Destination: Bardstown

This Wednesday I'll be boarding a flight to Louisville and then driving to Bardstown.  The schedule is set for this years convergence on Bourbon Mecca. 

Besides tasting through a god aweful amount of bourbon at the distilleries, we each also bring a bottle to share in the evenings.  Last years theme was "only damn good bourbon"  and boy did we have some fine bourbons show up.  Old, new, you name it, we had it.  I brought along a Rock Hills Farms that Julio's Liquor did back a number of years ago; it was a big cherry bomb and it got hit pretty hard over the course of 4 days. 

This years theme is a play on last years; "only damn fine malt".  That's right, all of us bourbon dorks are sliding to the dark side.  The list is pretty impressive and I'm excited to hit a number of those bottles as most of the selections are ones I have not tried.  Originally I was going to bring along a Springbank 12 year finished in a Claret cask (and cask strength to boot) but there were already two other Springers on the list so I changed my offering to a 2006 Arran Malt Cask finished in a Gonzalez Byass Cream Sherry cask.  There's no age statement but it's a terrific Scotch with a profile of apples and tropical fruits.  It drinks fantastic at cask strength. 

It will be a busy schedule with the first distillery being Four Roses first thing Thursday morning.  Nothing like drinking bourbon at 9:00 a.m.  That afternoon we hit Buffalo Trace and then BT again most of Friday as we're tasting through a number of various selections.  Saturday we'll be visiting Drew Kulsveen at Kentucky Bourbon Distillers (KBD).  Saturday afternoon we'll converge on a friends house for an afternoon and evening of BBQ, beer, bourbon, malt and cigars. 

I hope to come back home on Sunday with a sense of what we should expect in delivery come this summer.  The two that intrigue me this year is the OWA and Jefferson Rye.  The OWA will be younger than previous years so it will be interesting to see if we find something top shelf.  I've already tasted through the Jefferson Rye samples and there's some winners in the bunch so I confident we'll be picking at least one barrel of the Rye.

I'll try and post short updates as we progress.  Cheers.