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).
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 bourbon — it lacks the sweetness that makes good bourbon so appealing, but the rye-like characteristics are too muted here to appeal to fans of the spicy stuff. It…
This weekend Eric Felten wrote about the Widow’s Kiss in the Wall Street Journal, a classic cocktail that dates back to the 1890s at least. Tried one today — using his recipe, which is cribbed from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails — and found it as I remembered, still too sweet and overwhelming…
Nothing saddens me more than watching someone order a top-shelf tequila, then suck it down in one gulp with salt and lime. Herradura offers some tips on how to drink tequila the right way, whether you’re having a light silver or a deep anejo: – Before tasting, hold the glass up to a light. Swirl…
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…
Unhappy with merely drinking their expensive spirit, meddling scientists have found a way to turn tequila into diamonds. The final diamond film was hard and heat-resistant – properties that could make the diamond useful as coatings for cutting tools, high-power semiconductors, radiation detectors and optical-electronic devices, the scientists explained. They plan to begin industrial-scale applications…
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…
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.…
Just so I can get it down, officially, the full, official name of this product is (rî)¹. Actually, that’s a cheat, because there’s no symbol for a “long lowercase I” — an i with a horizontal bar instead of a dot — that the web can render, at least not that I know of. So…
After my report on Sgt. Classick‘s Hawaiian-based rums, the good folks at Haleakala Distillers responded to remind us that Classick isn’t actually distilled on the island, and that its products are. In fact Haleakala is the only distillery on the island of Maui, and produces a selection of fine rums. None of these rums are…
One of the most-fun-to-say spirits names in the business, Bunnahabhain is situated on the north end of Islay. This 18-year-old Scotch is a moderately smoky spirit, heavy on salty, seaweed-infused phenol and light on the sweets (a caramel note is there somewhere in the finish, but it’s just a hint, really). Flowery notes are more…