgiven has never been my favorite whiskey, but it did spur a whole lot…
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You know whiskey advent calendars and wine advent calendars and beer advent calendars. Now sake gets its due, courtesy of Namazake Paul, perhaps the most noteworthy online seller of sake in the U.S. Namazake Paul’s advent calendar — the only one of its kind — is quite the production, featuring 23 180ml cups of sake…
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For El Tequileño’s Reposado Rare expression the appellation “rare” is more fitting than meets the eye. By law reposados are required to be aged for less than one year, but El Tequileño circumvents these rules by maturing this limited edition tequila in a massive 25,000 liter American oak container known as a pipón for 6…
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For the 2022 holiday season, Japan’s Yamazaki has launched four whiskies in its Limited Edition Tsukuriwake Selection, “a fundamental piece of its unrivaled craftsmanship” that “introduce the foundational pillars of Yamazaki Single Malt Whisky – Puncheon, Peated Malt, Spanish Oak, and Mizunara. The collection honors Tsukuriwake, which means ‘artisanship through a diversity of making’ and…
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