Spirits
Spirits are beverages made by the process of distillation. The “Spirits” category is not commonly used at Drinkhacker because the vast majority of reviews we publish fall into this category. It is used only occasionally to help organize our category list (and mainly gets clicked by accident).
Yeah, it’s about as made-up a holiday as you can get, but March 5 is Absinthe Day, which means you should be mixing up a little green fairy concoction in honor of the misunderstood spirit. Don’t know where to start? Here are some of my favorite absinthes on the market: Obsello – Spanish. Fragrant, silky,…
St. Patrick’s Day is always good for dozens of recipe submissions from companies hopeful to have their (invariably green) cocktails featured here. None have come anywhere close to the audacity of Richard Blais’s concoction, which is reprinted here for your shock and awe. Cabbage water, people. Cabbage water. Corned Beef Collins 1 ½ oz. Michael…
Spiced rum continues to grow as a category as every distiller on earth realizes that Captain Morgan has been sucking down cash for years with no competition. This latest brand, Blackheart, comes from Heaven Hill, home of Evan Williams bourbon and Christian Brothers brandy. (Also, it is not to be confused with Black Heart Rum,…
It’s not every day I get to sample a four-figures-a-bottle whiskey. This week I got to try two side by side. Highland Park brought out its newest bottling — the vintage-dated 1968 Limited Edition (bottled in 2008, it’s a 40-year-old whisky) — which is on the cusp of being released into the wilds. At $4,000…
Immediate bummer: Upon pouring a bit of Solerno into your glass, Solerno turns out not to be bright red like the bottle’s appearance — and blood orange juice — would indicate (the glass is tinted, ya see) but rather nearly clear, like Cointreau, just with a slight yellow tinge. Solerno is indeed just a spin…
We were lucky enough to land one of just 1,100 bottles of Knappogue Castle’s 1994 Master Distiller’s Private Selection Irish whiskey, a single malt Irish — hand numbered and signed by the son of the distillery’s founder, Mark Andrews III. Aged 14 years, it’s hard to imagine this whiskey spent that much time in cask.…
Yes, Virginia, they make whisky in Wales. And as in Scotland, they spell it without the E. Penderyn is the best known Welsh whisky on the market, probably because it’s the only operating distillery left in the region. Penderyn makes several bottlings, but this, in the company’s “house style,” is one of its best-known, a…
There is one known use for Herbsaint, and it’s a big one: In the classic Sazerac cocktail, in which the glass is washed with Herbsaint before rye, sugar, and Peychaud’s bitters are added. Now Sazerac (the company) is relaunching the venerable spirit with its original 1934 recipe, called Herbsaint Original, aka Legendre Herbsaint. Neither the…
Our friends at Magnificent Bastard announced a contest to create a namesake cocktail for them late last year. After giving it much thought, here’s what I came up with and submitted. I wanted to create something that’s very easy to make, uses relatively common ingredients, and, in keeping with the name of the website, is…
First produced in Cuba, Matusalem now hails from the Dominican Republic (after a stint in the U.S. — presumably Puerto Rico), but claims to hold fast to its original Cuban recipe dating back to 1872. This is the company’s top-end bottling, aged for 15 years using the solera style of barrel aging (though what exactly…