What’s happening in wine and whiskey this week:

Drink This

🎨 Heaven Hill launched a new artist series of its bottled-in-bond bourbons.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Welsh wine is on the rise!

🇫🇷 Champagne Fleury is making wine that is steeped in history.

Get Out There

🗽 Visit New York’s Finger Lakes district to try some great wines.

🇲🇽 Mexico City is home to some of the best bars in the world.

🤠 Fredericksburg, Texas is home to some fantastic vineyards.

The Business

🍷 Some wine stories are becoming bars to boost business.

🦊 Media companies like Fox are branching out into wine.

💰 This bourbon brand wants to cover its debt with barrels.

Boooo

🇨🇦 Crown Royal is shutting down one of its bottling plants.

🔥 This fire had devastating effects on the Napa wine industry.

⬇️ Brown-Forman’s sales are way down due to Canadian boycott.

Woooo!

🥃 Sazerac is auctioning off a barrel of Elmer T. Lee bourbon for charity.

🍷 It’s time to bust some of the myths about American Chardonnay.

🥚 Is the hard boiled egg the best bar snack?

New Bottle Releases

Blue Run Glimmer
Blue Run Spirits, which was acquired by Coors Spirits Co. a few years ago, just released its most interesting expression to date—a bourbon finished in gin barrels. The bourbon is sourced from Bardstown Bourbon Company, Castle & Key, and another distillery, and then finished in barrels previously used to mature Barr Hill Tom Cat gin. That has imbued the whiskey with fascinating notes of botanicals that underlie the caramel, oak, and brown sugar base, resulting in a truly intriguing new bottle.

Glenfiddich 16
For this release, Glenfiddich has partnered with Aston Martin’s Formula 1 team. This is a 16-year-old single malt scotch that was matured in three different types of barrels—American oak wine casks, new American barrels, and second-fill bourbon casks—and bottled at 86 proof. Look for notes of maple syrup, caramelized ginger, fresh fruit salad, and sweet cream on the palate, with the Speyside distillery’s signature green apple and pear notes still making an appearance.

Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged
This is the third release of Maker’s Mark Cellar Aged bourbon, and it contains some of the oldest bourbon ever bottled from the distillery. The 2025 edition is a blend of 74 percent 11-year-old bourbon, 10 percent 13-year-old bourbon, and 16 percent 14-year-old bourbon. The whiskey was initially aged in the distillery’s traditional rickhouses, then transferred to the limestone cellar to continue to age in a cooler climate so it would not become overly oaky. The result is fantastic, with notes of dark chocolate, cherry syrup, baked pecan, caramelized brown sugar, and maple on the palate.