What’s happening in wine and whiskey this week:

Drink This

😀 Sometimes distilleries “happy accidents” result in some great whiskey.

🍇 These are the most expensive brandies to drink right now.

🐖 WhistlePig launched its oldest and most expensive whiskey to date.

Get Out There

🍷 The Park City Wine Festival is coming this October.

⛽ The best wine shop in Sonoma is… a gas station?

🧳 Visit these 12 U.S. vineyards this year.

The Business

🍾 Wine corks will not be subject to Trump’s tariffs.

🇯🇵 Suntory’s CEO resigned after purchasing illegal supplements.

🏬 Heaven Hill opened a new $200 million distillery in Bardstown.

Boooo

☀️ Califorina’s wine harvest is having a tough year.

🥃 Kentucky bourbon is in trouble, due in part to Canada’s boycott.

Woooo!

🪵 Woodinville Whiskey launched its oldest bourbon to date.

⭐ 15 Stars has a new Artisan Collection of whiskeys to try.

🫚 Glenmorangie’s latest single malt is called A Tales of Spices.

New Bottle Releases

WhistlePig The BigShǝBàng
This new release is the oldest and most expensive to date from Vermont distillery WhistlePig. It’s a 30-year-old single malt priced at $5,000 that was distilled somewhere in North America, most likely in Canada at Glenora. After initial maturation, it was finished in Vin Santo casks, an Italian dessert wine, to give it notes of honeyed bread, close, fresh dough, cinnamon, and dark chocolate on the palate.

Octomore 16 Series
This is Islay distillery Bruichladdich’s annual release of some of its most heavily peated whisky. Octomore 16 is a trio of single malts, each aged for five years in different types of barrels, including bourbon, moscatel, madeira, and PX sherry. 16.3 was made from barley malted to an extremely high 189.5 parts per million—that’s very, very smoky for the layman. That expression was also made from barley grown on a single farm on Islay, an attempt to highlight terroir in whisky.

Elijah Craig Ryder Cup 2025 Limited Edition Small Batch Bourbon
This marks a continued partnership between Heaven Hill’s Elijah Craig bourbon and the Ryder Coup, which takes place in New York this fall. Because of that, the bourbon was finished with two kinds of oak staves—75 percent sugar maple and 25 percent toasted applewood (the latter is the official tree of New York State). The result is classic Elijah Craig with extra notes of spice, almond, and leather on the palate.