A liqueur is an alcoholic beverage that has been flavored with fruit, herbs, nuts, spices, flowers, or cream and bottled with added sugar. Liqueurs are typically quite sweet; they are usually not aged for long but may have resting periods during their production to allow flavors to marry.

In some parts of the world people use the words cordial and liqueur interchangeably.

In any event what you have been calling liquor is really liqueur.

A distilled beverage, liquor, or spirit is a drinkable liquid containing ethanol that is produced by means of distilling fermented grain, fruit, or vegetables. This excludes undistilled fermented beverages such as beer and wine.

Ref.: Wikipedia

“Regarding whiskey, while most do not have supervision, some are ‘approved’ or ‘authorized’ or ‘acceptable’, but not actually having a hechsher as you will see in the lists.”

I want to point out that food or drinks do *NOT* need a hechsher to be kosher.

For example, if I go to the grocery store in the US and buy raw green peas, those peas do not need a hechsher. Similarly, I was informed by the Chicago Rabbinical Council that frozen peas do not need a hechsher if the only ingredients on the label are “peas” & “salt.”

The terms ‘approved,’ ‘authorized,’ or ‘acceptable’ from these kashrus agencies means *Kosher* according to the standards of the agency.

The Star-K puts it like this:

“The question is, can we, in accordance with halacha and in good conscience, consume beverages that do not have any hashgocha? Obviously the best case scenario would be to purchase alcoholic beverages with a reliable hechsher. There are, in fact, a few selections that have reliable kosher certification, but these are few and far between. When research into ingredients and production practices indicates that there are no apparent kashrus problems with the product, then halacha permits us to follow the concept of holchin achar harov, that we may assume that the majority is the scenario with which we are dealing.”

May we be zocheh to learn the depths of halacha and walk accordingly in Hashem’s ways.

Europe has a quite different ‘hechsher’ culture from the US and
Israel. You can go into many haredi, litvish or chassidish, homes in Europe and find a range of products without any hechsher but which appear on locally produced ‘approved’ lists. Whisky is certainly one of those items. The kosher market there is not big enough to support manufacturers paying the costs of hechsherim on many products.

So far as the LBD generally is concerned, their policy regarding
cholov yisroel is basically the same as I understand that of the OU, i.e. they are not makpid on cholov yisroel and anything KosherLBD Dairy is cholov stam. It is important to note as well that whilst it is a highly respected Beis Din, the LBD would not in Israeli terms be called a haredi Beis Din.

The LBD Kosher Guide link is:

http://www.kosher.org.uk