Tag: daily drinker

  • Russell’s Reserve 10-Year (LL/ME) Scoresheet & Review

    Russell’s Reserve 10-Year (LL/ME) Scoresheet & Review

    Here’s a little peek behind the scenes of my blog: Russell’s Reserve 10-Year bourbon is by far my most popular review, and by a significant margin. As of writing, it has around 23K views. The next highest individual review? Four Roses Single Barrel with roughly 12K. I’ve occasionally pondered why…

  • Wild Turkey Jimmy Russell’s 70th Anniversary Scoresheet & Review

    Wild Turkey Jimmy Russell’s 70th Anniversary Scoresheet & Review

    I have a confession to make: Prior to this review, I knew very little about Jimmy Russell. I briefly met him and his wife while visiting Kentucky in 2021, but beyond that, what I knew about him was derived from word of mouth. The highlights I could tell you were…

  • Jim Beam Black 7-Year Scoresheet & Review

    Jim Beam Black 7-Year Scoresheet & Review

    I probably speak for many people when I say that Jim Beam was instrumental to my formative whiskey drinking days. More specifically, the many options they offered at budget-friendly prices made it possible to explore variances of similar (if not identical) bourbons. This was the closest I could get to…

  • Evan Williams 1783 Small Batch Scoresheet & Review

    Evan Williams 1783 Small Batch Scoresheet & Review

    Facelifts are nothing new in the world of whiskey. Most distilleries make adjustments, big or small, to their bottles every few years. Even the same producer may make a drastic change to some of their bottles, but subtle changes to others (Wild Turkey and Old Forester come to mind). Heaven…

  • Wild Turkey 101 (2024) Scoresheet & Review

    Wild Turkey 101 (2024) Scoresheet & Review

    Your average long-time whiskey consumer is no doubt accustomed to their favorite bottle receiving slight facelifts over the years. Sometimes, this invites little to no attention; other times, it spawns conspiracy-level scrutiny from the more fervent among us. A couple of recent examples include Early Times Bottled in Bond, Old…

  • Evan Williams Bottled in Bond (2020) Scoresheet & Review

    Evan Williams Bottled in Bond (2020) Scoresheet & Review

    Bonded whiskey is an easy category to take for granted in the 21st century. As modern whiskey consumers continually demand transparency, the significance of the Bottled in Bond Act has seemingly become less relevant in the grand scheme. It’s a bit of a shame, considering this act was the first…

  • Michter’s US1 Small Batch Scoresheet & Review

    Michter’s US1 Small Batch Scoresheet & Review

    Present-day bourbon has effectively flipped from where it was 10 or so years ago. Boastful age statements, modest pricing, and high availability once defined the unassuming landscape. Now? The scene has exploded with NDPs, cask finishes, ballooning prices, and limited releases. In many ways, Michter’s portfolio feels like a microcosm…

  • Bunnahabhain 12-Year Scoresheet & Review

    Bunnahabhain 12-Year Scoresheet & Review

    Bunnahabhain is unique for a very simple reason: It’s one of the only Islay distilleries to produce unpeated malt whisky. That’s not to say no peated whisky is produced there (see: Toiteach A Dhà), but unpeated Islay single malt is more or less the spiel. That and the common bottling…

  • Knob Creek Small Batch 9-Year Scoresheet & Review

    Knob Creek Small Batch 9-Year Scoresheet & Review

    Many casual drinkers probably don’t realize just how prolific brands like Jim Beam actually are. Bottles bearing the Clermont distillery’s name are easy enough to discern, but Jim Beam plays host to many others as well. Consider their parent company, Beam Suntory, and Jim Beam’s prominence becomes that much more…

  • Four Roses Single Barrel Scoresheet & Review

    Four Roses Single Barrel Scoresheet & Review

    Digging deeper and deeper into the many intricacies of whiskey production is one the main reasons I find it so fascinating. That whiskey is made from a combination of water, grain, and yeast is easy enough to conceptually understand. It’s when we start getting into the minutiae of the process,…

  • Coopers’ Craft Barrel Reserve Scoresheet & Review

    Coopers’ Craft Barrel Reserve Scoresheet & Review

    Keeping track of what brands belong to what distillery and what distilleries belong to what parent company is no simple task. I’d argue that it’s one of the biggest barriers to entry for those looking to become more invested in whiskey. For example, the publicly traded Brown-Forman manufactures the likes…

  • Wild Turkey 101 Rye Scoresheet & Review

    Wild Turkey 101 Rye Scoresheet & Review

    Wild Turkey is seldom the first brand to come to mind when discussing rye whiskey. Perhaps it’s befitting, since Master Distiller Jimmy Russell rarely engaged with the category as a whole. Even so, rye continues to benefit from the bourbon boom since the two are frequently lumped together. One reason…