In this issue: Bourbon+ helps you mix up a great party with easy, delicious punch recipes. Writer Steve Coomes talks to Jane Bowie, Maker’s Mark’s director of innovation, about how she ended up there through a combination of chutzpah and dumb luck. Susan Reigler finds out what happens when good whiskey goes bad–and how distillers deal with it. Tom Johnson takes the mystery out of vermouth. And we revisit the Heaven Hill fire 25 years later with two firefighters who witnessed the river of fire.

Cover photograph by Heather Wibbels