TL;DR:
anything brown more or less ... white spiritis I'm more likely to want chilled or with ice (and it's not because I subscribe to the notion of white and brown spirit seasons, I love any at any time of year, likewise with red and non-red wine) ... even within one category like agave spirits, blanco seems to make sense chilled but reposado / anejo don't need it
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I am just going to mostly stick to broad categories (not even subcategories), because there's way, way, way too much great beverage variety out there for me to choose single favorites
1. whisk(e)y in general, including
• bourbon, whether wheat-forward, rye-forward, or otherwise
• American rye whiskey
• American alt whiskeys like wheat whiskey, novel exotic cereal blends from microdistilleries like Corsair, Koval and High West, as well as Stranahan single malt
• Scottish single malts, whether peat bombs or peatless and aged in secondary casks like Port, Sherry, Sauternes, Amarone or rum casks
• Irish whiskey, whether peated or not, like Redbreast, Connemara and others
• quality Canadian blends like Forty Creek, or Canadian rye
• Japanese like Suntory Yamazaki
• Mexican maize whiskey
• Breton whisky like Armorik
• even some decent Scottish blends like White Horse (has Talisker in the blend), and Ballantine are fine neat, and sure, JW is good too, but I will never forget the experience of sipping JW Double Black after sipping Laphroaig 10 Yr regular strength, the JW just seemed like water at that point, and JW Blue is the essence of Diageo price gouging, just as with the Caol Ila single malt that goes into JW)
• Tennessee whiskey is kind of bland / watery, e.g., any quality tier of Jack Daniels including Gentleman Jack and the Single Barrel is mostly meh, just stop effing around and go to a true bourbon instead of an insipid legal grey area bourbon, like Noah's Mill, any of the myriad variants from the Buffalo Trace distillery whether the basic Buffalo Trace or any of the allocated stuff (and let's be honest, with Pappy you are paying solely for the allocated scarcity of the age statement because no one thought to barrel more of it 20 years ago in anticipation for a sudden boom in interest in bourbon, and with Scotch or bourbon there is an upper threshold of aging years after which it is not yielding anything other than novelty (so James Bond's fave being Macallan 50 is utter nonsense, but what would you expect from someone who doesn't know Martinis are made with gin, and he's British no less) ... I've tasted every Van Winkle and it is not inherently superior, just needlessly expensive because of supply and demand 101 ... Colonel E.H. Taylor Rye is infinitely more interesting if you want to blow some money, sooo spicy, if you waste it on mixing it you need your arse kicked), or even just Makers Mark is nice for a basic wheated bourbon option, but special note, when it comes to Bulleit in particular, their rye is better than their bourbon ... there are infinite good bourbon options though, at multiple price points, including one from High Wire made from heirloom red corn
2. aged rum, preferably without the hogo trait (e.g., Abuelo, Cockspur, Mount Gay, Clement, Barbancourt, and several others from different Caribbean-adjacent countries)
1 and 2 are the main events, and could easily switch places
third place could be almost anything, whether Armenian brandy, Mexican brandy, pisco, or Laird's Applejack (tastes more like a whiskey than a brandy to me), Cognac is not my favorite thing at all but I have had a couple of XO's that I liked, Remy and another brand I can't recall but it was from a smaller distributor
4th place would go beyond purely distilled spirits and include myriad variations of amari (e.g., Averna), fernets, aperitivi (e.g., Campari), quinquinas (e.g., Bonal Gentiane-Quina), Barolo Chinato, and fortified wines (e.g., Pineau des Charentes, Madeira, Sherry, Port, Banyuls)
