Crazy long weekend on the bourbon trail in Kentucky!
Thursday @ Four Roses:
7 recipes straight out of the barrel. I lost my tasting sheet 😞 We ended up picking an OBS? but it wasn't OBSK as that was not included in the tasting. Pretty good time, the tasting got me pretty drunk.
Friday @ Buffalo Trace
Ancient Ancient Age 10 Yr
Blanton's
Rock Hill Farm's
Elmer T Lee
My favorite was AAA10. The RHF was very oaky and astringent. Blanton's and ETL are still so good but AAA10 was just in a different league. The "Elmer T Lee" dinner was awesome. Harlen Wheatley and Kris Comstock spoke about working with Elmer. They played some videos from interviews. Elmer's grandson was in attendance. Food was good and food +booze was wellll worth the 65$ price tag. Wish I had gone to the Weller one last year.
Saturday @ Willett, Heavenhill, Barton1792
Old Bardstown BIB
Willett 15 yr FE Bourbon
EC small batch
EC18
Henry McKenna BIB
Pikesville Rye
25yo "Bad" Whiskey - Nose was one of the best I've smelled, disappointed from there. This was their example of overaged whiskey.
1792 small batch (seemed considerably less good than my older bottle of 1792 Ridgemont Reserve but hey who knows)
Very Old Barton 80 proof - yuck. I didn't realize there were 4 varieties of this. The 80 pf is aged 4 years the 86, 90 and 100 proof BIB are aged 6 years.
Sunday @ Bulleitt Experience @ Stitzel-Weller
Bulleitt
Bulleitt 10 (girlfriend's favorite)
IW Harper NAS - 80 proof garbage
Blade and Bow NAS - 4 grain whiskey by virtue of the old SW wheated stocks being mixed in via a solera system. Still tastes like ****. My whole group hated this more than even the 80 proof IW Harper.
Cool to see SW. Bulleitt/Diageo instead of taking a stab at recreating the magic, they're further multinational corporate ****-tizing the whole thing. They are training future production employees on the micro still here and experimenting. Didn't get to see as much of the grounds as I would've liked. None of the barrels in the warehouse on the tour had legible markings which makes me think they were dummy barrels for the tour. Pretty sure the gubmint has laws about barrel marking. Very cool being greeted at the gate by Carol Perry (employee for 46 years I believe he said)..
I bought a bar mat and tasting glass from every distillery. The woman got a candle and xmas tree ornament ;D
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