I owe you a bit of an explanation for the tardiness of my 2025 Top 100, the live tasting taking place Jan. 20.

When 2025 rolled around, I transitioned from the 2024 Top 100 to the remainder of my son’s wrestling season, my Super Bowl event in New Orleans, the upcoming ASCOT Awards and the completion of my book, Bottom Shelf: How A Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life. 

No doubt, the calendar was stacked, and I knew the first half of my year would be dominated by finishing my memoir. I talk about my PTSD struggles from the Iraq war and how I became a taster with many personal battles in between, all the while chasing the true story of Old Crow. This book, honestly, took 20 years to write and is a reflection on the life I built. I try to convey how much the bourbon community means to me and how it’s given me purpose.

I remembered friends I’ve lost in the industry — Dave Pickerell, Parker Beam and Dave Sweet — and discuss how they forever impacted my life. Before he suddenly passed away last year, Sweet began to warn me of the dangers of our profession, how constantly being out and tasting takes a toll on our health. I’ve never been one to drink all the time, and I really keep track of units consumed vs. tasted, but his advice, in one of our last conversations, just hit me after his passing. I think, it’s because I had already been on a healthier path, having lost 45 pounds and fallen in love with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Suffice it to say, last year, Dave Sweet’s warning rang true in my brain when I tried to schedule tastings after a day’s worth of working on my book. 

Outside of my ASCOT Awards and the occasional reviews in Club Marzipan and YouTube, I simply wasn’t tasting like I used to. And when I did taste 3 to 5 in a day, like the old days, I would feel it the next day on the mats. I remember rolling with a 250-pound dude, and his weight fully collapsed upon me in the mount. I was out of breath and couldn’t escape like I had normally. I theorized on days I tasted, I rolled like crap the next day.

So from February to June, I tasted maybe three bourbons a week, in comparison to 10 to 25 normally. To be fair, my tasting regimen is not full-on gulp to pass-out-in-a-ditch hammered. I simply taste and spit. But even with that, I felt it on the mat the next day or in the gym. Perhaps, it’s just because I’m getting older?

Still, the Top 100 is incredibly important to me and I love what I do, so I simply circled August through November as massive tasting and catch up times. I would figure it out, maybe even cut back on my Jiu Jitsu training in this time. Then, when in the pool overlooking the ocean in July, I noticed I couldn’t see the boats. They were blurry.  I covered one eye and could barely see six feet in front of me. My glasses didn’t work; and I spent the last few days of our family vacation losing more visibility by the day. 

I immediately went to the eye doctor upon coming home and the doctor said my longtime astigmatism had caused fast-acting cataracts. Yeah, that astigmatism has always been with me.

Once I was at the VA getting new glasses and the doctor said out loud, “Wow, you guys aren’t gonna believe this. Come over here.” With my eyes pried open, a squad of medical students, one by one, looked in my eyes with their biomicroscope, one saying, “I’ve never seen one that bad.” My eyes have always felt like they were spasming in hot / humid conditions, and they hurt when around chlorine and other chemicals. But I never felt impaired or like I couldn’t do anything. But now, the doctor told me I would go blind if I didn’t get this taken care of.

Blind from cataracts?

Surely, this was just a way to get me to sign up for some sort of expensive surgery, I thought. But the more I researched, the more I realized my natural born eyes had been causing this since the day I entered this world and my vision was progressively getting worse. I went from being able to see perfectly fine with glasses to not seeing my children three feet in front of me with one eye covered. 

So, I got the surgery and they actually were able to correct my astigmatism, which was described as reshaping my eyes. My corneas went from a flat football shape to the normal person’s basketball. 

Both eyes were operated on, and I have one more procedure I am putting off (until I have to! Haha!), and I could instantly see better. I actually saw colors I’ve never seen before. For example, do you know the green used in highway signs? I’ve never in my life seen that shade of green. 

Honestly, my life was filled with colors and I was elated to see so well. They even corrected my vision, essentially sewing in new lenses, so I’d never have to wear glasses again.

But that put my tastings behind even further. And the clock was ticking, the boxes were stacking up. By mid November, my son’s wrestling season was full tilt, and there’s nothing that will pull me away from being a dad for my kids. That took out a couple days a week for potential tastings. I’d need a miracle to have a list ready by late December.

I would eventually pick up the pace and figure out some supplements to balance how I felt on the mat / gym, and I got in the groove to complete the list. 

Still, I hardly tasted what I normally tasted. This past year, I tasted more than 500 American whiskeys, a drop in the bucket to what I use to taste.

Is this the new normal? Even with supplements, can my body taste like it had done in the past? 

With writing Bottom Shelf, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my life and career, and I am about to enter the AARP phase of life. I’m a ways from applesauce and 15 medications a day. But I’m definitely getting older, and I can’t taste like I did when I was in my 30s. I must be more diligent. 

So, that’s why I’m late: A new book, family, eye surgeries and desire to live a healthy life. 

This year will be different, of course. I’m gonna get up earlier to work out, taste in the middle of the day and never miss a wrestling practice, tournament or a school play. I’ll cheer my wife on from the sidelines for her races, and I’ll plan the best Club Marzipan events ever.

Yeah, this year will be different. I’ll be on top of things!

I say that every year. 

Read more: Pre-order Fred Minnick’s New Book, ‘Bottom Shelf’