Pernod Ricard is a French company best known for its anise-flavoured pastis apéritifs Pernod Anise and Ricard Pastis. The world’s second-largest wine and spirits seller, it also produces several other types of pastis.
Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc. is a private, American family-owned and operated distillery founded in 1935 and headquartered in Bardstown, Kentucky, that produces and markets the Heaven Hill brand of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey and a variety of other distilled spirits. Its current distillery facility, called the Heaven Hill Bernheim distillery, is in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the seventh-largest alcohol supplier in the United States, the second-largest holder of bourbon whiskey inventory in the world, the largest, independent, family-owned and operated producer and marketer of distilled spirits in the United States, and the only large family-owned distillery company headquartered in Kentucky.
William Grant & Sons Ltd is an independent, family-owned Scottish company that distills Scotch whisky and other selected categories of spirits. It was established in 1887 by William Grant, and is run by Grant's descendants as of 2018. It is the largest of the handful of Scotch whisky distillers remaining in family ownership.
Liquor is an alcoholic drink produced by distillation of grains, fruits, vegetables, or sugar, that have already gone through alcoholic fermentation. Other terms for liquor include: spirit, distilled beverage, spirituous liquor or hard liquor. The distillation process concentrates the liquid to increase its alcohol by volume. As liquors contain significantly more alcohol (ethanol) than other alcoholic drinks, they are considered 'harder'; in North America, the term hard liquor is sometimes used to distinguish distilled alcoholic drinks from non-distilled ones, whereas the term spirits is more common in the UK. Some examples of liquors include vodka, rum, gin, and tequila. Liquors are often aged in barrels, such as for the production of brandy and whiskey, or are infused with flavorings to form a flavored liquor such as absinthe.
A master blender is an individual who develops specific blended spirits using a combination of spirits with different characteristics. For example, in the Scotch whisky industry, master blenders choose which single malts and grain whiskies to combine to make particular brands of blended whisky. A master blender is not the same thing as a master distiller, although one person may do both jobs at small craft distilleries. As the name suggests, the blender creates blends using spirits from different casks and is responsible for making sure the product remains consistent across different batches, while the distiller is either directly responsible for the mashing and distilling of spirits or simply holds the title as the administrative and marketing figurehead of the company.
Redbreast is a brand of single pot still Irish Whiskey produced by Irish Distillers. It was originally bottled by Gilbey's, a Dublin spirits merchant using distillate sourced from Jameson's Bow Street Distillery. In the 1980s, the brand was purchased by Irish Distillers, the producer of Jameson. It is the largest selling single pot still Irish whiskey in the world.
Stranahan's Colorado Whiskey is a 94 proof, small batch whiskey distilled in Denver, Colorado. Stranahan's was the first modern microdistillery to legally make whiskey in Colorado, and an early craft whiskey distiller in the United States.
Blackwood distillery was a Scottish distiller founded in July 2002 with the aim of building Shetland's first Scotch whisky distillery run by Caroline Whitfield. Products included Muckle Flugga whisky, Jago's cream liqueur and Blackwoods gin and vodka. In May 2008, the company went into administration, but a new company, Catfirth Ltd, was established to continue the whisky business and took over the remaining stocks of whisky. The stocks of the vodka and gin brands were sold to a company called Blavod Extreme Spirits. In 2013, word of further funding came through, with a promise that a distillery will open soon after but by 2015 that had not happened.
Leopold Bros. is a family-owned and operated distillery located in Denver, Colorado. They are well known as an independent distillery that floor malts, mills, mashes, and ferments all the grains in their spirits, as well as distills, ages, and bottles their entire portfolio at their one and only distillery in northeast Denver. They currently have the largest traditional floor malting room of any distillery in the United States, where they malt Colorado barley onsite.
Hangar 1 Vodka is a vodka brand produced by The Hangar 1 Distillery in Alameda, California. In addition to vodka, the distillery also produces spirits, some of which were formerly produced by St. George Spirits. The brand is owned and distributed by Proximo Spirits of Jersey City, New Jersey, and is available as a straight vodka as well as in a variety of flavors.
English whisky is whisky produced in England. At least eight distilleries currently produce it, and there are 26 whisky distilleries across England in various stages of development. Though England is not well known for whisky, distillers operated in London, Liverpool and Bristol until the late 19th century, after which production of English single malt whisky ceased until 2003. Since then, English whisky has experienced a resurgence in production.
Sazerac Company, Inc. is a privately held American alcoholic beverage company headquartered in Metairie in the metropolitan area of New Orleans, Louisiana, but with its principal office in Louisville, Kentucky. The company is owned by billionaire William Goldring and his family. As of 2017, it operated nine distilleries, had 2,000 employees, and operated in 112 countries. It is one of the two largest spirits companies in the United States, with annual revenue of about $1 billion made from selling about 300 mostly discount brands.
Proximo Spirits, Inc., is an American spirits importer and international distributor based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It is best known for importing and distributing Jose Cuervo, the world's largest-selling tequila brand.
House Spirits Distillery is an American craft distiller based in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in Corvallis in 2004 and moved to Portland in 2005. Its production facility and tasting room is located on Portland's Distillery Row, in the Central Eastside Industrial District. The distillery's flagship brand is Aviation American Gin, which comprised 80% of its production in 2012, and around 40% in 2016, after the company's move into a larger distillery facilitated a major expansion of production of its whiskey brand.
Tōkki Soju is a brand of soju founded in Brooklyn, New York in 2016 by master distiller Brandon Hill. The company prides themselves on quality over profit, using expensive ingredients that contribute to taste such as glutinous rice.
Chase Distillery, Ltd. was a British single-estate distillery based in Herefordshire, United Kingdom. William Chase, the former owner and founder of Tyrrells crisps, founded the family-run business in 2008. Using ingredients sourced on-site at Rosemaund Farm, the distillery focuses its production on potato vodka, gin and cider.
The Reefton Distilling Co. is a distillery founded in 2017 in Reefton, in the West Coast region of New Zealand. It specialises in gin, including one named "Little Biddy" after famed West Coast gold miner Bridget Goodwin.
