Whisky Mates Blog

Hey mates – we hope your new year is off to a great start. It’s been awhile since we’ve posted so we’re turning over a new leaf in 2026 with lots of new features being released, and plenty more a comin’! Suffice it to say, we’re pretty darn focused on ensuring a high-quality experience for […]

Photo Credit: Bourbon Culture Hey mates – just wanted to take a few moments to introduce a product extension of our flagship whisky comparison functionality that enables you to manually choose any two whiskies and compare them. In the preceding link we’ve started you off with the two above, but all you have to do […]

As we are emerging from the long grind of a dark, damp, and cold Seattle winter, I sometimes find myself with enough free time between dodging raindrops to analyze and ponder what it means to be a Whiskymate.  Sitting silently next to one of my best mates, Baker (my dog) I realize we are not […]

Well, this one is something. The Knob Creek 18 Year Old is all Jim Beam liquid through and through, that is for sure. Does it taste like Booker’s? Sure it does. Is it better than recent batches? In our humble opinion, yes. If you like extremely high quality whiskies that are a bit of an oak bomb, that […]

Here at Whisky Mates we hold scotch in high regard for a number of reasons. First, the category has an immense range, from floral and light to smoky and rich. The gambit of flavor provided by different cask influences (which, depending on how old the liquid is and what types of barrels are used, can add […]

Good afternoon, my fellow Whisky Mates. The last few weeks we’ve found ourselves making reference to the Woodford Double Oaked on more than one occasion. And on each occasion, we also found ourselves salivating in anticipation, longing to taste that heavenly liquid but once more. So we figured, hell, it’s probably time to just review the whisky. […]

By William Bedard I would like to thank my Whisky Mate Brian for the thoughtful welcome. I’m a man of brevity, so let’s get into it!  Starting at the entry level, the Knob Creek 9 is an excellent choice; for a 9 year age statement, at this price, it’s a no brainer. Like, the Whisky […]

For the past couple of years I’ve been informally back-testing the validity of the Whisky Mates whisky matches, tweaking the tasting notes and various inputs as I saw fit. This was a combination of tracking down reputable tasting notes and creating an amalgamation based on the flavors that came up most frequently and intensely, as […]

A take off on the old Scots-Irish slang term for moonshine, the iconic American soda brand Mountain Dew was originally intended to be a chaser and/or mixer for sub-par whisky. In the 1930s or ’40s (sources vary on the year), brothers Barney and Ally Hartman created a mixer to make whisky taste better. Apparently it […]

If you have a spare $150-260k lying around, this might interest you. Although, I certainly don’t, and it still intrigued the hell out of me. A one-of-a-kind special edition of The Macallan The Reach 81 Years Old, the oldest whisky in the world (i.e. the longest aged in the barrel; there are other older potable […]