The oldest bar in Lexington, Kentucky has decided to embrace its inner Robin Hood—well, sort of—by making one of the country’s most sought-after spirits available at cost to anyone who shows up. It’s very cool. It’s surprisingly generous. And it’s a very, very savvy bit of marketing.

When a piece of pop culture becomes insanely popular, like really, really ubiquitous, it starts popping up everywhere. When it comes to HBO’s mega-hit Game Of Thrones, that ubiquity started years ago (I’m a casual fan, and I’ve got pint glasses with the sigils of House Targareyn and House Tyrell in my cupboard). Now…

At the end of a week that was definitely 27 years long, one must take good news where one can find it, and one will, perhaps, wish to have a few stiff, well-earned drinks to take the edge off. Consider this story a double-threat.

The oldest person in Great Britain celebrated her 112th birthday this week, and to mark the occasion, she gave away her secret to longevity: A dram of single malt whiskey, every night for the last sixty years.

As has been made clear, we love whiskey at The Takeout, and I am for sure that fan club’s president. So when I saw a list that featured one bourbon-maker from each of the United States (plus D.C.), I clicked extremely hard on that link. And I was not disappointed, for in that slideshow I learned something delightful:…

Previously, on recommendations from a fancy whiskey shopgirl, Allison Shoemaker suggested six whiskeys—mostly bourbons—that are great bang-for-your-buck bottles. That doesn’t mean they’re the cheapest bottles around, but it does mean that, in the humble fancy whiskey shopgirl’s opinion, they overdeliver on the price.…

A bottle of Japanese whisky sold at Hong Kong’s Bonhams Whisky Sale on August 17 for $343,000 (US), toppling both its estimated sale price and the previous world record for a single bottle of Japanese whisky. That is, to use a technical term, “holy shit money.”

For better or worse, we at The Takeout do, in fact, read the comments—mostly for better, as y’all are a good bunch. In addition to the charming discourse, sometimes one of you will throw out a question we decide to go right on ahead and answer. And so, in deference to our supreme leader President Zod, we present an…

Back in June, we checked in on some of the distilleries and bars experimenting with sound-aged or pressure-aged whiskey. To that, Endless West would like to say, “Pffft.” (We are not saying pfft, Cleveland Whiskey is good stuff.)

In late June, a warehouse at the Barton 1792 distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky collapsed, sending 9,000 barrels of bourbon crashing to the ground. The cause is still unknown. In the days that followed, the situation seemed to get worse and worse. A partial collapse became a complete collapse, and another 9,000 barrels…

To say that Japanese whisky (no ‘e’) is having a moment would be inaccurate, as it’s been having a moment for quite awhile now and at a certain point, a moment becomes a mainstay. But while the buzz surrounding the spirit has extended beyond the realm of whiskey nerds, it’s still not found on all that many bar carts,…

There’s a certain kind of whiskey lover who, every so often, pops into the store where I moonlight as a purveyor of fine spirits, surprisingly affordable wines, and fancy soaps. These shoppers are typically much more interested in educating me about whiskey than actually discussing it, for I, a humble shopgirl, could…

Really good scotch isn’t cheap. Decent scotch isn’t cheap. Frankly, cheap scotch usually isn’t all that cheap. That’s part of what makes this story so delightfully baffling: Aldi makes a scotch blend that costs $17.37, and it just won a gold medal at an international spirits competition.

It’s possible to make whiskey taste as though it’s been aged for years without actually aging it for years, and it does not require possession of a TARDIS.

Today, I bring you a story that prompted Takeout editor Kevin Pang to say this on Slack:

This morning, a delightful piece in Forbes reminded me of one of the more interesting wrinkles in the spirits lexicon: whiskey vs. whisky. That there are two different spellings isn’t news to me, and like many bourbon nerds who also happen to write things, I know better than to include that ‘e’ when writing about…

You’ve got to hand it the McIlhenny Co., the company behind Tabasco. Faced with environmental issues on the island where the company’s signature product has been made for 150 years, Tabasco is still pushing forward with a number of new creations. For example, a Diamond Select $35 bottle of Tabasco to celebrate that…

The celebrity spirits market seems to be wide open lately, with Ryan Reynolds pushing gin, Jon Bon Jovi pushing rosé, and George Clooney selling his tequila line for nearly a billion dollars. The latest such entrepreneur is a bit more surprising: Bob Dylan.

Yesterday, Johnnie Walker announced that it was changing the strident icon on its scotch bottle temporarily to “Jane Walker.” Time reports that the black outlined lady in a hurry to go out riding or something “will appear on 250,000 bottles nationwide in March. For every bottle produced, [brand owner] Diageo is…

My grandmom recently passed away, and at the end of the brief, intimate memorial service we held for her, in typical my-family fashion, we toasted her with a shot of Ozelski-brand Polish Whiskey.