What’s happening in wine and whiskey this week:

This Week’s Unicorn Review Stories

🍷 Vicki Denig spoke to Nikita Malhotra about her journey into the world of wine, and some of her favorite bottles at her NYC restaurant Smithereens.

🥃 It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, so Gina Pace wrote about the category’s comeback and picked some of the best and most collectible bottles to consider.

New Bottle Releases

Lux Row Estate Bourbon ($100)

This is the first estate bourbon from Lux Row, a project that master distiller John Rempe has had in mind for some time now. It’s a five-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon made from a mashbill that includes #2 yellow corn (78% corn, 12% malted barley, 10% rye) that was actually grown at the Lux Row estate and bottled at 107 proof. Official tasting notes describe honey on the nose and brown sugar, black cherry, and dark chocolate on the palate and finish.

Barrel Cigar Blend ($85)

This is the first cigar blend from Louisville’s Barrell Craft Spirits. The whiskeys in the mix were aged from 7.5 to 18 years and finished in three different types of barrels: Madeira, Armagnac, rum, and Hungarian oak. Like any other cigar blend you can certainly enjoy this without smoking, but the flavors of Boston cream pie, grape soda, cedar, and pecan pie on the palate make this a good whiskey to pair with a stogie.

Unicorn Whiskey Pick of the Week

High West Bourye ($125)

High West’s Bourye isn’t the only bourbon-rye blend that you can find on liquor store shelves anymore, but it was one of the first to combine these two distinctive styles of whiskey. The 2026 release just arrived, and there have been some changes this year—most notably, the ABV is higher at 50.5 percent (101 proof, for all you Wild Turkey fans). But that’s not the only thing that makes this excellent whiskey stand out.

The blend changes a bit from year to year, and the details for this year’s release are as follows. The mashbill combines two different bourbons and two ryes, three of them sourced and one produced in-house. The bourbons were made at MGP in Indiana from a mashbill of 75% corn, 21% rye, 4% barley malt; and 60% corn, 36% rye, 4% malted barley. One rye also comes from MGP’s classic mashbill of 95% rye, 5% barley malt; the other is made in-house at High West from its mashbill of 80% rye, 20% malted rye. Each whiskey was aged for a minimum of 10 years and up to 19 years, and the final blend has not been chill filtered. “We re-evaluated Bourye in 2026 to better showcase the elegance and complexity of its 10+ year‑old whiskeys,” said a rep for the distillery in a statement. “With the rich, decadent flavor that emerges in whiskey over long maturation, this blend can boldly embrace a higher proof while maintaining balance, depth, and approachability.”

I’d say the High West team succeeded in that with this release, which is the best Bourye in recent memory. While the exact proportions are not revealed, there is clearly a balance of bourbon and rye present as you sip, and one style does not overtake the other. That means that sweet maple, honey, and vanilla notes are nicely balanced with dried fruit, black pepper, and a cabinet full of baking spices. And at 101 proof, there’s a nice warming heat on the finish.

High West recommends that you sip Bourye neat—preferably “around a campfire while looking at the Milky Way.” Please do try it that way, it sounds pretty nice especially as the weather starts to warm up a bit. But the whiskey also happens to work very well in a Manhattan, so give that a try too. However you choose to drink the new Bourye, you won’t be disappointed.

Unicorn Wine Pick of the Week

Rémy V ($35—this week’s wine pick is a spirit)

Sometimes it’s worth it to go against type. Earlier this month, Cognac house Rémy Martin announced the U.S. debut of a new neutral spirit distilled from grapes called Remy V (35% ABV). It’s an un-oaked, unadorned eau-de-vie with a Cognac pedigree.

The Grande Marques house of Rémy Martin has moved steadily in the direction of finer and finer bottlings of Cognac, culminating with Louis XIII Black Pearl, an expression that retails for north of $30,000. Compare that to your basic Louis XIII, one of the finer things that’s ever landed on my tongue, which goes for a mere $4,000-$5,000.  Rémy Martin is a house known for the balance and finesse of its brandies; to my palate, it’s always been a house that emphasizes clarity over concentration or depth of flavor.

Cognac, of course, is a white spirit before it becomes a brown spirit. Distilled from grapes in copper pot stills, the Rémy V bottling draws from what the house does best. There is often a raw phenolic (and not unpleasant) bite to the flavors of un-oaked grape brandy, similar to grappa or other eaux-de-vie concoctions that are made, pretty much, wherever grapes are grown. It may be a neutral spirit, but Rémy V is less neutral than vodka, and much closer to grappa in its character.

As such, it has grappa’s gorgeous aromatics. Freed of the influence of oak, the nose is lifted and bright, smelling of toasted lees and ripe pear, with a light topnote of white tea. The palate is rich, round, and slightly sweet (they’ve added a pinch of sugar to round out the texture), with a pleasing phenolic bite. It feels like an ideal base for citrus cocktails, or sipped over a single sphere of ice.