August 29th, 2008

Tom Moore Distillery joins Kentucky Bourbon Trail

John Hansell

There is now one more distillery you can visit in Kentucky. Excerpts of the press release I received earlier this week follows.

KENTUCKY BOURBON TRAIL ROLLS OUT NEWEST MEMBER

FRANKFORT, Ky. – The historic Tom Moore Distillery, home of 1792 Ridgemont Reserve, has joined the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and will begin offering tours on Oct. 1, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association announced.

The Bardstown landmark is owned and operated by Constellation Spirits, the former Barton Brands, Ltd., which was founded by Tom Moore in 1879. Its super premium 1792 brand bourbon is named for the year when Kentucky gained statehood.

“We’re excited and proud that visitors will be able to get a behind-the-scenes look at what our employees do best – make excellent Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey,” said Johnnie Colwell, Vice President and Plant Manager of Constellation Spirits.

Plans also are underway for a visitor’s center to open in 2010.

Category: Bourbon,Distillery Tours,Travel No Comments

April 14th, 2008

Speyside bound

John Hansell

This Saturday, Amy and I are heading to Speyside to tour distilleries for four days. I’m calling it the “Beyond Glenlivet and Glenfiddich” tour.

We’re going to average about two a day. Stops will include BenRiach, Benromach, Glenrothes, Macallan, Cragganmore, Ardmore and Glenfarclas.

So many Speyside distilleries, so little time! Obviously, a return visit will be necessary at a later date.

Category: Distillery Tours,Scotch whisky,Travel 10 Comments

October 24th, 2007

Highlights of WhiskyFest San Francisco

John Hansell

Well, last night was Malt Advocate magazine’s inaugural WhiskyFest San Francisco. As it is with all WhiskyFests, it was a lot of fun, with many great whiskies to taste.

Some of the highlights that stood out for me included some very rare and old whiskies from the independent bottlers. I also was intrigued by some experimental whiskeys from Stranahan’s (they called ‘em “snowflakes”, because no two Colorado snowflakes are alike). For their seminar, Heaven Hill brought out some of their bourbons that they only sell to the export market, which was pretty cool. And John Hall from Forty Creek hosted a seminar that included tasting the individual components of his Barrel Select.

There were also plenty of new whiskies to taste. Here’s just a small sampling that was being poured:

Aberlour 12yr. “Double Matured”
Benromach Organic
Bowmore 18 yr.
Several new Bruichladdichs
The New Buffalo Trace 2007 Antique Collection
Compass Box Flaming Heart
New release of Evan Williams Single Barrel
New Glenmorangie expressions
Hazelburn
Lagavulin and Oban Distillers Edition
New 2007 release of Old Forester Birthday bourbon

And not to be outdone by all the whisky companies, Anchor Brewing Company was pouring this year’s “Our Special Ale” which will not be released to the public until November. It came off the bottling line the day before! How cool is that?

On top of all this, we had San Francisco’s best mixologists making signature whiskey cocktails. They rocked!

Many whisky legends were there, like Jimmy Russell of Wild Turkey, Jimmy Bedford of Jack Daniels, Parker Beam from Heaven Hill, Lincoln Henderson (Woodford Reserve and now Suntory), Richard Paterson of The Dalmore, and Willie Tait from Jura.

WhiskyFest New York is in six days. I have six days to recover and do it all over again. Cool…

Category: Events,New Releases,Travel,WhiskyFest No Comments

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