Whisky Chicks and Bourbon Brotherhood announce rare bourbon raffles to benefit Coalition for the Homeless

Due to travel and airline snafus (understatement of the year on that one), I did not get the opportunity to do any tastings for tonight’s post. But this morning, I received a very nice email for a charity raffle to benefit the unhoused in Louisville, KY. And I thought I’d share that with you instead of leaving you without content. As you know, I’m a softy for charities. The entire press release, along with links, have been published below.

In honor of the eleventh annual Bourbon Mixer, the Whisky Chicks and Bourbon Brotherhood are thrilled to announce two rare bourbon raffles benefiting the Coalition for the Homeless: a full six-bottle Pappy Van Winkle flight, and an eleven bottle, rare Blanton's collection.

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One lucky winner will be the owner of all six bottles of the coveted Pappy Van Winkle Collection:

🥃 Old Rip Van Winkle 10-Year Bourbon
🥃 Van Winkle Special Reserve 12 Year Lot B Bourbon
🥃 Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye Whiskey – 13 Year
🥃 Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve – 15 Year
🥃 Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve – 20 year
🥃 Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve – 23 year

Pappy Van Winkle raffle tickets cost $100 and are expected to sell out quickly, as they are limited to only 1,000 tickets (a much lower number than other Pappy raffles!).

One lucky winner will also own the eleven bottle Blanton's collection: 

🥃 8 bottles of Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon, each with a different topper to spell out "BLANTONS"
🥃 Blanton's Straight from the Barrel (Cask Strength)
🥃 Blanton's Gold
🥃 Blanton's Green Label - Special Reserve

Blanton's raffle tickets cost $50 each and are limited to just 1,000, too.

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The raffle winners will be drawn on Saturday, August 17, at 9pm, at the tenth annual Bourbon Mixer, held at the Olmsted from 6:30-10:30pm, of which the Bourbon Flight is a sponsor. Winners need not be present. For more details about the event—including an exciting silent auction—and to get tickets to the Mardi Gras themed event, see www.bourbonmixer.com.

Four Roses x Ooni Bourbon Barrel Aged Honey

I’d like the thank Four Roses, Ooni, and their PR team for sending me this sample with no strings attached.

I am a pizza fanatic. I have it at least once a week and always on Saturday. I choose Saturday because my pizza is not a frozen disk out of the freezer but a fully-from-scratch affair that needs time. To give you a taste of how much I like pizza, we grow about 100 tomato plants of various varieties per summer, with 95% of the harvest going into pizza sauce (the rest goes into my wife’s Bourbon and Beer Chili). I spent twenty years crafting a recipe to my liking, at one point tossing the entire last decade of development when I realized I wasn’t satisfied, then starting from scratch before tweaking it with every batch until I locked in something that I was completely satisfied with. That sauce recipe is a richly spiced Midwestern-style sauce, not a tomato-forward New York/East Coast style. And it was developed to work best with a sourdough crust, whole milk mozzarella, and pepperoni, and to bake well in a home oven.

This is not the style of crust that the people who developed tonight’s pizza topping had in mind. This honey is a partnership between Four Roses and Ooni Pizza Ovens. I thought about getting an Ooni at one point before realizing that my preferred crust isn’t really cut out for that high of heat. People who have them seem to like them, though. And I’m definitely in the “live and let live” camp when it comes to pizza styles.

Here is what the companies have to say about their newest collaboration:

“The bourbon barrel aged honey was crafted in partnership with Bohman Bee Company, specialists in creating local raw honey. Once sourced, the honey was then aged in ex-Four Roses barrels that once aged its Small Batch bourbon. The barrels were freshly dumped and never rinsed to fully impart the richest essence of bourbon. The end result is a honey with tasting notes of ripened red berries and dried spices, perfect for drizzling on freshly made pizza and a sweetener in summer cocktails.”

IMAGE: Delicious honey that makes me smile. It gets a smile rating.

So if you’ve been around a while, you know I love honey. Almost as much as I love pizza and bourbon. And even though that is the case, I seldom remember that a honey drizzle is the perfect topping for a spicy pepperoni pizza. I am going to need to remember it in the future because this is just the best addition to my home-cooked Saturday pizza. The sweetness of the honey really complements the spicy, salty flavor of the pizza. Because this honey was aged in Four Roses barrels, which can be fruitier than other brands, it brings out the fruity notes of the tomato. It’s really quite tasty.

Of course, if you are not a pizza fan (gasp!) that doesn’t mean that you can’t try this honey. On its own, it has a wonderfully fruity and slightly boozy note from the barrel aging. Not as much as other barrel-aged honey that we’ve covered, but it’s very mellow, much like Four Roses. It also works great as the sweetener in cocktails made with Four Roses. All in all, if you are a Four Roses fan, like I am, give this one a try. It’s available on the Ooni website for $16 for a 10-ounce bottle. I like this one a lot.


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McMann & Tate Cocktail Bitters

I’d like to thank McMann & Tate Cocktail Co. for providing this review sample with no strings attached.

IMAGE: Three bottles of McMann & Tate Cocktail Co. bitters: Bing Cherry, Wildly Aromatic, and Moroccan Orange, with dropper tops and colorful geometric labels, set against a green outdoor background.

A few weeks ago, a very nice person wrote to me offering a sample of their company’s cocktail bitters. As I am always in the mood to add to my bitters collection (seriously, I think I need to pare it down—three shelves full is a bit overkill), I happily accepted, as I’d never heard of the brand.

When the bitters arrived, well, let’s just say that I was smitten. I love, love, love the late 1950s-1960s “space age” style design language. Give me a kidney-shaped design element, and I’m going to perk right up. It’s the same design language that inspired my “retro” styled bourbon t-shirt and die-cut sticker (for sale now at BourbonGuyGifts.com). Though honestly, I didn’t lean into it as much as the designers of the McMann & Tate Cocktail Company brand did. So, without even tasting the bitters, I was on board with this. I just hoped that they tasted as good as they looked.

But before we get into that, who is McMann & Tate? And no, I don’t mean the fictional ad agency that employed the husband in the old Bewitched TV show (though the company might want to work on the ol’ SEO since the fictional agency was what filled the first page of Google). They are a cocktail ingredient company out of New Jersey. They sell nine types of bitters, four types of freeze-dried citrus wheel garnishes, and three types of flavored rim salts. And yes, they all look amazing.

I received three bottles from them: the Wildly Aromatic, the Moroccan Orange, and the Bing Cherry. These are the exact three flavors that we use most often in our house, having developed our own recipes for them over the years. I was most excited to try the aromatic. In my experience, one aromatic bitters can differ from another much more than one orange bitters from another orange bitters. Same with cherry.

When I test bitters, I tend to do it in the most reproducible way possible. Namely, I make my favorite non-alcoholic, non-mind-altering drink (bitters and soda water) and then an Old Fashioned. Both are very simple drinks, and the differences from drink to drink are solely from the bitters. For the Old Fashioned, I used Maker’s Mark 101 proof as it is a pretty plain palette to paint the bitters across, and it tastes delicious. The impressions below encapsulate both testing methods.

McMann & Tate Cocktail Co. Bitters

Purchase info: These were sent to me at no charge for review purposes. Each bottle is $14.99 for a two-ounce bottle on the brand website.

Details: 40% ABV.

Bing Cherry Bitters

In soda water: Cherry and spice notes finishing with a nice bitterness.
In an Old Fashioned: Pairs well with Maker's 101. Brings out the inherent cherry notes in Maker's with a strong cherry finish.

Wildly Aromatic Bitters

In soda water: Baking spice on the nose. Mouth has a lot of Coca-Cola, vanilla, and backing spice notes.
In an Old Fashioned: Coca-Cola on the nose. Baking spice notes led by clove and anise on the mouth. Finish is Coca-Cola again.

Moroccan Orange Bitters

In soda water: Citrus zest on the nose. Bitter orange notes with very little spice.
In an Old Fashioned: Orange on the nose. Hints of orange on the mouth. This really shines on the finish with a strong orange flavor.

Thoughts:

The Cherry is great on its own. I’m a big fan. It didn’t show much on the nose, but the mouth and finish are very flavorful. For the Orange, I'd probably add a touch of aromatic if I was using it in an Old Fashioned. There isn’t quite the level of spice that I like in my Old Fashioned, but that is something I find in most brands of orange bitters. The Aromatic is delicious on its own. I was always on the Coke side of the Coke and Pepsi Cola Wars, and this reminds me of that tasty beverage. Made a damn fine old-fashioned. What I like about having multiple bitters, though, is using a couple of different ones together. The orange and cherry work nicely together. We’ve already discussed orange and aromatic. And cherry cola is always tasty. I’d recommend giving them a shot. I know I’ll be doing a little shopping after I’m done here.


If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.

Penelope Rosé Cask Finish

I’d like to thank ByrnePR and Penelope Bourbon for providing this review sample with no strings attached.

Hello, my friends. I hope you all made it through another explosive holiday with all your fingers intact and a lot of barbeque in your belly (whether your preferred definition of that word is smoking or grilling). As I was watching a bunch of very large and frightened dogs, I had neither the ability to enjoy the explosions or some barbeque. Alas, such is the life of a dogsitter on a holiday weekend.

But one thing I did enjoy was a bit of bourbon. After all, it’d be a bit silly to celebrate the birthday of the United States without indulging at least a taste of its Native Spirit. I wasn’t, however, enjoying tonight’s whiskey, preferring something a bit more traditional while my wife was away. But once she got home, we got down to tasting the samples that came in while she was gone.

So, let’s talk about this bourbon from MGP’s Penelope brand. As always, this is a blend of different mashbills, some using rye as a flavoring grain and others using wheat. This is how they get to what they call their Four Grain bourbon. The composite mashbill works out to 74% corn, 15% wheat, 7% rye, and 3% malted barley. The component bourbons were aged between four and five years in barrels with a number 4 char level (number 2 on the barrel heads). According to the brand website, the blend was then finished for about four months in “French Grenache Rosé Wine Casks from the Southern Rhône region of France” before being bottled at a non-chill-filtered 94° proof.

Let’s see how it tastes.

Penelope Rosé Cask Finish

Purchase Info: This sample was provided for review purposes at no cost. The suggested retail price is $49.99

Price per Drink (50 mL): $3.33

Details: 47% ABV. A blend of three bourbon mash bills. Composite Mashbill: 76% corn, 14% wheat, 7% rye, and 3% malted barley. 4- to 5-year-old bourbon finished in Rosé casks for about four months.

Nose: Vanilla sugar, dried grains, and cherry.

Mouth: Fruity and biscuity with supporting notes of caramel, vanilla, and baking spice.

Finish: Medium length and warmth with notes of caramel cherries, buttermilk biscuits, and baking spice.

Thoughts: It took me a bit to warm to this one. I was fairly neutral at first as I processed the combo of red fruit and biscuits. But as I did the tasting, I ended up liking it more. My wife give it an unwavering like, I'm on the fence between like and neutral. So I'm giving it a smile. I like it, just not as much as my wife.


If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.