Kentucky Trip: FR, FRPS, Willett, HH Connoisseur Experience, JB, C&K

[Kpiz]

I made my first trip to Kentucky at the end of May and the details are below. Advance warning: it’s a little wordy. Thank you to everyone who has contributed their experiences with distillery tours and visits, bourbon bars, liquor stores etc. over the years because that helped immensely in determining our itinerary and making it a great first trip to KY. Also special thanks to Bruce for answering my endless questions about Four Roses private barrel selection and giving me some very helpful tips.

 

We had three days in KY and wanted to get in as many distillery tours as possible. We stayed in Louisville (at Aloft Louisville Downtown, which I recommend) and we hoped to do tours in the morning and early afternoon, then come back to roam around Louisville in the evening. Below are our distillery experiences as well as notes from one liquor store stop. I’m leaving out food and bars for now since this write-up is already lengthy. If anyone wants to know where we ate and drank in Louisville, just ask and I’ll be happy to provide that info.

 

General Itinerary:

Friday: Four Roses Distillery Tour @11am, Four Roses Private Selection (Cox’s Creek) @1:00pm

Saturday: Willett Distillery Tour @ 10am, Heaven Hill “The Whiskey Connoisseur Experience” @ 11:30am, Jim Beam Distillery Tour @ 2:30pm

Sunday: Copper & Kings Distillery Tour @ 11am

 

I booked most of these tours 3+ weeks in advance and I recommend booking as soon as you know the dates you’ll be there. Most of the tours were sold out in advance, especially those on the weekend.

 

Four Roses Distillery Tour

I had hoped to do three tours in the Lawrenceburg (and Frankfort) area in a single day since it’s about an hour away from Louisville. I was most interested in the Four Roses Distillery Tour, Buffalo Trace Hard Hat Tour, and Wild Turkey Distillery Tour. Unfortunately, when I checked about 3 weeks in advance, the BT Hard Hat tour was already full and WT was closed all day for a private event. I had already booked the FR Tour by this point, so I decided to go ahead and keep this tour and I could possibly stop by BT or try to get on a Woodford Reserve tour last-minute if we had time. It turned out that we would be busy much of the rest of the day (FR Private Selection), so this was all for the best. More on the private selection later.

 

We arrived at FR and were greeted by the friendly front desk ladies who inquired if we were there for a tour… Yes indeedy we were! She made sure that we knew that this was going to be a modified tour due to the construction, which I was also informed of when I booked the tour, and we were off…to the projector room. We watched a video that included the basics of Four Roses, such as their products, the different mashbills, etc. before proceeding down a ramp towards the distillery building. We walked down the road toward the front building as she told us more history on the distillery before stopping at the very front. We were allowed to mill about for about 5 minutes and peek our heads into the building (they weren’t kidding, there’s a lot of construction going on). The tour then moved onward to see the truck filling station, where trucks are pumped full of delicious FR distillate before they head on down the road to their rackhouses and bottling plant in Cox’s Creek. We then proceeded back to the gift shop, where we were treated to a tasting of the FR core lineup: Yellow Label, Small Batch, and Single Barrel. We only partook in the Yellow Label so as to save our palates for the big tasting at 1:00.  Everyone was able to keep their FR tasting glasses. Not bad for a $5 tour, but I see why they warned us about the ‘modified’ tour. We really weren’t able to see much of the distillery, and while it was still a cool experience since it was my first time there, I’ll wait until construction is over before returning. The entire tour, including the video and the tasting, lasted about 40 mins. Also, I did not see any gift shop exclusive single barrel picks here.

 

Four Roses Private Selection

This was a last-minute development. About a week before our trip I mentioned to my local bourbon purveyor that I was heading to KY. He said he hadn’t been able to do a FR barrel proof private selection since they now require people to do the selection in-person (and he just opened up a new shop so he can’t get away on a weekday very easily). I offered to do the tasting/selection for him while I was out there, he made a few phone calls…then I got a call from him on that Thursday, right after I arrived in KY, asking if I was still available on Friday afternoon to do a pick. I of course told him that I was, now glad that I hadn’t been able to book any other tours that day. I have been shopping at his store for about 5 years and during that time have tried many of his selections (three FR picks, two ER picks, KCSB, EWSB, ETL) so I know his preferences pretty well. In addition, we’ve had many conversations about bourbon and generally know that his preference is for high-proof, bold, sweet bourbon. This is not far from my own preferences so I figured this would be a do-able task. And so after touring the Four Roses distillery at 11am we made the drive to the FR bottling facility at Cox Creek for a private selection.

 

We parked by the gift shop and let the folks inside know that we were there for a private selection. I was glad to have my girlfriend there with me so she could opine as well. We were both very excited while also not entirely sure what to expect. The gift shop employees let us know that Mandy, the Private Selection Manager, was expecting us. We hopped in the car and the security guard gave us instructions on how to get to the building we’d be tasting in. Mandy greeted us as we walked inside.

 

The FR Private Selection room is set up so that as you enter, the tasting bar is to the left, the barrels to be tasted are on the right, and straight ahead (to the back of the room) are the bathrooms and apparently a storage room containing barrels that have been selected and are awaiting bottling. I did not get to see the room full of barrels that have been selected and alternate barrels to be tasted (to add into the lineup for the next group after a barrel has been selected), because I was on the phone with the store owner for whom we were selecting during this time.

 

After introductions with Mandy, we got each of our glasses filled by bringing them, one by one, over to the barrels where Mandy filled them with a whiskey thief. There were seven barrels for tasting.

Once we had all of our glasses filled, we began to smell and taste. We had decided to first taste these blind until we narrowed it down a bit, without knowing the age or recipe, so we didn’t look at the barrels and Mandy kept her sheet (with the recipes and ages) hidden from us for the time being. At this point we started to follow Mandy’s lead. We told her this was our first private barrel selection (as if she couldn’t tell by our excitement) and that we would greatly appreciate her advice and candid opinions. Her process is to go through and smell them all (at least once, sometimes twice), then taste through them all twice before starting to make a list of favorites and eliminate barrels that weren’t in contention. I think this was a very good process overall and really allowed us to acquaint ourselves with the barrel samples. The only modification I would make next time is to try them in different orders rather than just going through them in order twice. I don’t think they order the barrels in any particular way, so you can end up with a bold, high proof barrel right before a lower proof, more nuanced barrel and this can have a big impact on tasting. This was probably a rookie mistake on my part, but I certainly mistook at least one as being bland or underpowered when in reality, I just tasted them right after a bruiser of a bourbon.

 

After tasting each sample twice, we each reported out our favorites before learning the age and recipes of all the barrels. Mandy and my girlfriend had the same top 3, in the same order, which is pretty incredible in my opinion. Their rankings were as follows: 1. Barrel 5, 10y5mo OESV from the first tier of the warehouse, 2. Barrel 4, 8y6mo OESQ from the fifth tier, and 3. Barrel 2, 8y5mo OBSV from the sixth tier. I had trouble narrowing it down to just three and thought barrels #2-6 were all pretty good. In addition to the ones they listed, I enjoyed Barrel 3, a 9y8mo OESK from the first tier, and Barrel 6, a 9y2mo OBSQ from the third tier. I thought that by this point we would be close to choosing a barrel, but in reality we had just begun.

 

We discussed what we liked in each barrel and I found this to be very helpful. I was very surprised that they both liked barrel #5 so much. I liked it (I probably would have ranked it 4^th) but it had a light nose, I had trouble teasing out flavors, and overall I thought it was a little underpowered. They both found it to have very nuanced aromas and flavors and thought that perhaps this nuance was being drowned out by the intensity of barrel #4. With this in mind, I gave my palate a bit of a break, a couple corn chips, some water, and went back at barrel number five. This time, though it was still lighter than most of the others, I was able to pick out some flavors: honey, caramel, cinnamon, and an interesting finish (it has a clean slightly sweet finish, which makes me want to drink more). It also had a great empty glass smell...you know, the smell that remains when you finish the pour and let the glass dry. It’s really a great hot weather whisky and one that continues to get better as you continue drinking it. If that last sentence doesn’t make sense, I’ll try to explain: If I have a large pour, some whiskeys taste the same as I continue to drink it, while others seem to have their less desirable qualities amplified as I drink more, and a rare few seem to get better as I drink more. The latter scenario was the case here. Each subsequent sip seemed to amplify the honey and cinnamon that at first seemed so light. It also just tastes luxurious.

I was also curious about Barrel #4. They both liked the aromas of this one A LOT and this is why they had kept it in their top 3. Admittedly, this one smelled fantastic – everything bourbon should smell like but turned up a notch. I found the taste to be disappointing, however. It certainly had power in the way of proof but there wasn’t much flavor that materialized behind it. We tossed this one out.

 

I explained my choices as well. I thought barrel 3 had the right amount of oak and some nice spice (they disagreed). Barrel #6 had loads of brown sugar with an interesting cotton candy finish (Mandy retried this one and said “Yeah I definitely do not get brown sugar from that”). Overall I think these two barrels had a bit too much oak for their taste and not enough depth. As far as the others, Barrel 1 was the least interesting of the lot, and Barrel 7 herbal and very earthy…an interesting one but not something I’d want a whole barrel of.

 

Being as we all had barrel 2 in our top three, and I now liked barrel 5 (a lot), we agreed to narrow our focus down to these two. After tasting them a couple times more, they were still close but barrel 5 had emerged as the favorite. I knew that the OBSV (barrel 2) was more the store owner’s style, but the OESV (barrel 5) was really good and since it was also a full two years older, we thought it would be easier to sell to customers. Ultimately, I called the store owner and laid the two out for him. He thought about it and, after getting some additional info from Mandy (her estimations of total number of bottles and proof for each cask), decided to go with barrel 5, the OESV.

 

In addition to the aforementioned lessons on how to approach these tastings and re-order them, I also learned how much impact warehouse location can have on a barrel’s character and proof. Four Roses is the only (or at least, one of the few) KY distilleries to have single-storied warehouses. But still, the barrels are stacked 6-barrels high and the ones at the top (6^th tier) can have dramatically more barrel influence and much higher proof. This doesn’t mean either one is better, just different, and of course there are many other variables that impact the contents of a barrel as well (yeast, mashbill, subtle differences in oak staves, location of the warehouse itself, proximity to a door or window, etc).

 

Illustrating the effect of barrel height/location were our top two barrels. The 8y5mo OBSV came from the 6^th tier, was about 120 proof (as estimated by Mandy), and contained about 150 bottles of bourbon. The 10y5mo OESV came from the 1^st tier, and despite spending two more years in the rickhouse is probably 10 proof points lower, contains a dozen more bottles of bourbon (so less evaporation), and was noticeably lighter in color than the OBSV.

 

Basic Tasting Notes:

• Barrel 1: Light, a little char and spice.
• Barrel 2: Classic bourbon profile: brown sugar, spicy, intense at full CS, some herbal notes, with a little water it showed some dry oak on the medium-length finish
• Barrel 3: Muted nose with some fresh cut lumber, easier to drink at proof than #2, heavier on the spices than some of the others
• Barrel 4: Some spice and light sawdust on the nose. On the palate it is somewhat herbal, notes of green tea, sweet finish
• Barrel 5: Light nose, just a whiff of caramel. On the palate there are layers of honey, caramel, cinnamon, and some delicate fruitiness. Finish is medium length and leaves a slightly sweet caramel flavor. This really stands out as being quite different from the rest.
• Barrel 6: Brown sugar, burnt sugar. Some cotton candy on the finish.

• Barrel 7: Deep herbal and earthy flavors, like decaying plant matter. I might buy a bottle of this because it’s weird, but it wasn’t the barrel we were looking for. It was obvious to me that this was an F yeast.

 

Several other tidbits of information we picked up:

• Mandy informed us that there were no OBSO barrels available to try and there wouldn’t be any until 2020 because of its important role in the Small Batch blend (OBSO, OESO, OBSK, OESK) and limited quantities coming to age. There will also only be about 15 barrels of OESO available for private selection over the next couple years. In addition, they don’t currently have any OBSK available for PS but will have a small amount available starting in the fall. Needless to say, there were no O yeasts in our tasting, and just 1 K yeast.
• I’ve seen this mentioned before on SB, but they dump some really old barrels into Yellow Label. I asked about the 23yo component of this year’s LESmB and said I didn’t realize they have such old bourbon sitting around. She said something along the lines of “we have some that’s older than that” so it’s entirely possible they have 24-25yo barrels. I asked what they do with it, and she said it just goes into Yellow Label. Pretty astonishing. She said she had a couple guys there one day for a private selection and she was showing them around the bottling facility while they were dumping barrels for YL. They got to try one of these really old barrels and thought it was excellent – but she thinks they just liked it because of its age, and while it’s a very good blending agent, it’s not very good on its own. That may be true, but I’d still sure love to try it!
• Mandy described their process for assessing barrels to determine which ones make it to private selection. I won’t try to regurgitate it all, but it involves a lot of tasting, earmarking barrels, and re-tasting starting when the barrels just a few years old. A PS barrel is likely tasted a few times before it makes it to the PS room, which is pretty cool and certainly made me appreciate getting to select one of these choice barrels.
• Cask-strength private selections are now only available to people who do the selection in person. She said this was mostly done to slow down the selections, because their stocks were getting low, but it didn’t slow down at all.

 

 

 

 

Willett Distillery Tour

We arrived just a couple minutes before 10:00am when the tour was scheduled to start and we checked-in in the gift shop. The tour starts outside the main distillery building in the courtyard /parking lot, where our tour guide began providing distillery history, which was pretty interesting. From there we moved through the fermentation room where we got to walk past the large metal fermentation tubs and even got to try the mash! This was a nice touch and very memorable. I, of course, got a nice big taste of that sour goodness. The tour then moved to column and pot stills, and it was cool to see the famous Willett pot still. I’m not a Willett super-fan or anything but we took this opportunity to get a photo. We then moved onto the barrel-filling station, where they still have some of the original equipment. We walked into the rickhouse, which smelled wonderful (I didn’t find any really old barrels). From here we moved to the tasting room for some samples. They had all of their normal products available for sampling, and they grouped them so we got to try one from each group, which equated to 3 small pours (I think). I sampled Old Bardstown BIB, KY Vintage, and Noah’s Mill. The OBBIB was simple but good, youngish tasting but not in a harsh way, just a little grainy. We all got to keep our Willett tasting glass, which is a Glencairn with the Willett logo on it. The tour ends in the gift shop, where they have all kinds of goodies. I bought a bung with the Willett pot still logo on it, which I plan to add a magnet to and stick on my fridge. Overall a pretty good tour and one I recommend if you can make it to Bardstown.

 

They did have gift shop exclusive bourbon when I was there. It was a 14yo bourbon in the 120 proof range for $214. I was intrigued but not terribly tempted at that price. Had we been able to try it, and had it been amazing, I may have considered it.

 

 

 

Heaven Hill Whiskey Connoisseur Experience

The main reason why I booked this experience/tasting versus the regular “Mashbill Tour” was that we were doing two other tours this day and didn’t want to get burned out. This was mostly for my girlfriend’s benefit, who likes drinking whiskey but who I’d imagine would be bored after hearing how a still works for the third time in a day. It also seemed like a better value at $20 versus $10 for the Mashbill Tour, since the Connoisseur Experience included some nicer whiskeys that I otherwise wouldn’t get to try.

 

The feisty and very entertaining older lady who led our tasting gave some basic information about bourbon and rye whiskeys, what a bonded whiskey is, etc as we tasted but not a whole lot beyond that, which was fine with me. This was mostly about the tasting. We started with Henry McKenna BIB followed by Pikesville 6yo Rye, both of which I’ve had before and always enjoy. After that we had Old Fitzgerald 12yo, which was good but unexceptional to my taste. William Heavenhill was a little more my speed (115 proof and 14yo), and I thought this was the best of the day. The most interesting bourbon we tried, however, was the “Bad Bourbon” as it was labeled. This was a 25yo, 100 proof bourbon that was included in the tasting to show us what happens to bourbon when it is barreled for too long. Far too much oak for most people in the tasting room, but I liked this one a lot. It had a lot of oak but also some vibrancy, and I didn’t feel that it was ‘tired’ or stale. If this is what they consider to be bad bourbon, I’ll buy all the 25yo they have!

 

This was a good tasting and I recommend it if you’re looking for something besides a full distillery tour.

 

 

 

Jim Beam Distillery Tour

This was a fairly action-packed tour so I’ll just hit the highlights:

• Filling a new barrel and tasting the unaged distillate: They had an empty barrel out for demonstration purposes and one person on the tour got to try their hand at filling it. The filler looks like a gas pump and operates similarly. As he was filling, we all got to stick out finger underneath and get a taste of the unaged stuff. It was very corny, sweet, and as expected had a good amount of the Beam funk.
• Taste the mash! Like at Willett, we got to stick our grubby hands into the fermenter and get a taste. These were closed-top fermenters, unlike the open-top tubs at Willett.
• Dumping a barrel of KCSB: This is where they dump single barrels of KCSB to enter the single-barrel bottling line. The barrel we were dumping was about 12.5 years old. The tour guide chose one person to put a glass underneath the bunghole as it emptied to catch a large sample of the contents. He then passed the glass around so we could all try it straight from the barrel. This was my favorite part of the tour, a nice touch that made the tour feel more intimate. I’ve been wanting to do a private selection of KC, and this made me want it even more.
• Bottle your own Knob Creek Single Barrel! A little cheesy and not terribly hands-on, but still a cool offering and one of the features this tour had that made it great. Essentially you grab an empty KCSB bottle, sanitize it by rinsing it with KCSB, and set the bottle on the bottling line for it to be filled, corked, and dipped in wax. For those who had committed to buying their bottle, we got to push our thumb into the top so it has our thumbprint on our bottle. I purchased my bottle, as did a few other folks. Unfortunately any info about the barrel we bottled was not disclosed, except that this was NOT the barrel we had just dumped. I asked the bottling line worker if he knew any info about this specific barrel, and while he didn’t know for sure, he said all the barrels they’d been bottling that day had been from the same batch, so this one was also likely 12.5 years old. I planned to buy my bottle anyways, but a little extra info would have been cool for us nerds on the tour. I also asked the tour guide about the barrel we bottled and he seemed confused by the question, which is a bit frustrating. I have to imagine I’m not the first person to ask such questions.

 

 

 

Copper & Kings Distillery Tour

It’s always nice to have a tour guide who does other things around the distillery and so has a lot of knowledge about its inner workings. This was the case at C&K, where our tour was led by one of the assistant distillers. He seemed to know a lot about sourcing their fruit and wine, fermentation, distillation, and aging processes…or at least he was very good at reciting what they told him to say.

 

This tour started in front of their three stills, all made by Vendome: a 1000-gallon, a 750-gallon, and a 50-gallon that is used for one-off batches or experiments. We were able to see the underground warehouse (more like a basement) where they age their brandy. The guide said they like these cooler temperatures because they want less barrel influence than the bourbon distilleries do. They do however use “sonic aging” to get some liquid movement inside the barrels, which essentially means they play music really loud down there during non-business hours. I’m not sure if the music really makes a difference or not, but certainly an interesting technique.

 

From here we went to the tasting room, where they had their core range available as well as some pretty unusual offerings and even four single-barrels that we could fill a bottle of and purchase should we like them. Their core range is great, but I chose to try the stuff I hadn’t had an opportunity to try yet. I tried a single barrel of Butchertown that was being finished in a Willett Rye barrel, and it was good but didn’t stand out to me. The Blue Sky Mining was good, very floral but not something I needed to buy. The last bottle I tried was an absinthe that had been aged in a barrel that first held port, and then held gin. It was very interesting but a taste was enough. Though the opportunity to bottle my own C&K straight from a barrel was much appreciated, I didn’t find any of the offerings warranting purchase. By this time my suitcase was already rather full anyways.

 

Overall this was a good tour and I definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a good distillery tour in Louisville.

 

 

 

Old Town Liquors

I saw this liquor store recommended in a few threads from several years back and it was one of the few liquor stores I went to in Louisville. I had a great experience here and highly recommend it to anyone in Louisville looking for a place to get private selections or KY-only bottles (though they were sold out of HH6BIB at the time I went). They also have an excellent beer selection that we had a hard time resisting.

 

All of the employees we spoke to were very nice, and they let us sample damn near every private selection they had. We sampled three FR picks, three KCSB picks, and two MM46 CS selections. All were very good, though MM46 CS just isn't really to my taste in general. I was mainly interested in their KCSB picks and I thought all three were great – one was bright and bold, one was very oaky, and one was just perfect. I bought a single bottle of that KCSB and am now wishing I would have bought another.

 

I thanked them profusely for their help and hospitality, and made sure to tell them that their store was recommended highly on SB.com. They were of course very glad to hear that. Again, I highly recommend stopping by this store while you’re in Louisville.

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by Kpiz

[Paddy]

Thank you for the great report, very well done!  Glad you guys had a nice time in the motherland. 

[Kpiz]

Thank you for the great report, very well done!  Glad you guys had a nice time in the motherland. 

Thanks, Paddy! What a beautiful state you live in. I'm already itching to go back.

[flahute]

Super awesome report Kyle! Thanks for taking the time to share all the details.

 

The Four Roses tour, when you can actually go into the fermenter room and distillery is great and worth doing. If you get another chance, go back after construction is complete. Of course, it may be different then from what I've done in the past. I imagine it will include the new still. I'll need to back and do it again myself to see what's changed.

 

Very cool that you got to do that pick. I am SO glad that you got to meet Mandy. She is absolutely THE best. The only thing better than doing a pick with Mandy is also having Al Young or Brent Elliot there. What I do like though with your pick is that Mandy got to be in her element and share what she knows and how she does it. Also glad that you got to experience the difference in tiers. My group picked a tier 6 OESV last year that ended up being a short barrel with incredible oak influence (in all the right and desirable ways) that reminds me of Stagg. I know of a number of great tier 6 barrels and your comment about what happens to barrels up there is spot on.

 

To answer your question about what's in the back room - the first area is where they keep some barrels for tasting. (Selected barrels go back into the rick house until they get bottled.) They also keep case goods there. This is also where they load trucks with bottled and cased product. The room behind that is the bottling line. And next to that, to the left, is where the aged barrels get dumped. and the new barrels get filled.

[mosugoji64]

Excellent report, Kyle! Thanks for sharing! Sounds like your tours were a lot of fun. I'm always eager to get back to KY and your reviews have me itching for another trip! Definitely schedule a trip to BT when you have a chance as it's a great place. You said you're not a big fan of MM, but the distillery is beautiful and makes for a great visit. Good to hear you enjoyed yourselves!

[Stump1998]

Sounds like a awesome trip...

 

[Kpiz]

10 hours ago, flahute said:

Super awesome report Kyle! Thanks for taking the time to share all the details.

 

The Four Roses tour, when you can actually go into the fermenter room and distillery is great and worth doing. If you get another chance, go back after construction is complete. Of course, it may be different then from what I've done in the past. I imagine it will include the new still. I'll need to back and do it again myself to see what's changed.

 

Very cool that you got to do that pick. I am SO glad that you got to meet Mandy. She is absolutely THE best. The only thing better than doing a pick with Mandy is also having Al Young or Brent Elliot there. What I do like though with your pick is that Mandy got to be in her element and share what she knows and how she does it. Also glad that you got to experience the difference in tiers. My group picked a tier 6 OESV last year that ended up being a short barrel with incredible oak influence (in all the right and desirable ways) that reminds me of Stagg. I know of a number of great tier 6 barrels and your comment about what happens to barrels up there is spot on.

 

To answer your question about what's in the back room - the first area is where they keep some barrels for tasting. (Selected barrels go back into the rick house until they get bottled.) They also keep case goods there. This is also where they load trucks with bottled and cased product. The room behind that is the bottling line. And next to that, to the left, is where the aged barrels get dumped. and the new barrels get filled.

 

Thanks, Steve! I appreciate the additional info. Our barrel isn't scheduled to be bottled until September, so this means it will get almost a full additional summer of aging in the rickhouse (rather than in the back room like I had thought).

 

Mandy really was absolutely fantastic. It certainly would have been cool to have Al or Brent there, but I wouldn't change anything about our tasting, and you're right that it was a good opportunity to hear Mandy's thoughts and tasting process. Al was originally scheduled to join but he and Mandy were accidentally not copied on the final e-mails confirming our tasting reservation so they weren't 100% sure we were coming until an hour or so beforehand. By then Al had committed himself elsewhere.

 

Once FR finishes construction at the distillery I'll have to do the tour again. I also want to check out the bottling line and other stuff at the Coxs Creek location since I took too long tasting and didn't get a chance to any of it. Just more reasons to go back to KY.

[Kpiz]

6 hours ago, mosugoji64 said:

Excellent report, Kyle! Thanks for sharing! Sounds like your tours were a lot of fun. I'm always eager to get back to KY and your reviews have me itching for another trip! Definitely schedule a trip to BT when you have a chance as it's a great place. You said you're not a big fan of MM, but the distillery is beautiful and makes for a great visit. Good to hear you enjoyed yourselves!

 

Thank you, Brian! Hopefully I can plan the next trip a little farther in advance and get a BT Hard Hat tour booked. l'll add MM to my list for next time as well.

 

It really is a wonderful place and we had a great time. I'm shooting to at least make it back to KY for the annual SB get-together next April.

[CardsandBourbon]

Great report.  I was in your neck of the woods (Napa & Sonoma) last year for our 30th anniversary.  Had as much fun doing the wine tours as you did on the bourbon tours.

[tanstaafl2]

Excellent report! I hear on barrel 7 of your FR options. The store I help pick barrels with bought a couple of barrels during a previous visit (last year I think) and one was for the customers but the other was funky and interesting and not at all a typical profile. We really liked it but it was a of course a bit harder to sell!

 

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by tanstaafl2

[Kpiz]

3 hours ago, CardsandBourbon said:

Great report.  I was in your neck of the woods (Napa & Sonoma) last year for our 30th anniversary.  Had as much fun doing the wine tours as you did on the bourbon tours.

 

30 years is one heck of a milestone, congrats. Glad you enjoyed CA wine country - I should really spend more time up there. I think I take it for granted since it's so close to me.

[Kpiz]

1 hour ago, tanstaafl2 said:

Excellent report! I hear on barrel 7 of your FR options. The store I help pick barrels with bought a couple of barrels during a previous visit (last year I think) and one was for the customers but the other was funky and interesting and not at all a typical profile. We really liked it but it was a of course a bit harder to sell!

 

 

Thanks, Bruce! It certainly would have been cool to have the latitude to pick a wackier barrel in addition to one that is a little more traditional. Although, the one we chose is probably a good compromise - not what I'd call the classic FR profile while also being something that will appeal to many people (hopefully). This store is pretty small and the owner loves doing barrel picks, but they take a while to sell.

 

I actually e-mailed Mandy to find out where the other barrels in our tasting went, and she of course replied promptly with the info, so I may try to track down bottles of one or two of the barrels we didn't select.

 

It seems like FR bumps up the number of barrels in the tasting to 10 if you're choosing more than one barrel, is that correct? Tasting through ten would be quite a challenge to the ol' palate, even if I was able to choose two rather than one.

[tanstaafl2]

I am never quite sure what the rules are but we did have ten when we did our two picks as I recall. I just show up and drink!

[Vosgar]

19 hours ago, flahute said:

 I am SO glad that you got to meet Mandy. She is absolutely THE best. 

 

8 hours ago, Kpiz said:

Mandy really was absolutely fantastic. 

 

I agree with you guys 100%, she's a sweetheart and really knows her stuff. 3 years ago I was with a group picking a couple of barrels and we were fortunate to have Jim Rutledge running the show. While talking with him towards the end of our picks, he too commented about how impressed he was with Mandy, was sincerely happy to have her helping him and thought she brought a lot to the table for the selection experience. Absolutely no surprise that she did a great job for you!

Edited July 15, 2017 by Vosgar

[PaulO]

Thanks for sharing Kyle.  I'll make it down there one day.  The inside Four Roses story was very interesting.

[HoustonNit]

I'm late to the party but what a great trip. Thank you so much for sharing it.

Need to be part of a bottle selection at a distillery, in general need to get out there for a trip. I don't if I'm a big Willett fan but love there facilities, particularly there rickhouses.

[flahute]

36 minutes ago, HoustonNit said:

I'm late to the party but what a great trip. Thank you so much for sharing it.

Need to be part of a bottle selection at a distillery, in general need to get out there for a trip. I don't if I'm a big Willett fan but love there facilities, particularly there rickhouses.

Remember, that going to KY is the only excuse you need to go to KY. You won't regret it.

[georgemoe]

Great report thank you. I'm planning my first trip for the week after KBF in 2018 and this is very helpful.