This week: Buffalo Trace gets rejected… We dive into dripping 90’s nostalgia… And Ferrari.. uhhh, well, I think they might have killed the brand.

Back in Issue 2, we covered the rumor that Sazerac was circling Brown-Forman, parent company of Jack Daniel's, Old Forester, and Woodford Reserve. The short update: it's over, twice.

In late April, Brown-Forman and Pernod Ricard officially terminated merger discussions, having been unable to reach mutually agreeable terms. [1] That alone would have been a significant story. Then, a few weeks later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Brown-Forman had also rejected Sazerac's $15 billion takeover bid, which came in at approximately $32 per share. [2] Two suitors, two rejections, one company that apparently does not want to be acquired at any price currently on offer.

If the Sazerac deal had gone through, it would have united two of America's most prominent family-owned whiskey empires. [2] Sazerac brings Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle, and a portfolio that reads like a bourbon hall of fame. Brown-Forman brings the most recognizable whiskey label on the planet. Together they would have been something genuinely seismic. Instead, Brown-Forman remains publicly traded, majority family-controlled, and apparently content to stay that way.

Whether that's the right call is a separate argument. What's clear is that the consolidation story that dominated bourbon conversations for the past year has, for now, gone quiet. Don't bet on it staying that way.

Forty Years on Islay

Fèis Ìle, the Islay Festival of Music and Malt, turned 40 this year, [3] which feels both impossible and entirely right. Forty years of peat smoke, Atlantic wind, and distillery open days on an island with fewer than 3,500 permanent residents. There is no better argument for the power of whisky as a cultural force than the fact that Fèis Ìle draws people from every corner of the world to a place that takes genuine effort to reach, every single year, without fail.

Douglas Laing marked the occasion with a special Big Peat Fèis Ìle 2026 Edition, finishing their signature Islay blended malt in ex-Pedro Ximenez sherry casks and releasing it at natural cask strength of 52.6% ABV. [3] Fitting tribute from a brand built entirely on the island's character. If you've been to Islay, you already understand what the fuss is about. If you haven't, this is the year to fix that.

Bruichladdich Goes Back to the Beginning

This is the one you've been seeing teased. For Fèis Ìle 2026, Bruichladdich is releasing three bottles: two new limited editions and the return of one of the most talked-about cult bottlings in the distillery's history. [4]

The two new releases are the Port Charlotte PC5 Redux and the Octomore OBA Redux, both limited to 2,500 bottles. PC5 Redux is a reimagining of Bruichladdich's very first release as a reopened distillery: on May 29, 2001, when the stills ran again after years of silence, Port Charlotte was the first liquid to come off them. PC5, bottled five years later, defined the signature sweet barbecue smoke profile that Port Charlotte is known for today. [5] This 2026 version is a five-year-old heavily peated single malt at 40 PPM, distilled from 100% Scottish barley sourced from 14 Islay farms, matured in first-fill bourbon barrels, Oloroso hogsheads, PX hogsheads, and recharred Bruichladdich whisky barrels, bottled at cask strength 63.5% ABV. [6]

The Octomore OBA Redux revives the OBA concept ten years after its initial debut, combining the mystery of Bruichladdich's Black Art series with Octomore's layered peated power, at 54.2% ABV. [7] Cask details are undisclosed, PPM is undisclosed. Classic Bruichladdich: they'll tell you everything and nothing at the same time.

Then there's the third bottle, the one that dropped June 1. The Bruichladdich 25 Year Old 1991 Yellow Submarine WMD III resurfaced, capped at just 1,991 bottles, a nod to the year the spirit was distilled and to the story behind the name. [4] The legend: an unmanned Royal Navy submarine was caught in the fishing nets of Islay fishermen off the coast. It was yellow. The distillery, being the distillery, named a whisky after it. [8] The original WMD III from 2018 is already a collector's piece. This new release, now 25 years old from 1991 stock, is the distillery reaching back to its most eccentric, most gloriously Bruichladdich chapter and saying: we remember.

If you want one, you already know what to do. Let’s book a trip! Or, sign up at their website. They might be shipping. If not, auction it is.

Little Brown Dog Grows Up

There is a specific kind of moment in the whisky world that never gets old: the independent bottler who spent years curating other people's work finally stepping forward with their own. Little Brown Dog just had theirs.

Founded in 2018 by Andrew Smith and Chris Reid out of rural Aberdeenshire, Little Brown Dog built a following the honest way, through eight years of careful, flavour-led independent bottling. This week they launched their first-ever core expression: Aberdeenshire Single Malt. Their words: "our most important release in eight years of business." Hard to argue with that.

The whisky itself is a 12-year-old unpeated Highland single malt, distilled at Glen Garioch, which sits about ten minutes from Little Brown Dog HQ. The cask recipe is 60% first-fill bourbon barrels and 40% Oloroso and PX sherry casks, bottled at 46% ABV, natural colour, non-chill filtered. All the right boxes ticked. Batch One runs to around 2,000 hand-numbered bottles, intentionally small enough to let batch variation breathe, large enough to actually reach people. The first 500 bottles from a pre-production preview sold out almost immediately, which suggests they've been sitting on something people actually wanted. [9]

The design is worth noting too. The label draws its silhouette from Bennachie, the hill visible from the distillery gates, with a few personal touches folded in: Peedie, the actual little brown dog the company is named for, hidden in the barley fields alongside a farm gate and a cask. It's the kind of label that tells you something real about the people who made it, which is increasingly rare. [9]

This is not a brand chasing hype or leaning on borrowed prestige. It's two founders from Aberdeenshire who spent nearly a decade learning the trade before putting their name on a bottle of their own. Batch Two is already prepared. Batch Three is underway. The ambition is clear: grow from cult independent bottler to established name, one honest dram at a time. [9]

Earlier this month, the watch world gathered in Geneva and collectively lost its mind, in the best possible way. The Phillips Geneva Watch Auction XXIII, held May 9 and 10 at the Hotel President Wilson, became the highest-grossing watch auction in history, clearing $96.3 million across two days. [10] Combined with an earlier online session, it was the first watch auction season in history to cross the $100 million mark. [11]

The headline lot was a 1953 Patek Philippe Reference 2523, a two-crown world-timer in 18-karat yellow gold with a polychrome cloisonné enamel dial depicting South America. It hammered at $10.2 million, making it only the second Patek Philippe ever to clear that threshold at public auction. [12] For context, that is sixteen Ferrari Luces. That is also a watch the size of a coat button that a man made by hand in Geneva in 1953, and someone just paid ten million dollars for it. The hobby is fine.

Across all three Geneva auction houses that week, a combined $155 million in watches changed hands, with somewhere north of fifty world records set between them. [13] At the Phillips sale alone, all but one of the 225 lots sold. [10] The market, at least at the very top, is not correcting. It is accelerating.

Which brings us, in the most violent gear change this newsletter has ever attempted, to a $198 watch with a fish on it.

Not Everything Has to Cost a Fortune

J.Crew and Timex quietly dropped something this week, and it smells like a Saturday in 1994. Their first collaboration in over a decade is a wrist-worn preppy dream that looks straight out of the 1990s, [14] which is fitting, because that's exactly the era when J.Crew catalogs were doing more for American menswear than most brands are doing today.

The watch is a rework of the Timex MK1, originally rooted in military field watches, arriving here in a gold-toned stainless steel case at 36mm with a quartz movement and a clean, intentionally simple dial. [15] The braided brown leather strap really drives it home: it looks like a braided leather belt, a classic preppy staple that would have looked right at home tucked under a rugby shirt in a J.Crew catalog circa 1996. [14] The whole package has that specific energy of dressing well without trying very hard, which is, arguably, the entire point of J.Crew at its best.

The one curveball is a brook trout illustration above the six o'clock position, based on a watercolor by J.Crew's in-house artist, who is apparently also an avid fisherman. As the brand puts it: "It is not a fishing watch or a diving watch. It is simply a watch with a fish on it." [14] Fair enough. The campaign photography leans into the nostalgia deliberately, blending faux retro advertising aesthetics with everyday moments: breakfast tables, lawn games, outdoor afternoons. [16] It knows exactly what it is.

It's $198, available now through both Timex and J.Crew online and at select retail locations. [15] Timex has built real momentum through smart collaborations over the past decade, working with Todd Snyder, Noah, and The James Brand, among others. [17] This one fits right in. It's not a watch that changes the conversation. It's a watch you actually wear. And, I must get it.

Ferrari unveiled the Luce this week in Rome. "Luce" means light in Italian. I have a different word for it, but this is a family newsletter.

Let's talk about what it is: a five-door, five-seat, full-size electric sedan. Ferrari's first EV. Priced at €550,000, roughly $640,000. [18] For context, that is slightly more than six of those $10.2 million Patek Philippe world-timers from Geneva earlier this month. One of those watches fits in your shirt pocket. This requires a garage.

The design came from a collaboration between Ferrari's own Centro Stile, led by Flavio Manzoni, and LoveFrom, the creative collective founded by Jony Ive and Marc Newson. [19] Jony Ive is the man who gave us the iMac, the iPhone, and years of beautiful, intuitive Apple hardware. Marc Newson is the industrial designer behind some of the most visually striking objects of the last three decades, from the Lockheed Lounge to concept work for Ford. Two genuinely legendary designers. On paper, a dream team.

Look at it.

The Luce adopts a mostly familiar four-door EV silhouette, with a sizeable glasshouse designed to look as though it sits beneath the outer shell, as if the bodywork has been lowered from above. [20] Floating above and around that shell are suspended front and rear aerodynamic wings. [21] Instead of a traditional hood, a large aerodynamic wing housing the daytime running lights raises the front of the car to suggest a more conventional silhouette, directing airflow up and over the convex glasshouse body. [22] The result is something that looks less like a car that was designed and more like one that was rendered, approved, and shipped. Smooth, seamless, inoffensive. A soap bar with a prancing horse badge.

The sides offer almost nothing. Short overhangs, a large black panel behind the front wheels, and door handles replaced by Tesla Cybertruck-style door poppers on the B-pillar. The rear passengers get suicide doors. [20] At a glance the back reads as a sedan, but the entire rear panel lifts as a hatch, with the rear glass hinged into the tailgate. [20] Ferrari says that's a nod to the 360 Modena and the 458. I'll take their word for it, because nothing else here is asking you to make that connection.

The wheels are the one redeeming visual detail: 23 inches up front and 24 at the rear, machined from solid aluminum in a Turbine design, the largest ever fitted to a production Ferrari road car. [20] They're genuinely beautiful. They deserve a better car around them.

The logo is also still there. Ferrari got that part right.

In practice, the Luce looks like a Tesla that spent a semester abroad in Milan and came back with an accent. The interior carries Ive's fingerprints throughout: screens with Apple Watch-style crowns, an infotainment panel with an iPad-like sensibility, Gorilla Glass details at every turn. [23] Which is impressive work, in a vacuum. But it also answers a question nobody at Ferrari was supposed to be asking, which is: what if we made the Apple car that Apple never made? That cancelled Apple project, Project Titan, suddenly feels very relevant here. [23]

Ferrari's CEO Benedetto Vigna called it "the result of five years of work." [18] Five years. I've had a sourdough starter that showed more urgency.

The Luce is technically extraordinary, to be fair. 1,113 horsepower, quad motors, a Halbach array powertrain borrowed from Ferrari's Formula One program, 48V active suspension so sophisticated it doesn't need anti-roll bars, four-wheel steering, torque vectoring on both axles. [19] By any engineering measure, it's absurd. In the best possible sense of that word.

But a Ferrari is supposed to make you feel something the moment you see it. The 458 made photographers weep. The F40 made grown men embarrassed about their emotions. The Luce makes you think about whether you need to update your iOS.

Ferrari is aiming this at families, specifically families with very deep pockets, pitching comfortable seating, premium technology, and a 600-liter trunk. [18] A trunk. Ferrari. For your groceries and your children's hockey equipment.

I understand the business logic. I do. EVs, new customers, generational shift, all of that. I understand that Maranello needs the Luce to exist the same way I understand why certain whiskies add caramel coloring. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

There is one more theory worth floating. Ferrari has never been above using one car to sell another. Buy the Purosangue, earn the right to be offered a Roma. The Luce, at $640,000, may be less a car and more a loyalty test: proof that you are serious enough about the brand, and liquid enough, to be considered for an allocation of something you actually want. Like, say, the F80. Ferrari's 1,200 horsepower hybrid hypercar, limited to 799 units, already sold out before most people knew it existed. If buying a soap bar on wheels is what gets your name on that list, there are people who will do exactly that without a second thought. Ferrari knows it. The Luce may be the most expensive velvet rope in automotive history. 

The prancing horse is still on the hood. It just doesn't look like it's running anymore. It looks like it's loading.

Speaking of Driving Things I Actually Enjoy

Forza Horizon 6 dropped last week and I haven't put it down. Playground Games set this one in Japan, with a fictionalized Tokyo as the centerpiece, [24] and it is exactly what petrolheads have been asking for across multiple installments. Touge runs, mountain passes, urban canyons, the full fantasy. Over 550 cars, the densest map the franchise has ever built, full of verticality, diverse biomes, and driving experiences that range from scenic to genuinely stupid fast. [25]

It's a good reminder that sometimes the best driving experience available isn't in your garage. The WRX is great. Japan at midnight in a tuned Nissan Skyline, consequence-free, is also great. Different category. The launch has already been called one of the biggest game releases of the year, [26] and honestly, the hype is earned. If you're a Game Pass subscriber it's already in your library. There's no excuse.

Outro: That's Issue 8. Ferrari loaded a progress bar and called it a supercar. Geneva sold a 1953 watch for the price of a small island. Bruichladdich pulled a submarine out of the Atlantic and bottled it. J.Crew put a trout on a dial and somehow nailed it. And somewhere in Japan, a virtual Skyline is waiting in my garage with no software updates required, well sorta...

The Luce is still at 47%. See you in Issue 9. Thank you as always!

[1] Brown-Forman Corporation, Form 8-K, April 28, 2026 — sec.gov

[2] Robb Report, "Brown-Forman Has Rejected Sazerac's $15 Billion Takeover Bid," May 13, 2026 — robbreport.com

[3] Whisky For Everyone, "Inbox, May 22, 2026" — whiskyforeveryone.com

[4] Whisky Monkeys, "Bruichladdich Unveils Two Fèis Ìle Whiskies and Welcomes Back a Legend," May 2026 — whiskymonkeys.com

[5] Bruichladdich Distillery, PC5 Redux product page — bruichladdich.com

[6] One More Dram, "Bruichladdich Unveils Fèis Ìle 2026 Exclusive Releases" — onemoredram.com

[7] The Whisky Wire, "Bruichladdich Launches Its Fèis Ìle 2026 Limited Editions" — thewhiskywire.com

[8] Whisky.com, "Bruichladdich WMD II The Yellow Submarine" — whisky.com

[9] The Herald Scotland, "Scottish Distillery to Release 2,000 Bottles of First Whisky," May 2026 — heraldscotland.com

[10] Robb Report, "Phillips's $96.3 Million Geneva Sale Is the Highest-Grossing Watch Auction in History," May 11, 2026 — robbreport.com

[11] Watchilove, "History Was Made in Geneva This Weekend," May 2026 — watchilove.com

[12] Borro, "Phillips Geneva XXIII Delivers a $10.2 Million World Record for the Patek Philippe 2523," May 2026 — borro.com

[13] The Rare Corner, "The Bifurcation Becomes Official: What the Geneva Spring 2026 Auctions Just Confirmed" — therarecorner.com

[14] Gear Patrol, "Timex's Classic Affordable Field Watch Gets a Preppy '90s Makeover from J.Crew," May 26, 2026 — gearpatrol.com

[15] Complex, "J.Crew and Timex Team Up on Limited-Edition 'MK1' Watch," May 26, 2026 — complex.com

[16] Complex, "J.Crew and Timex Team Up on Limited-Edition 'MK1' Watch," May 26, 2026 — complex.com

[17] Gear Patrol, "Timex's Classic Affordable Field Watch Gets a Preppy '90s Makeover from J.Crew," May 26, 2026 — gearpatrol.com

[18] Carscoops, "Ferrari's Luce Is A Four-Door EV Designed By The iPhone Guy" — carscoops.com

[19] Carscoops, "Ferrari's Luce Is A Four-Door EV Designed By The iPhone Guy" — carscoops.com

[20] Carscoops, "Ferrari's Luce Is A Four-Door EV Designed By The iPhone Guy" — carscoops.com

[21] Car Design News, "Luce Is a 'New Chapter' in Ferrari Design" — cardesignnews.com

[22] Dezeen, "Ferrari Has Launched the Luce, Its First Electric Car" — dezeen.com

[23] 9to5Mac, "Ferrari Luce EV Debuts with Jony Ive-Designed Cockpit," May 25, 2026 — 9to5mac.com

[24] Wikipedia, "Forza Horizon 6" — en.wikipedia.org

[25] Forza.net, "Forza Horizon 6 Now Available on Xbox Series X|S and PC," May 19, 2026 — forza.net

[26] DLCompare, "Forza Horizon 6 Is One of the Biggest Game Releases of 2026" — dlcompare.com