Castle & Cairn

Licensed in 2014, B.R. Distilling Co. is a craft distillery located in Memphis, Tennessee very close to the Mississippi river and it's tributaries which have a moderating effect, proving high humidity and relatively steady temperatures. The brand is named for Blue Notes, those of a slightly flattened (lower) pitch on the 3rd, 5th, or 7th degree of the major scale which often create a soulful, ambiguous blend of major and minor sounds characteristic of blues, jazz, and gospel. Further, a Juke Joint was an informal, often makeshift bar in the rural American South, primarily for African Americans, offering food, drinks, dancing, and gambling, also serving as crucial incubators for blues and early R&B music. Blue Note Juke Joint is a workhorse, priced aggressively for a craft spirit and meant both for neat sipping and cocktail use. Not to be overlooked, it has won double gold at the San Francisco World Spirits competition.  Also under the Blue Note branding, you'll find Crossr...

QuickTrip has a long history of being in energy beverages with it's "Rooster Booster" brand, most often in Big Q from the fountain. In 2021-2022, they rolled out a 16oz canned line simply titled "QT Energy" to capitalize on continued growth in the energy drink segment, particularly with younger consumers. The cans feature a digital camouflage design, in this case red, and seem to be primarily marketed at young men.   🛒 Price: $2.39 (often 2/$4 or with a BOGO coupon in the app). I got this one for .75 with a coupon. ✨Calories: 230 , 16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine:  160mg, slightly less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor:  This feels very much like a Red Bull clone, conveying the classic "generic berry", cotton candy, and bubblegum profile of that brand albeit with much less of a spice tingle or citrus pucker. The drinking experience is overall smoother and sweeter.  🧪 Ingredients:  Notably this is a full calorie energy drink with a high-glycemic load of 230 calor...

Named for Colonel Albert Bacon Blanton who worked his way up from office boy at age 16 to distillery president, this bottle was introduced in 1984 by Master Distiller Elmer T. Lee as the first commercially marketed single barrel bourbon. Blanton was known for searching the rickhouses for particular "honey barrels" of outstanding quality from the center cut of warehouse H . Unlike most of the other Buffalo Trace warehouses, H is metal sided instead of brick and will therefore change temperature more, potentially accelerating the aging process. Warehouse H has four floors of ricks, each with about 60 ricks each. Rick numbers repeat on each floor. In 1999, Buffalo Trace changed the bottle design to include the eight iconic horse and jockey stoppers which spell out B-L-A-N-T-O-N-S and depict the various stages of a horse race. Notably the two different N's are slightly different, the latter being followed by a subtle colon. Blanton's is bottled by hand so the topper lette...

Part science experiment and part advertisement for their Private Select barrel program, the Lost Recipe series from Maker's Mark is a limited-release collection which uses never before tested combinations of finishing barrel staves which have been retired from the main barrel select stave kit. The private select program sees selectors choose a combination of ten finishing barrel staves from a rotating list of five flavors. This particular release centers on the archived Roasted French Mocha stave which was retired in 2021 and replaced by the "Mendiant" stave in the current kit. Edition 02 of 2025 includes the following staves: 3 Baked American #2 - sweetness/vanilla, honey, bright fruit 4 Maker's Mark No. 46 - caramel, toasty, baking spice 3 Roasted French Mocha - Dark chocolate, coffee, charred oak This is a good bit different from batch one which featured twice the number of mocha staves and French Cuvee instead of the No. 46 staves. Allegedly, this was to help miti...

Introduced in 1945 by the Medley Distilling Company in Owensboro, Kentucky. Mellow Corn was created to utilize excess corn stocks while catering to a palate that preferred a lighter, less tannic, spirit than popular bourbons of the the time. Heaven Hill acquired rights to the brand in its 1993 transaction with United Distiller's (now part of Diageo), also picking up a few other historic brands like Old Fitzgerald. Since then, Heaven Hill has done little to change the brand, keeping the original label design. Somewhat unexpectedly, this retro chic aesthetic has found a happy home in the internet subculture, eliciting a cult following. The popularity of "Mellow F-ing Corn" (MFC) really took off during the lockdowns of 2020 and seemed to be a reaction to the scarcity and hyper-premiumization of the whiskey and bourbon market around the same time.  Though most of the initial hype has subsided, you can still find some fair activity on  r/MellowCorn  and similar whiskey forums....

The higher-proof and "uncut" version of ifs French oaked sibling , Maker's No. 46 Cask Strength seeks to blast you with stronger waves of the caramel finish flavors you loved at 94 proof. Bill Samuels Jr. wanted to take the family recipe and spruce it up, adding 10 seared French Oak Staves (profile number 46 from the Independent Stave Company) and making his own mark on the family legacy. Standard Maker's Mark completes its aging for 6-8 years before being batched and recoopered into barrels with the added French oak Staves for another 9-10 weeks. 46 had the distinction of being the first in Maker's Stave finishing program which paved the way for the current Private Selection offering by which customers choose distinct stave profiles with which to finish barrels to their own tastes and designs (see also the Lost Recipe series ). First released as a distillery limited edition in 2015, you can find Cask Strength in a slowly increasing number of outlets. 🛒 Sourced:...