Author: Camper English
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Which Whisky Chiller Works Wonders?
I have a story in the new Fall 2013 issue of Whisky Advocate magazine that's not online. In it I compared a range of devices meant to chill down whisky. Teroforma Whisky Stones [buy] Teroforma Whisky Stones MAX [buy] Balls of Steel [buy] Skybar's Wine Chill Drops [buy] Tilt Spheres [buy] Steel Ice [buy] A…
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Making Absolut Vodka: A Trip to Ahus, Sweden
Absolut vodka is made in southern Sweden, in the town of Ahus in the Skane region. I took a trip there this winter to learn how the vodka is made. The distillery can produce 650,000 bottles of vodka per day and I had about that many questions for the producers. I think it's best to…
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A Visual Guide to Herbs Used to Make Vermouth
This summer I visited Turin and Pessione Italy with Martini vermouth. The distillery hosts the Martini visitors' center and museum, and in this post you can read about how Martini vermouths are made. On one particularly lovely day, our group piled into cars and drove around the countryside to see the local herbs used to…
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How Martini Vermouth is Made: A Trip to Pessione, Italy
This summer I took a trip to Pessione, Italy, the home of Martini vermouth. Pessione is a small town just outside of the city of Turin, in the northwestern part of Italy. The distillery site was chosen as it is close the the railroad, though it is also close to both wine-growing and herb-growing regions.…
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A Handy Chart for Categorizing Sherry
In my talk on sherry at Tales of the Cocktail, I was trying to summarize sherry in a way that makes it easy to understand what is in the bottles you find on shelves. I think the three slides below get us pretty close (though I had 90 slides during the talk!). The last chart…
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Bottled Waters Most Resembling Waters of Scotland
In this post we'll look at commercial brands of bottled water that resemble water from the Speyside, Highlands, and Islay regions of Scotland. We saw before that different waters bring out different properties in scotch whisky. We can then look at properties of bottled water from Scotland. Thanks to UisgeSource, we can look at the…
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(Re)Introducing Noilly Prat Extra Dry Vermouth
Last year I had the pleasure of visiting the Noilly Prat vermoutherie in Marseillan, France, where I learned about how it is made. Shortly after the visit, I wrote a blog post about the differences between Noilly Prat Dry (aka Original Dry), Noilly Prat Ambre, and Noilly Prat Rouge. It took a year, but they are…
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How Column Distillation Works: Pot-Column Still Edition
At the Tales of the Cocktail convention this year, I moderated a panel with three distillers who run column stills; one 5-column rum still, one continuous bourbon still, and one pot-column hybrid. John Jeffrey is the Head Distiller for Death's Door Spirits. He makes vodka, rum, and white whiskey and will be releasing aged whiskey in the…
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How Column Distillation Works: Multi-Column Rum and Vodka Edition
At the Tales of the Cocktail convention this year, I moderated a panel with three distillers who run column stills; one 5-column rum still, one continuous bourbon still, and one pot-column hybrid. Liza Cordero is the Process Director for DonQ rum, made at the Serralles distillery in Puerto Rico. She runs a pretty gigantic 5-column still. It…