Barleycorn Awards Spring 2026 Winners with Founder John McCarthy

There's nothing like a good competition.

As you know from our season-ending bracket challenges, we don't get to do enough spirits-related competitions, Brad.

I was going to say, if there's

anything that matters in this world, it is taking beautiful art forms and reducing them to cold, hard, mathematical numbers.

And I got to say, Bob, the Barleycorn Awards... were so much fun to judge for.

I freaking loved this process.

I also really loved interviewing John McCarthy.

We had such a great time talking to him, and I'm excited for you guys to hear it.

Yeah, so if you've been a longtime listener of Film and Whiskey, then you know that this is not our first rodeo when it comes to judging spirits competitions.

But typically, you know, when you are on the judging panel for a competition, it involves an in-person component.

Like, you got to go somewhere, you got to sit in a room, and you get a flight of... spirits put in front of you.

Typically, you're given like a category.

Hey, you're drinking, you know, barrel proof bourbons that are over 10 years old.

And here's eight samples to sip through.

Nobody knows what you're drinking, but your whole table will sip through and you'll kind of talk through what was good, what was bad, what you want to qualify for moving on to whatever the next round might be.

The Barleycorn Awards, by extension, have flipped that model on its head, Brad.

We were sent a box of whiskey in the mail, and it was like, here's...

I think I got 25 samples.

Here's 25 unnamed samples, and they had a code name, and we got a link to go onto a portal and put our scores in, and that's all we knew about these.

But I think, crucially...

The selling point here, Brad, is that we didn't have to go anywhere to do it.

Amen.

It felt similar to the experience of a 90-minute movie, Bob.

It really did.

We've basically Netflixed the judging criteria.