Elizabeth Mack

You’ve heard it before: “Don’t judge a whiskey on the neck pour—the first pour is always off.” As someone who operates in the spirits industry—and holds a degree in chemical engineering —I wanted to believe there was something real behind this. After all, the logic sounds plausible: There’s air in the neck of the bottle Oxygen interacts with the liquid Therefore, the top layer must be chemically different That’s a clean hypothesis. The problem? It doesn’t hold up under actual science. Let’s...

Should You Trust Spirits Awards? Fully Blind vs. “Blind-ish” Competitions Explained Walk into any liquor store and you’ll see it: Gold medals. Double gold. Best in Class. Platinum winner. World’s Best. It can start to feel like everyone won something. So here’s the real question consumers should be asking: Do these awards actually mean the spirit was the best… or just the best marketed? The answer depends entirely on how the competition was judged. And most consumers have no idea there’s a...

What the heck is a “cigar‑malt” whiskey/whisky? Picture this: you light up a fine cigar, settle into your chair, and reach for a dram that says it’s made for that moment. Enter the “cigar‑malt” – a whisky/whiskey (usually malt or single‐malt, but there’s crossover) marketed as the ideal partner to a cigar. The label might read “Cigar Malt”, “Cigar Blend”, “Cigar Reserve”, etc. The promise: a spirit heavy enough in body, rich in flavor (often sherry, dark fruit, tobacco, oak, maybe smoke) so...