Carbon & Oak

A revived label from the Lawrenceburg distillery Julian Van Winkle once ran — recommended over the rye by a liquor-store owner, and worth listening to.

Okay, this one is going to be a little different. I'd never heard of Crittenden Distillery before getting a pour of this at a bottle share, and honestly, they don't seem to have much of an online presence yet outside of Meta. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes word of mouth travels faster than searching for something you don't even know exists yet.

The frenzy of the bourbon boom has cooled. Shelves that sat empty for years are beginning to fill back up, and while we probably won't see age statements magically reappear on bottles like Blanton's or find ultra-aged releases collecting dust the way enthusiasts remember from the 1990s, there is something equally exciting happening.