As I write this, it is the day after we returned home from our second trip to Kentucky in the past six months. The first time, I thought my wife was just humoring me by going along with my plan for a Kentucky Bourbon Trail vacation (and she probably was), but by the end of that trip, she had become fully “bourbon curious” and wanted to know when we could go back.
I’m sitting down to write this while I sip and puff on purchases made at one of the distilleries we visited this week. Bardstown Bourbon Company is a newer producer of Kentucky’s finest export. At their state of the art facility I picked up a bottle of their Small Batch Stave Finish, a distillery exclusive, and a couple examples of the Montecristo Distiller’s Select, a cigar made to go with their bourbons (and sold in several other places besides their distillery). I figured I would do a little review of both while I introduce the next big series I’ll be embarking on.
The Montecristo is a Nicaraguan puro made by Plasencia Cigars. It has a great box-pressed look and earthy, slightly sweet aromas that are fairly par for the course with Nicaraguan leaf. These cigars are $18 each and while the Montecristo brand has historically been slightly higher in price that I feel like it really warrants, this cigar does at least look like an $18 stick. Clipping the head, I took a cold draw. I found it to be very open and was heavy with floral and herbal notes, with just a little pepper spice lingering on the lips afterwards.
The Bardstown Small Batch Stave Finish is a blend of 4 bourbons from 4 different sources. The majority is from Georgia (48%), while 26% is made by Bardstown themselves. The other 26% is split between two other Kentucky distillers. The different juices are between 4 and 12 years in age. The blending is a throwback to what the company did at the outset, before they had any of their own whiskey aged to sell. I couldn’t find any information about what specific oak staves they used in finishing this whiskey. It is bottled at 94 proof (47% ABV).
I swirled the bourbon around in my glass and got notes of oak, clove, and vanilla on the nose. It’s low proof makes it very approachable. I took a sip and got orange and butterscotch up front. There was just a touch of spicy heat in the middle of the palate…more of a baking spice warming you up than anything else. The finish was relatively long with faint notes of cinnamon, apple, and brown sugar. All those descriptions might make it sound overly sweet, but it really wasn’t…more of a mid-sweet experience, but there wasn’t much going on besides sweeter notes.
Once fired up, I found the cigar to be medium-plus in body with more cedar and earth on the palate than the prelight draw had indicated, but also with a decent amount of that floral nose coming through on the palate. The retrohale was really spicy. On an amusing note, that made me think to give the warning…while retrohaling cigars is seen as a way to enhance your experience in tasting the cigar, the same is not true of bourbon. This bourbon, by the way, was actually a good pairing with the cigar, adding enough sweetness to provide a very nice balance.
Back to our trips…between the 7 days we spent in Kentucky this year, we visited a total of 13 bourbon distilleries and 1 cooperage, taking in a total of 15 “experiences” along the way (a mixture of tours and tastings). As we started talking about what we liked and didn’t like about each stop, it occurred to me that this might be really good advice for anyone else wanting to make similar trips…especially since you might be coming from a lot further away.
To that end, I will be writing up our thoughts on all the places we visited along the bourbon trail this year and giving them some type of score or grade regarding various aspects of the visit…appearance and presentation, the experience itself, the gift shop, and the availability of distillery exclusive bottles. I already know who scored high and low in different categories and there are some definite dark horses in the mix…and a couple big names that seemed to go out of their way to disappoint. I’ll also post plenty of pictures from the visits. I hope you’ll join us! Oh, and I did get a lot of new products on the second trip, so we are all set up for Bourbon Friday reviews for a while!!!
