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Whiskey/beer writer Lew Bryson, author of Whiskey Master Class, takes to the Daily Beast to talk geotargeting -- the increasingly common creation of whiskey brands for release in limited areas.   "Sure, there are lots of whiskies that are only for sale in a limited area, but usually that is because the distillery is small and they don’t make a huge amount. But it’s different when a distiller or a brand that’s nationally distributed decides to get out the Sharpie and make a circle on the map, and say, 'Only here. Nowhere else.' It’s kind of special, and the reasons often...

In Scotland, there's a burgeoning environmental movement to ban the harvesting and burning of peat, one of the world's dirtiest fuels. The mining of peat is about as destructive as strip mining. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been laid waste by centuries of peat extraction. Only a small percentage of that harvest is used in the distilling of whisky, but it's absolutely crucial. That's why Diageo, maker of two of the peatiest whiskies in the world -- Lagavulin and Caol Ila -- has locked-up the rights to continue harvesting peat on Islay until there is no more peat to...

Researchers look at the perceptible qualities of rye and Bourbon and conclude there's no real difference. Whiskeyvolk disagree: (Researcher Jacob) Lahne’s selection of what he calls “commercial” whiskies used in the study contain just one with no corn (Bulleit Rye) and one with no rye (Maker’s Mark). The rest were blends of both corn and rye, inevitably exhibiting attributes of both. As noted by Dr. Lahne, “it is possible for a 2% difference in mashbill to tip a whiskey from one category into the other”, and it is not possible for even the most discerning tasters to consistently recognize such...

All joking aside, women  (in general) have more acute senses of smell than men. The reason for that, according to aroma research published in Brazil, is the number of neurons found in the brain’s olfactory bulb. Wedged down between the top of the nasal cavities and the bottom of the frontal lobe, the olfactory bulb is a computer, of sorts. It processes raw data from the nose into information the rest of the brain can use. Women’s olfactory bulbs are bigger than men’s — significantly bigger, as it happens. Women have almost twice as many of the cells that sort and categorize smell...