Spirit & Cask is the independent authority on fine spirits: whisky, cognac and armagnac, rum, and agave spirits. We cover the distilleries, the makers, the casks, and the culture, from the stillhouses of Speyside to the palenques of Oaxaca.

We exist because nobody owned verified provenance journalism for the drinker with money. Every fact in this publication is logged like a cask entry. Every tasting note carries its provenance: who tasted, where, when, and from what. Every ranking is blind-judged and unsponsored. We never invent a tasting note, never sell a score, and never let an advertiser shape our judgment.

What we cover

• Whisky: Scotch, American whiskey, Japanese whisky, Irish whiskey, and the world's new traditions, from distillery floors to auction rooms.
• Cognac & Armagnac: the great houses of the Charente, the small producers of Gascony, and the eaux-de-vie market.
• Rum: cane spirits and the Caribbean, the distilleries, the independent bottlers, and the fight over what rum is allowed to be.
• Agave: tequila, mezcal, and the agave spirits, the jimadors and palenques, and the regulation that decides what reaches the bottle.
• The Cask: craft and technique: stills, fermentation, coopering, wood, and time.
• Collecting: auctions and the secondary market, tracked as data in the Cask Index.
• Culture: the bars, rituals, literature, and social history around the bottle.

Editorial standards, in brief

Primary sources only: the distillery, the auction house, the regulator, the trade body, the published record. No tasting note is published as first-hand experience unless the writer actually tasted the spirit. We do not score out of 100; judgment is expressed in words and in the annual franchise, never in points. Corrections are published promptly and visibly, dated at the foot of the article. The full standards are set out on our Corrections and Review Ethics pages.

Spirit & Cask covers spirits only. A publication of VAUDERIVE, the Swiss luxury group.

Contact

You can reach us through the form on our Contact page.