Most of the country has been ignoring this story. When it’s finally resolved, @FBIDirectorKash must resign and join Bongino. What the two of them have done to this autistic black man is inexcusable. At a minimum, they should release Cole on an ankle bracelet until the trial.
@BethanyForTruth I saw 3D plans for a Flock Sock. It is positioned above a Flock camera and gravity does the rest to allow the sock to gently slide over the camera, protecting it from the sun’s damaging rays and preventing the paint from becoming weathered.
🥃 THE ANGEL'S SHARE
Where Col Wood shares what the angels won't
From the Desk of Col Wood
Saturday, September 26, 2026
Well now, friends, the leaves haven’t quite turned yet, but the warehouses already smell like October. I sat down this evening with a short pour and a longer list of what the industry has been stirring this week, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t a curious mix of old bottles getting a new backbone and folks still betting on brick and mortar while the rest of the world talks glut.
willett finally lets that pot still bottle speak at full volume
Willett has taken its most recognizable decanter—the one that looks like the still itself, dreamed up by the late Even Kulsveen—and filled it with the same wheated mash bill (65% corn, 20% wheat, 15% barley) at natural cask strength instead of cutting it down. Entry proof stays 115; what comes out of the bottle will wander batch to batch and be printed right on the label. They’re planning two drops a year, timed to the spring and fall equinoxes, at a neighborly $67.
That’s a smart piece of work. The original Pot Still Reserve already had personality; this one just stops whispering. In a year when a lot of folks are hunting value instead of unicorns, a $67 full-proof expression in a bottle you can spot across the liquor store feels like the kind of honest play we could use more of.
Col Wood's Call to Action: If you already own the regular Pot Still Reserve, pull it off the shelf tonight and sit it next to a glass of something else wheated. Write down what changes when the proof goes up. That’s how you learn your own palate instead of waiting for a review to tell you.
morehead is still pouring concrete, glut be damned
Eastern Light Distilling just locked in the last pieces of a $60 million pile—$23.1 million in private money plus USDA-backed and clean-energy financing—to finish a 50,000-square-foot contract house in Morehead. They’re talking a 54-inch column, more than 125,000 barrels a year once it fires in late 2027, and a campus built so smaller brands can have a real home instead of just a purchase order.
Now, we all know Kentucky is sitting on a historic barrel inventory and Americans are sipping a little lighter. Building another big still in that climate takes either courage or a very long calendar. I lean toward both. Contract capacity that is transparent and eastern-Kentucky-rooted might be exactly what some of these newer labels need when the big houses are still sorting their own warehouses.
Col Wood's Call to Action: Next time you’re at a tasting room or a bottle shop, ask who actually distilled the juice. If the answer is “a partner,” remember that partner is about to have a new address in Rowan County. Support the folks who put their name on the still, not just the label.
📱 A Word from Our Sponsor (That'd Be Me)
Look, friends, with Willett dropping a new proof every equinox and half the industry still trying to remember which barrel went where, a scrap of paper in the kitchen drawer just won’t cut it. That’s why I built My Bourbon Collection: Vault. Version 3.0.0 is out now, $1.99, and it does the one thing this week’s news keeps reminding us we need: it keeps a permanent record of what you own and what it actually tasted like the night you opened it. Tasting journal stays with the bottle, not in your fading memory. Grab it here: https://t.co/Bo3oe1ApWR
🛠️ The Distillery: What We’re Barreling Next
We’re not done cooking. Next up in the stillhouse: a barcode and OCR scanner so you can add a bottle without typing every blessed field, a proper data import so you can bring your old lists over without starting from scratch, and a couple of quiet improvements I haven’t quite decided whether to announce or just let you find. Patience, like good whiskey, rewards the ones who wait.
Until Next Week, Friends
Keep your pours honest and your notes honest-er. The market will keep doing what markets do; our job is to taste what’s in the glass and remember why we started.
Yours in bourbon,
Col Wood
P.S. - Add a single drop of water to a new high-proof pour and wait thirty seconds before you judge it. The whiskey will tell you more if you give it room to breathe.