If you’ve hung around bourbon folks lately, you’ve probably heard the word Amburana tossed around like it’s some kind of secret handshake. A few years back, most of us couldn’t have picked the wood out of a lineup. Now it feels like every craft distillery in America is stuffing barrels with the s

Every man reading this has at least one skeleton in his liquor cabinet. That bottle you bought because it was on sale, or your brother-in-law swore it was “just as good,” or you were in a hurry and grabbed the wrong label. Mine was a plastic-handle Old Crow I picked up the week before Christmas las

Bourbon lovers know the ritual: a well-chosen bottle, a proper glass, a quiet moment to enjoy the corn-sweet richness, vanilla, caramel, oak, and that long, warm finish. Now imagine taking a perfect sip right after a bite of ghost-pepper wings or extra-hot Nashville chicken. What happens next is no

If you’re a whiskey lover like me, you’ve probably wondered if it’s cheaper to buy your favorite bottle straight from the distillery. I mean, cutting out the middleman sounds like a no-brainer, right? But is it really a steal, or are you just falling for the charm of those rustic barrel rooms? Let

Every year the spirits world throws a big fancy party in San Francisco where the real heavy hitters show up — master distillers, buyers, writers, and a few hundred folks who just love a good drink. They blind-taste thousands of bottles, argue late into the night, and finally hand out the awards tha

Most guys who love basketball and a good pour remember Cliff Hagan as the slick-shooting, hook-shot master who helped the St. Louis Hawks beat Bill Russell’s Celtics for the 1958 NBA title. What a lot of folks don’t realize is that long after the final buzzer, the man they called “Li’l Abner” never

For years, guys who love a good whiskey have been chasing the next big thing—something that feels familiar in the glass but surprises the hell out of you on the first sip. Turns out a small outfit up in the Colorado mountains might have just dropped exactly that. Hoot + Howl Spirits, a craft di

Every year, right after Thanksgiving, a quiet line starts forming outside a little distillery tasting room in Bend, Oregon. Guys in Carhartt jackets, a few with gray beards and ball caps pulled low, stand around sipping coffee from thermoses, talking about hunting season and how the snow level look

Thanksgiving usually means the same old thing: turkey, football, and relatives arguing about politics at the table. But this year, something completely different showed up on a lot of guys’ feeds – a bunch of retired grandpas and some loud twenty-something influencers getting absolutely smashed on

For more than two decades, John Campbell was the steady hand behind one of Scotland’s most famous names in whisky. As the only Islay native ever to serve as distillery manager at Laphroaig, he spent years coaxing that unmistakable iodine-and-campfire smoke out of peat-fired kilns on a windswept Sco