Tasting Report: Ministry of Rum Festival 2011
Last year’s Ministry of Rum event was a tasty yet tiny look at the growing world of rum, and most of the same faces — with a few new ones — were back again in 2011. I focused on unfamiliar brands at this walk-around event… but made it a point to retry a few rums…
Book Review: Great Whiskeys: 500 of the Best from Around the World
The bad news: Many of the world’s “great whiskeys” are ones you will likely never see in the real world. Pinwhinnie Royale? Dallas Dhu? Braunstein Danish Whiskey? The good news: If Great Whiskeys is right, there are plenty of whiskeys you can get your hands on, including Early Times, Canadian Mist, and Georgia Moon. This…
Review: Hankey Bannister Blended Scotch Whisky
If you can’t love a whisky with a name like Hankey Bannister, you can’t love anything. Well, maybe a great name can’t buy you love after all. This Scotch blend is fairly typical — Highland and Speyside malt whiskys blended with Lowland grain whiskys to create a simple and relatively inoffensive drinking experience. My only…
Review: Blowfish for Hangovers
How refreshing! Blowfish contains no goji berry. No acai. No kudzu. No N-Acetyl L-Cysteine. None of that new age stuff at all. Instead it has just two, old-school ingredients: Aspirin (500mg) and caffeine (60mg), delivered in an effervescent tablet. Complicated? No, but it’s a recipe that works pretty well. I’m not sure what the advantage…
Review: Speyburn 10 Years Old (2011)
Shop carefully and you can get a single malt whisky for 20 bucks: Though I’ve rarely seen it in bars, Speyburn is a staple of grocery stores around these parts, where it’s cheaper even than Johnnie Walker Red Label. Based in the Speyside region (of course — though the bottle claims a Highlands origin), this…
Review: Buffalo Trace Antique Collection 2011 Edition
We’ve been writing about Buffalo Trace’s awe-inspiring Antique Collection for longer than I can remember, and each year it seems like these five Bourbons are better than the last time out. This year that streak seems to be taking a breather, with a mixed bag of very good and merely “OK” whiskeys. I’d still drink…
Drinkhacker 2011 Wine Cheat Sheet / Vintage Chart
For five years we’ve been offering this fun little freebie: A chart that tells you which years are good, which are great, and which are lesser in the world of wine. Just print it out (it’s best if you have a color printer but works either way), fold it into threes, and stick into your…
Review: 2006 Tenuta Rocca Barolo DOCG
Tenuta Rocca’s Barolo has one thing going for it that almost all other Barolos lack: Affordability. At just $35 a bottle (on deep discount), you’re getting top, DOCG-level quality at a price cheaper than most mid-grade California Cabs. Oh, how does it taste? Great. While initially restrained, a few minutes in the glass opens up…
