Drinkhacker

We are pleased to report another winery has entered the fray to rescue wine from the ready-to-drink wilderness: a lawless, inflamed expanse where vodka mascots, venture capitalists, and seltzer bros have been quietly eating wine’s lunch for years while wine sat there, uncanned, slowly withering an analog death.

David already got the full backstory on AJ Bond when he talked last month with whisky-maker Allisa Henley. We discovered in that interview that she was the ‘A’ in AJ Bond, with the ‘J’ being the late John Lunn, a veteran of George Dickel, like Allisa, who joined Sazerac in 2016 when the company purchased their then employer Avery Trail Distillery and set in motion grand plans to give Jack and George a run for their money.

Being a lesser-known appellation next door to Pomerol and Saint-Émilion is being the youngest sibling in a family of iconic overachievers: nobody’s exactly cruel about it. However, they constantly introduce you as “the other one” at wine bars or dinner parties. Fronsac and Canon-Fronsac have spent centuries in this position, making perfectly serviceable Merlot-driven wines while everyone else hoovered up the oxygen in the room, the cellar real estate, and the fees at the auction houses.

Belvedere, what with its three-figure bottles like Belvedere 10 and single estate rye vodkas, has long cultivated a very upscale reputation. What then to make of its new coffee-flavored vodka called, ahem, Dirty Brew? Color me disconnected from the branding guidelines. As for Dirty Brew, it’s a 30% abv offering that starts with Belvedere’s organic rye vodka and infuses into it roasted organic Robusta coffee beans.

Dixon Dedman has become one of the most recognizable names in American whiskey, first gaining a following through his early releases of Kentucky Owl. After a seven-year run with the brand, Dedman departed in 2021. In November 2022, he launched 2XO, short for Two Times Oak, with The Phoenix Blend serving as the debut release. In 2026, Dedman unveiled the seventh installment in the 2XO Collectible Series, The Hip-Hop Blend.

The premise behind Maison Vernhes Alliance (MVA), stripped of marketing gloss, is simple enough and should ring familiar to loyal readers: it’s a wine collective built entirely around the premise that small European producers are out there making genuinely great wine but simply cannot be bothered or, more accurately, cannot afford, to fight their way into the retail shelf-space wars that larger houses win through sheer financial attrition.

Chicken Cock has dropped a few out-there releases since its re-inception in 2017 as a premium whiskey producer, but none of them are as unique, I think, as Chicken Cock Old Glory. What’s in the bottle? A blend of 70% Chicken Cock Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey with 30% Laird’s Apple Brandy — an homage to two of America’s ancestral spirits. This was dropped for the big U.S. 250th anniversary last month but it slipped through the cracks here until now.

Partida launched a single barrel program in 2020, rolling out a collection of barrels of its reposado. 30 barrels in total were offered in three different styles (we just tasted one) — but notably all were bottled at 80 proof. This year, Partida expands on that concept with the release of 20 more barrels of reposado, only this time the outfit is dropping them at higher proof.

On January 19, 2025, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau officially recognized American single malt whiskey as a category of American whiskey. That designation may be new, but American single malt whiskey is not. American distillers had been developing their own approach to malt whiskey for years before the category received official recognition.

If you haven’t been paying close attention, you might have missed the fact that Bardstown Bourbon Co. has become one of the most innovative distilleries in America, turning out one unusual whiskey after another, relying either on unexpected blends or out-there finishes.