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For as long as Texas has made whiskey, its barrels have come from somewhere else. A distiller in the Hill Country could grow the corn, mill it, ferment it and run it through a still within a few miles of home, then put the result into a barrel built in Kentucky or Missouri and shipped halfway acros

Four days before Americans vote in the 2026 midterm elections, Al Jazeera sent correspondent Heidi Zhou-Castro to Kentucky with a question that sounds like a bar-stool riddle: what does bourbon have to do with the midterms? The network's short report, published October 30, starts from a plain premi

A Utah Distillery and a Revived Rye Tradition Rye was once the backbone of American whiskey. Before Prohibition, the spicy, grain-forward spirit was the default pour in the Northeast and a staple of the bar rail, and it sat at the center of drinks like the Manhattan and the Sazerac. After repeal,

A Scotch Built Without a Statue in the Lobby Most Scotch brands sell their age. They point to the founder's portrait, the year on the label, the stone warehouse, the family name that has been on the door for generations. Monkey Shoulder went the other way. It showed up with three cartoonish monkey

The Short Answer: About 97 Calories a Shot A standard 1.5-ounce shot of 80-proof whiskey carries roughly 97 calories. Depending on the source and the brand, you will see figures anywhere from 97 to about 105. Bourbon, rye, Scotch and Irish whiskey all land in the same neighborhood at the same proo

The Short Answer: About 17 Shots in a 750ml Bottle A standard 750-milliliter bottle of whiskey holds about 17 shots when each shot is 1.5 fluid ounces. The exact math is 25.4 fluid ounces divided by 1.5, which comes to 16.9. Most bartenders round down to 16 to leave room for spillage and the occas

The Short Answer: Roughly 200 to 300 Bottles A standard 53-gallon bourbon barrel typically yields somewhere around 200 to 300 bottles of 750 milliliters, depending on how long the whiskey aged and at what proof it was bottled. The theoretical ceiling is higher, about 418 bottles if nothing were ev

The Short Answer: A Straw for Barrels A whiskey thief is a long, narrow tube that lets a distiller pull a small sample of spirit out of a barrel without tipping, tapping or opening it. Most are copper or glass, some are plastic, and nearly all of them work the same way: slide the tube in through t

The Short Answer: PPM Is a Phenol Count PPM stands for parts per million, and on a bottle of Scotch it is shorthand for phenols, the family of smoky, medicinal compounds that burning peat leaves behind on malted barley. A label that says 40 PPM is telling you something about the barley that went i

The Brand That Started It All: Old Forester and the Birth of Bottled Bourbon Walk into any well-stocked liquor store in America today and the sheer volume of bourbon options can feel overwhelming — floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with distinctive labels, each one competing for attention with claims