Way back when I was a young bourbon-lad, transitioning from a bourbon drinker to a bourbon geek, Chuck Cowdery's The Bourbon Country Reader was the first whiskey publication I subscribed to. Over the years, I subscribed to other whiskey publications, Whiskey Advocate, The Bourbon Review and others. But one-by-one I let those subscriptions lapse. Sometimes it was because I didn't find anything between the pages that I found valuable enough to pay for. Sometimes it was due to lack of time or interest on my part.
The one publication subscription I've never let lapse is The Bourbon Country Reader. The content is well-written, well-researched and isn't available anywhere else. Chuck knows bourbon and though he has his opinions, that's part of the draw. The subscription, being about the price of a cheap-ish bottle of bourbon, is inexpensive at $20 for six issues. These appear roughly 4-6 times per year but your subscription is issue based, not time based. They appear frequently enough that they become part of your routine and not something that you've forgotten that you subscribed to by the time the next issue arrives. And in what might seem a paradoxical statement I like that it is short. It is 4 pages long with three to four articles per issue. I can get through it in one sitting. There is no filler.
If you are reading bourbon blogs, you are probably reading Chuck Cowdery's blog. If you read bourbon books, you might have read his books: Bourbon, Straight and Bourbon, Strange among others. But if you read only one bourbon publication, it should be The Bourbon Country Reader. Go to Chuck's blog to subscribe.
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