So the bottom line here – go ahead and drink your whiskey/whisky and feel safe in your amorous advances as long as you are keeping it real – and within your specific bodily limits.

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Specialty shots of the Woodford Reserve at the MGM Grand will set you back $15 – while they last.

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When Michael Jackson first stepped on the floor with his brothers Tito, Marlon and …oh, wait a minute, wrong Michael Jackson. The Michael Jackson who shares his name with with that “other” Michael Jackson is noted for his beer hunting ability rather than his ABC’s…unless it is the ABC’s of beer. Michael Jackson of “Beer Hunter” television series fame has several other things in common with that other Michael Jackson – they have both passed away suddenly [beer Michael Jackson in 2007 and singing Michael Jackson in 2009], both were too young and both gained their initial fame in the 1970s. Everybody has heard of the singing Michael Jackson but not as many have heard about the beer-slinging Michael Jackson who became famous by bringing the world of craft beer and breweries to the American public with a book in the 1970s and the television series in the 1990s. Now comes “Beer Hunter: The Movie” a documentary based on his life and, of course, beer [and later, malt whisky].

“Beer Hunter: The Movie” is expected to be available on DVD in July 2013 but if you find yourself unable to wait that long, you can arrange a private screening for you and your buddies by going to the official Beer Hunter: The Movie site.

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The pool looks good when you have a beer in your hand, right Dad?

Father’s Day is rapidly approaching and if you haven’t already devised what your plans will be for dear old Dad, then SpaNautica – the spa at the swanky Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina Del Rey, California – has a Plan B option for you. Relaxing poolside with a beer after a therapeutic massage delivered by Kate Upton and other members of Maxim’s Hot 100. Okay, so that last part was our idea and they don’t tell you what kind of beer they will be providing – probably not PBR or Coors Light though, we’re guessing – but it still sounds like the idea has merit for the Old Man, provided you can pony up the coin necessary for the gift.

The Spa Nautica Father’s Day package – which includes beer and a massage with “fitness gel” of menthol and eucalyptus – will set you back $155 and perhaps a portion of your dignity, but you will get a $25 voucher for yourself in the bargain.

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First, Maker’s Mark wants to begin adding water to their bourbon in a desperation attempt to capture as much of the whiskey boom as possible in an industry that typically requires time [not looking at you, Cleveland Whiskey] to properly age bourbon. The backlash from that bright idea was so harsh that it forced MM to back off their plans. That went so well that MM has now decided that instead of merely watering down their bourbon to create more bottles on the market, they will merely rinse out their barrels to squeeze every last bit of residual bourbon backwash to toss into their bottles and still call it bourbon – while also receiving a $100,000 tax credit from the state of Kentucky to assist in the $8.2 million it would cost Maker’s Mark owner Beam to upgrade their facility to accommodate the new process.

Beam already makes a bourbon – called Devil’s Cut – which extracts liquor from rinsed barrels.

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Whiskey barrel parts about to become Cleveland Whiskey fodder.

According to tradition, bourbon whiskey should be aged in charred American oak barrels for at least nine years, preferably 10-12 years – at least the really good stuff, like Woodford Double Oaked or Knob Creek. But in Cleveland, Ohio – not far but far enough from the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky – entrepreneur Tom Lix is busy pumping out 1000 bottles of Cleveland Whiskey a week and selling out. Lix can do this because he has discovered and has a patent pending on a process that significantly accelerates the aging process of typical bourbons.

Instead of aging the spirit for 9-12 years, Lix ages them only six months the old-fashioned way, then dumps the 51% corn spirit [which also contains rye, barley and wheat] into an agitating bin which contains chopped up staves from those traditional charred American oak barrels. The agitation squeezes the spirit into the pores of the wood staves – essentially speeding up superficial portions of process that would normally all those years of aging – and produces the finished product in only six days. While Lix is unable to coax subtle flavors and nuances out of the spirit via the process, he is able to get a reasonable facsimile of high end bourbons that has been compared favorably by some to venerable old favorites like Knob Creek.

Cleveland Whiskey began selling for $35 a bottle on March 1, 2013 and is mostly only available in Ohio – at the moment.

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Twenty years ago – has it been that long already? – the big beer giants of the world were knocked on their collective asses by what started out small and what would be destined to become all the rage – the now much-ballyhooed craft beer brewery [or microbrewery, if you so desire] movement. The popularity of home-brewing in the 1980s turned thousands of people – mostly males who didn’t have to worry about dating – into beer connoisseurs overnight. Or if not connoisseurs, at least more knowledgeable beer drinkers. This, in turn, sparked the beer revolution that turned everybody’s noses up at Bud and Coors and helped create the craft beer/microbrew craze of the 90s when the number of craft breweries in the United States alone jumped from a mere eight in 1980 to 537 in 1994 [and to 1600 in 2010]. Of course, this meant the parent companies of Bud and Coors eventually had to buy some of these breweries or make their own pretend-craft beer and market it as a craft beer, but that is the price to pay for capitalism and greed.

Now, the whiskey industry is in the first stages of its own craft period. The number of craft whiskey distilleries are beginning to multiply and find themselves in locations well outside the usual Bourbon-Whiskey Belt in Kentucky and Tennessee as well as the worldwide whisky mecca of Scotland while using a staggering array of ingredients to enhance the various whiskies [similar to the m.o. used by craft breweries of yore]. We profiled the products of one of those craft distilleries – Dry Fly – earlier this month and there are two more which WC would recommend to your palate – Balcones and Journeyman.

Balcones is based smack-dab in beer drinker central – Texas [Waco] – and yet the three best products to emerge from the distillery since its birth in 2008 are distinctly light years away from beer and happen to be damn good whiskey as well. They are Baby Blue – a blue corn whiskey that nibbles at your brain lobes, Rumble, a wildflower honey [thanks bees!] and turbinado sugar whiskey that is sort of like a love child from a Jamaican rum plantation and Tennessee whiskey distillery and then Brimstone which, well, the name speaks for itself, lights your fire between now and next Tuesday. Balcones Whiskey has already won several national and international awards and if you were placing a wager in Vegas on the success of Balcones, you could start counting your money.

Journeyman does not yet have the awards of Balcones and is even newer – having inly been open for a mere two years – but looks to have a made a promising start with its Ravenswood Rye. Based in Michigan, the distillery now has three whiskies to tout – adding the Buggy Whip Wheat and Featherstone Bourbon to the party – but the Ravenswood Rye is still the clear winner of the trio. It’s a young whiskey but its wise beyond its years.

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Louisville Cardinal head men’s hoop coach Rick Pitino celebrates his new Maker’s mark label by going out and catching an 80-pound marlin in the Bahamas.

Back in April, the University of Louisville Cardinal defeated Michigan 74-68 and won the 2013 version of March Madness – the NCAA national championship – and the accolades and tributes began pouring in and have yet to stop as it was announced earlier this month that famed Kentucky bourbon label Maker’s Mark will make Louisville Cardinal head coach Rick Pitino the honoree of a special limited bottling of Maker’s Mark as part of a fundraising promotion to benefit the school’s academic programs.

There will be 12,600 bottles of the Pitino Maker’s Mark label produced by Maker’s Mark – with a release date to be announced at a later date.

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Ol Blue Eyes keeps a Kung-Fu grip on his Old No. 7.

Frank Sinatra had a sponsorship contract with Chivas scotch in the latter portions of his long and famous entertainment career – but it was a flask of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 – which he referred to as “nectar of the gods” – with which he was buried when he passed away 15 years ago. Although Sinatra was never an official spokesman of the brand, he was a hefty unofficial spokesman – having crates of it shipped to his house, all his shows and even going so far as to crafting a blazer with “Jack Daniel’s Country Club” emblazoned on it. Brown-Forman – the company that now owns the Jack Daniel’s brand posthumously rewarded Sinatra’s dedication to their whiskey by creating a special “Sinatra Select” whiskey that they rolled out last year in Cannes, France, in October. You may have heard of it – and you may have also heard about its price and availability – $150 to 175 and only available at various European duty-free shops and, initially at least, in the USA at the Las Vegas McCarran Airport [in December]. But availability of the whiskey – which is 90 proof and aged in a special “Sinatra barrel” with an extra lining of oak to give it a spicier flair – began to expand to the company’s distillery in Lynchburg, Kentucky along with a few other locales in Kentucky and, beginning this month, there was even more expansion.

As of May 2013, Sinatra Select is now also available in most USA airports as well as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico which, as all Sinatra fans must know is “south of the border”.

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