Last Sunday night was the third annual bourbon tasting for the Black Acre Foundation, which is a nature preserve and historic house in Jefferson County off Tucker Station Road. It was decided to expand the format this year because of the great interest in this event, so it was held at the Bourbon's Bistro and we had 61 people who purchased tickets at $100.00 each. The event started with the bourbon tasting.
We tasted 6 whiskeys. Some were donated by the distiller, some came from my collection and one came from Susan Riegler's mother. We started with this year's Old Forester Birthday Bourbon donated by Brown-Forman. We moved to a Beam's Choice 100 month old from a 100th Anniversary Kentucky Derby Decanter. Next was some Old Taylor 6 yo, 80 proof mad by National Distillers. The next product was donated by Buffalo Trace and was the Sazerac Rye. Charles Miller donated two bottles of his single barrel of Weller 12 yo which is actually 14 years old and made on the last full day of production at Stitzel-Weller. The final bottle was donated by Susan's mother and was a bottle of Very Very Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond 1967-1979 - a very fine bourbon. A vote as to what everyone prefered at the end of the tasting showed that the Very Very Old Fitzgerald nosed out the Weller 12yo by one vote 15-14, and all of the other products received at least 4 votes. The tasting was a big success.
The dinner followed the tasting and started with shrimp and grit, followed by a salad and ended with some roast beef and vegtables. Wine was provided by Smith Groves winery and a dessert of a bourbon banana cake was provided by Emily Williams of the Butterfly Garden Restaurant.
Julian Van Winkle and his wife came by for a while at the end of the dinner and a good time was had by all. Next year I am going to have to work hard to find either 1.75/1/2 gallon old bottles or multiple bottles of the same product, because the event keeps getting larger.
The final thing I should mention are the door prizes I gave away to people who answered trivia questions. Brown-Forman donated a bottle of Birthday Bourbon and I gave the bottle to the person who told me the state that made the repeal of prohibition pass (Utah). Fricky does not realize it, but he donated a bottle of Four Roses Small Batch - the bottle was brought to Pen's Party during the festival and never opened and left behind, so I picked it up and used it for a door prize (Thanks Fricky!) and the question was who originated the brand Four Roses, which nobody answered so Gwen from Blackacre asked who was the first person to distill at Blackacre (Moses Tyler). The final prize was a pair of Old Rip Glencairn glasses. I get these glasses from Julian all of the time and I use them for these events (Thanks Julian!) and the question was when did Pappy Van Winkle die (1963).