I am a big fan of Lost Lantern and I am a big fan of Liza Weisstuch. I think what the folks in Vermont are accomplishing is nothing less than astonishing. And I think Liza is an exceptional writer. I had the pleasure of meeting her a dozen years ago. I recently was unable to attend the most recent Lost Lantern tasting, featuring this new lineup honoring whiskey made from all 50 states. But Liza did such a tremendous job of it (far better than anything I would have done) that I thought I'd pass this along. You should read this article. About THESE whiskies from THIS whiskey writer! A great job!
Liza Weisstuch
By Liza Weisstuch
Reporting from Vergennes, Vt.
New York Times
June 15, 2026
Outside the building in rural Vermont where a company called Lost Lantern blends whiskey sits a gray Prius V with more than 120,000 miles on the odometer.
It was brand-new when Lost Lantern’s owners, Nora Ganley-Roper and Adam Polonski, bought it in 2018. They had just quit their jobs in Manhattan (he was a drinks writer and editor, she was a sales manager for Astor Wines & Spirits), put their belongings in storage, founded a whiskey company and taken off for eight months. They visited 60-plus distilleries in 32 states on the first of what would be many road trips.
On Monday, 20 national park visits, hundreds of hotel overnights, one overheated engine, one marriage and one baby later, they are releasing the result: United States of Bourbon, a blend of 50 bourbons, one from each state, to mark America’s 250th birthday.
While most whiskeys are identified by their age or grains or barrels used for aging, this one could be measured in miles. To buy barrels of the component whiskeys, Mr. Polonski visited several distilleries in each state and selected one bourbon to represent that state in the mix. (His wife joined him when she wasn’t in Vermont blending whiskeys.) The label lists all 50 producers.
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Early on in their travels, they started toying with the idea of creating the 50-state blend, which they call U.S.B. But that was merely a fantasy at the time. There weren’t distilleries in every state yet, let alone ones that produced bourbon old enough to be released — or any bourbon at all.
But then products from craft distilleries started to come of age. Today there are more than 2,200 distilleries in the country, up from 1,835 in 2018, according to the American Craft Spirits Association.
“We got really excited about the possibility of doing U.S.B. once we realized that well-made bourbon from places outside Kentucky tastes very different from Kentucky bourbon,” Ms. Ganley-Roper said on a recent Saturday in Lost Lantern’s blending room, in an old milk-processing plant about 25 miles south of Burlington, Vt.
Many glass containers, including tall bottles and smaller jars, hold a dark golden liquid, arranged on a shiny wooden bar.
Mr. Polonski visited more than 150 distilleries across the U.S. to find the whiskeys for the new blends.Credit...Oliver Parini for The New York Times
Hundreds of small bottles of whiskey lined a metal shelf. The couple’s infant son, Owen, younger than the youngest barrel of bourbon in the room by several years, snoozed in a carrier.
Ms. Ganley-Roper developed the United States of Bourbon over about a month by creating combinations of a few products at a time, then blending them together.
“Some bourbons have a real intense flavor in one direction — a primary flavor note, like salt or pepper or spice. Others are more subtle,” she said. “I built the whiskey off of the more subtle ones, then used more intense whiskeys like you would use salt and pepper in a recipe to enhance the flavor.”
As they traveled the country to buy bourbon, the couple had the awards and relationships to establish their credibility in the industry, so distillers didn’t need convincing that United States of Bourbon wasn’t just a vanity project.
continue at the New York Times....
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