American Whiskey Magazine

I’m sure at some point in your life, somebody has said the phrase “once in a lifetime” to you, with beaming eyes and an excitable smile. It may have been a friend recommending a new coffee shop, a work colleague discussing their latest holiday, or a salesperson trying to offload a two-for-one golf resort and hotel combo pack to you. Whatever the circumstance might be, it’s always a superlative that’s used to make you think this experience is going to blow your mind and be unlike anything you’ve ever tried before. Sometimes, these experiences can match the hyperbole surrounding the expectation. Up until a few years ago, I had never been to Los Angeles. I had always wanted to be in Tinsel Town on the night of the Oscars ceremony.…

Whisky Live Paris is preparing to put on its biggest show yet in 2024, the year it marks its 20th anniversary. First launched at the Palais Brongniart in 2004 by La Maison du Whisky, Whisky Live Paris has developed and grown over the past two decades into a seminal annual event for industry professionals and whiskey consumers alike. The show moved to its current venue, la Grande Halle de la Villette, in 2019. Whisky Live Paris 2024 is set to host 300 distilleries and brands from more than 40 countries. There will be plenty to explore, with an estimated 2,000 bottlings available to sample. Among the whiskey exhibitors will be 60 brands from Scotland and more than 20 from America, showing off their latest releases. The show will also make…

I’ve always loved how bourbon brings people together. It usually starts with friends sharing newly discovered bottles, then people decided to start a club to share their experiences with more people, and now some even start choosing their own private barrels or even bottling their own brands, all because a friend once shared a dram. Here in Louisville, we used to have a group called the Louisville Bourbon Hounds. These folks created a group around a shared love of hunting for new releases. They’d often wind up camping out together on a store’s sidewalk in order to be the first through the door the next day when a release was planned. When stores started to ban camping, several of the group’s members bought RVs to camp in the parking lots.…

On 13 September, during National Bourbon Heritage Month, the 33rd edition of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival (KYBF) will commence, the biggest celebration of Kentucky bourbon in the world which takes place in the bourbon capital of the world, Bardstown, Kentucky. The enormity of the festival’s scale has been exponential since its beginning as a tasting dinner, growing into an authentic experience for the most enthused bourbon fanatics and newcomers to the spirit style. It remains today one of the Commonwealth’s leading cultural festivals. In its 33rd year, a key component of festival planning is to ensure that the festival is able to differ from year to year, so that regular attendees are able to distinguish from one year to the next, while those who are new still get enjoy the very…

In Kentucky, it is not unusual to find experts on bourbon. There are even historians and archaeologists who specialize in the distilled spirits industry within the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The preeminent bourbon historian in Kentucky is Michael Veach, author of Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage, who is also a Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Famer. He owns his own consulting business and stays busy doing historical research for brands, speaking at whiskey festivals, and writing books, though he is semi-retired these days. “I like to say I was the luckiest graduate to ever come out of the University of Louisville’s history department,” Veach says. “I was working on my master’s degree at U of L and Nick Morgan called the university and was looking for someone to help put together…

On 13 September, during National Bourbon Heritage Month, the 33rd edition of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival (KYBF) will commence, the biggest celebration of Kentucky bourbon in the world which takes place in the bourbon capital of the world, Bardstown, Kentucky. The enormity of the festival’s scale has been exponential since its beginning as a tasting dinner, growing into an authentic experience for the most enthused bourbon fanatics and newcomers to the spirit style. It remains today one of the Commonwealth’s leading cultural festivals. In its 33rd year, a key component of festival planning is to ensure that the festival is able to differ from year to year, so that regular attendees are able to distinguish from one year to the next, while those who are new still get enjoy the…