Last November 20th, Whisky Advocate magazine held their annual New York Whisky Fest which was held at the Marriott Marquis hotel located at 1535 Broadway in Times Square, Manhattan.

It was a night of over 280 whiskies from the United States, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Japan and India with a couple of tables of tequila thrown in for good measure.

Simply put, whisky is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Every country has its own regulations for how its whisky is labeled.

This was a huge event taking up a whole floor in the hotel. So as usual in these mega tastings, I focused my efforts. When I have a whiskey cocktail such as a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned, I prefer Rye whisky, so I prioritized sampling rye whisky at the start of the tasting.

I’m always on the lookout for a new product so I kept my eye out for any label that I wasn’t familiar with. Since the distillers had more than one than one version of their whiskey on hand to pour, even the usual mass market distillers showed something new or rare since they experimented with different alcohol levels, mash bills and with the type of barrels that the whiskies were aged in.

With a Glencairn in hand, these were some of the brands I sampled:

Heaven Hill	Jacob’s Pardon
Westland	Balcones
Amador	Middlewest
Bookers	Minden Mill
Little Rest	Sagamore
Basil Hayden	Jefferson’s
Jim Beam	Knob Creek
Redemption	Old Grand Dad
Bullet	Rabbit Hole
Praedictum	Redbreast
Busker	Drumshanbo