jack daniels

Jack Daniel's is about to roll out its first new expression in a generation: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey.

The new libation starts with Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 and mingles it with a special honey liqueur. The result is a smoother, sweeter version of Jack that is just 70-proof. It is a clear and understandable attempt to pull more women into drinking Jack. There is even a cute honeybee on the label. Older drinkers might take a shine to it, as well. I can see my late Aunt Letitia or even my North Carolina Gram sipping Jack's Honey.

The addition of liqueur does give the finish a vaguely medicinal, cough-syrup taste in the background of other flavors like butterscotch, pear and honey.

Bartenders are just getting samples to play with, but I can see Old Fashions being made with Jack Honey, as well as Mint Juleps that are made with Old No. 7 instead of Kentucky Bourbon. The Derby is right around the corner, too.

Price: About $22.00 for a 750 ml bottle.

Brown-Forman, the parent company behind Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve, Early Times and Southern Comfort has launched Collingwood Canadian whisky, a new premium brand in the company's portfolio.

Collingwood, a blend of two whiskies, takes its aging in white oak barrels, but receives a finishing stage in casks made of toasted maple wood. Master Distiller Chris Morris perhaps not coincidentally this year released a new expression from Woodford Reserve Masters Collection that is maple finished.

"Sugar maple does not lend itself to barrel making the way oak does," Morris told Luxist in a recent interview. "But we can work with it in finishing stages, and it imparts a very unique flavor and finish to the whisky that is very desirable."

Water for Collingwood is spring water drawn Ontario's Georgian Bay. The whisky is triple distilled. And the new brand is bottled in a unique flask-style bottle with a large "over-cap."

The whisky is smooth at 80-proof, and not as rye-centered as other Canadian whiskies. Notes of applesauce, cedar, butterscotch and molasses are in the nose.

The new brand is initially available in Texas, Florida, Kentucky and Louisiana, hitting more markets throughout 2011. A 750ml bottle will retail for around $27.

Premium Bourbon Jim Beam has tapped actor Willem Dafoe for an unusual TV ad campaign.

Directed by Dante Ariola and created by New York ad agency StrawberryFrog, the ad uses Dafoe to talk about the choices we make in life and how they define who we are. "Life boils down to a series of choices," says Dafoe in the voiceover. "All choices lead you somewhere; bold choices lead you where you are supposed to be."

In between the statements, the commercial surprises and amuses the viewer with images of Dafoe as chess player, circus clean-up man, fashion designer, plant manager, sumo wrestler and trapeze artist. The commercial's last image is of a bottle of Jim Beam, suggesting this is the bold choice bourbon drinkers must make.

Collection or illicit liquor store? A Tennessee man has been indicted on charges of illegally possessing up to $1 million worth of Jack Daniel's whiskey but says he's not selling the alcohol, just the vintage bottles they came in. The AP reports that Randy Piper of Goodlettsville was indicted on four counts regarding the possession, sale, transportation and storage of the liquor. After receiving a tip that someone was selling liquor without a license, officials seized 2,400 bottles from two warehouses Piper owns as well as a home in Lynchburg, the home of Jack Daniels. Piper says he has been collecting bottles for around six years.