Boone County Distilling revived a northern Kentucky name that Prohibition had silenced, and sells its bourbon under the tagline Made By Ghosts. Two bottles sit on our shelf: the $59.99 Small Batch, a blend of five to fourteen year barrels at 90.8 proof, which records no hechsher - and the $84.99 x Dalton Wine Cask, finished in kosher casks from Dalton Winery in the Upper Galilee and bottled under OU, which is a genuinely rare object. Plus Town Branch at $34.99, the malt-forward Lexington bourbon nobody explains.

French Colombard is one of the most widely planted white grapes in the world and almost nobody drinks it on purpose. It is a blending grape - the one other grapes borrow acidity from - and it started life in the Charente being distilled into Cognac. It holds its acid in heat, which is exactly why Israeli wineries plant it. What it tastes like, why Chardonnay needs it, the three bottles we have with Colombard in them from $14.99 to $21.99, and why the label sometimes says Colombar instead.

There is no gunpowder in Gunpowder gin. The name is Chinese gunpowder tea - green tea rolled into tight pellets that look like musket shot - and it is one of twelve botanicals in the bottle. Drumshanbo Gunpowder comes from The Shed Distillery in Co. Leitrim, it is $40.99 at 43% alcohol - 86 proof - and it is one of only two gins on our shelf that records a hechsher on the listing. What the name means, why it is not a London Dry, how to serve it, and what else forty dollars buys on the gin shelf.

If you have been at a farbrengen you have met this bottle without reading the label. Benedictine D.O.M. is a French herbal liqueur from Fecamp in Normandy, it is 40% alcohol - 80 proof, level with vodka and whiskey - and the 750ml is $39.99 with the litre at $49.99. It is not wine and there is no grape in it at all: the base is neutral beet-root alcohol. What the three letters mean, why historians doubt the monastery story, what twenty-seven botanicals taste like, the four ways it is actually drunk, and exactly what our listing records on hashgacha.

Dewar's White Label is the bottle that taught most of the world what Scotch tastes like, and on our shelf it is $29.99 at 40% alcohol - 80 proof - one of the cheapest bottles in the whole Scotch collection. What a blended Scotch actually is, why the blend is built around Aberfeldy single malt and what double ageing does to it, why a no-age statement is not a warning sign, about 97 calories in a pour, and Highland Queen 8 Year at $32.99, the other traditional blend at this money that almost nobody asks for by name.

Dalwhinnie sits in a gap in the hills at Drumochter Pass and is the coldest inhabited place in Britain with a weather station to prove it. The 15 Year Old is $79.99 at 43% alcohol - 86 proof - and it is one of only three bottles in our forty-one strong Scotch collection that records a hechsher on the listing. What a Highland malt is, why the altitude and the cold matter over fifteen years, why the smoke in it is a kiss rather than a wall, and what else eighty dollars buys on the malt shelf.

Gin and tonic in a can exists, it is $19.99 for four, and it is better than it has any right to be. J. Folk builds a real cocktail at full strength - proper gin, real tonic, a lift of passion fruit and citrus - four 250ml cans at 10% ABV. That number is the one to pay attention to, because hard seltzer taught everybody to read a can as four or five percent, and a ready-to-drink cocktail is usually double that. A 250ml can at 10% carries about the alcohol of a glass of wine. Also on the shelf: a canned peach mimosa made from rose wine and real juice, and the blue bottle Moscato in cans. Prices for all of them, and three honest reasons cans beat bottles.

Nearly every single malt in Scotland is distilled twice. Auchentoshan runs the spirit through three times, which is an Irish habit more than a Scottish one, and it is the whole reason this whisky is light, clean and soft instead of heavy and oily. American Oak is $39.99 for the 750ml, matured only in ex-bourbon barrels, which is where the vanilla and coconut come from. The last working Lowland distillery of the old guard, sitting at Clydebank on the edge of Glasgow. How to say the name, what Dark Oak and Virgin Oak and Blood Oak actually mean, how it sits against a Speyside and an Islay malt, and why this is the bottle to hand somebody who thinks they do not like single malt.

Thousands of people a month search for wine in a blue bottle, vodka in a blue bottle or gin in a blue bottle, because the colour is the thing they remember when the brand name is gone. Three different aisles, three real answers. The wine is Bartenura Moscato at $14.49, five percent alcohol, in the most recognised kosher bottle in the world. The vodka is Deep Blue from Ukraine, ice-filtered and OU, $27.99 for the 1.75L. The gin is Bombay Sapphire at $32.99, vapour-infused through ten botanicals at Laverstoke Mill. Every size of the blue Moscato with prices, why blue bottle white wine lands in the same place, and why searching by colour is a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Fireball is not whiskey. It is a cinnamon whisky liqueur at 33% alcohol - 66 proof - which is well below the 40% floor a straight whisky has to clear, and that one fact answers most of what people ask about the bottle. The 750ml is $24.99. What our listing records on certification and why flavoured spirits sit on the other side of that line, the gluten question, and Heeet Hot Cinnamon Vodka at 68 proof, the second cinnamon bottle on the shelf that almost nobody knows about.

Is cava kosher. Is tequila kosher. Is cognac kosher. Is Jack Daniel's kosher. The answers are not random, and one rule covers almost all of it: what is in the bottle decides it. Anything made from grapes needs a hechsher, always. Anything flavoured or sweetened needs one too. A plain spirit distilled from grain, cane, agave or potato is a much simpler picture. A shelf-by-shelf walk through wine and sparkling, cognac and brandy, vodka, gin, rum, tequila, whiskey, vermouth and liqueurs, with a certified bottle named for each one and why Passover is a separate question entirely.

Or Haganuz is one of only three names anyone has typed into our search box in the last two months, and the winery behind it sits at the foot of Mount Meron in a village founded by Chassidic families who came to farm and to learn. Eight bottles from $19.99 to $64.99, split into the everyday Amuka tier and the serious Marom and Har Sinai end. Every one is OU. Which is mevushal, which is only 9% alcohol, what makes a varietal Cabernet Franc worth $31.99, and the difference between the two port-style sweet reds.