Review: Cannonborough Beverage Co. Sodas and Mixers
Charleston-based Cannonborough Beverage Co. started making its fresh fruit sodas in 2012, where they are sold for drinking soda and for use as cocktail mixers. These all-natural sodas come in 750ml bottles (the crown caps can be a problem unless you’re preparing drinks for a party or a punch bowl), and can be purchased online…
Review: Afrohead Aged Rum XO 15 Years Old
Last year Afrohead Rum, a capable 7 year old, hit the scene. Today we turn out head toward Afrohead XO, a 15 year old blend from the same Bahamas-based distillery (bottled in Barbados) and featuring the same afro-headed mascot on the bottle. As with its forebear, Afrohead XO showcases a somewhat rustic and simplistic style. On…
Review: Beach Whiskey Original and Island Coconut
I say coconut-flavored spirit. You say…Â whiskey? It’s hard to believe, particularly with a name like “Beach” and pastel-colored bottles, but this really is a corn-based product. A pure corn, white whiskey is the one in white. Red is a cinnamon spirit (not reviewed here) and blue is the coconut whiskey. Coconut whiskey. Still can’t get…
Reviewing Douro Wines: 2013 Vale do Bomfim and 2012 Prazo de Roriz
The Symington family is a titan of Port-making — producing Dow, Graham, Cockburn, Warre, and more — but it also produces plenty of table wine, right in the same region where Port grapes are cultivated: The Douro of northern Portugal. Made using traditional Portuguese grapes, these wines are rustic and often simple. Let’s explore a…
Review: Kinahan’s Irish Whiskey – Blended and Single Malt 10 Years Old
The rise of Irish continues with the relaunch of Kinahan’s Irish Whiskey, a brand that dates back to 1779 and was called for by none other than Jerry Thomas in some of his iconic cocktail recipes from the 1800s. Kinahan’s went under in the early 1900s but was revived in 2014, and for obvious reasons:…
What To Do with Leftover Whisky? Blend Your Own Infinity Bottle
Whiskey samples are a way of life at Drinkhacker HQ, and when you’re in this business for awhile (we’re approaching 9 years and 5000 posts), those samples start to stack up. Sometimes samples come as full 750ml bottles. Often they arrive in the form of 50ml or 100ml minis. I give away more mostly-full bottles of…
Review: Few Spirits Anguish & Regret Liqueur
Anguish & Regret — what a name! — is a spin on a liqueur known as malört. Malört? It’s a liqueur introduced in the 1930s in Chicago by a Swedish immigrant who was obviously pining for his aquavit in some fashion. The name malört is Swedish for wormwood. Today, Chicagoans still love malört, and a small cottage industry…
Review: 2014 Freemark Abbey Chardonnay Napa Valley
Freemark’s latest chardonnay offers a bit more mineral character than your typical California chardonnay, with notes of white grapes, white florals, and honeysuckle, before slowly fading into light caramel, vanilla, and gentle oak notes. The 2014 bottling rides the line between traditional Napa chardonnay and, say, a New World pinot grigio — which is either…