Honestly, I did so many great stories this year it’s hard to choose my favorites. Thank you to everyone who reads along with my work. Without y’all I wouldn’t be able to live my professional dreams! If you have a different favorite story of mine for the year, leave me a comment below. Cheers!

Inside Doc Brown Farm and Distillers. I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful these folks are. I stayed with them on their farm south of Atlanta for a couple of days and we had a ball. They are growing heirloom Jimmy Red corn and heirloom Abruzzi rye and taking that grain to nearby Distillery of Modern Art to distill whiskey from it.

Dispatch From Woody Creek. Among the myriad things I never thought I’d ever say in my lifetime, I always counted, “I’m having dinner with William H. Macy” among them. Boy howdy I was wrong. Bill Macy was an absolute delight, and he even played the ukulele for us after dinner. And Woody Creek is doing a fabulous job making whiskey from locally sourced grains. Their rye whiskey is totally fab!

Freddie Johnson’s Life at Buffalo Trace. Every opportunity I get to talk with Freddie Johnson is a treasure. He always has stories I’ve never heard before, even though I have interviewed him a dozen times over the years. This time he told me about seeing the horses that would move barrels in the rickhouses before the mechanical elevators were installed. And now he’s Buffalo Trace’s global brand ambassador. What a guy!

Bulleit Unveils First Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon. Sometimes you really have to know the industry to know the significance of a seemingly-bland news story. Bulleit’s first Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon signals a shift away from the model that carried it for decades and ushers in a new era of all self-produced whiskey.

Nancy Fraley on a Life in High Spirits. Fraley is one of my favorite people in the industry and her work is not well-known among whiskey geeks. She has an absolutely magical palate and has probably blended some of your favorite whiskeys!

There’s No Gluten in Whiskey, Right? This story came about after an argument with my doctor, who did not understand the regulatory issues with putting “gluten free” on whiskey bottles and assumed it meant there was gluten in whiskey. The TL;DR is that gluten doesn’t carry over in the distillation process, but there are at least two sources of potential gluten contamination: secondary maturation casks and cross-contamination from bottling lines in the same space as fermentation or grain handling equipment.

Michigan’s Whiskey Storyteller: Ari Sussman. Ari is another tragically underrated person in this industry. I met him when I visited Mammoth Distilling a few years ago to see their work reviving Michigan’s Rosen Rye, and he’s been involved with numerous other brands as a consultant.

A Tale Of Two Mentees. Virginia Distillery Company’s Amanda Beckwith and Wyoming Whiskey’s Nichole Martens both have been hand-picked and mentored by the aforementioned Nancy Fraley. They both showed great promise as blenders and have grown to encompass those roles in their respective distilleries.

Hard Truth Distilling Company: The Art of Growing Where You’re Planted. Hard Truth makes STELLAR whiskey, and it’s also THE place to be in Brown County, Indiana on the weekends. They’ve got side-by-side tours of the backwoods complete with cocktails, a tiki island, an amphitheater, and more.

Carving Out A Niche At Leiper’s Fork. This little-known Tennessee distillery is putting out some majorly good whiskey. They’ve created a gathering spot for locals and are distilling as much as the county will allow.

A New Era of Grain to Glass. There are numerous distilleries unlocking new flavor potential in whiskey, including Hillrock Estate, Frey Ranch, Minden Mill, and more.

Is Estate Whiskey The New Bottled-in-Bond? A new designation of “estate whiskey,” which means slightly different things according to different governing bodies, a poised to give whiskey purists the MOST authentic whiskey available.

Heaven Hill’s Sydney Jones on Her Path From Craft Whiskey to Bardstown. There are so many amazing people in the whiskey industry who ended up here quite unintentionally and grew to be among the best in the business. Sydney Jones is one of them.

“Sourcing Is Not A Crime”: Interview with Redemption Whiskey and Proof and Wood Founder Dave Schmier. Honestly, if you don’t know Dave Schmier’s work you are probably missing out on some of the best whiskey in the world. Seriously, this guy is a World Whiskies Awards powerhouse.

Highlights from the Tennessee Whiskey Trail. If you haven’t yet explored the Tennessee whiskey trail, it has grown far beyond the usual suspects of Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel.

The History of Bottled-in-Bond Whiskey. Because I got to talk to Mister Bottled-in-Bond himself, Bernie Lubbers, now retired-ish.