The Joy And Sadness Of A Honey Barrel

One of the many, many highlights of my visit to Kentucky for this year’s Bourbon Classic wasn’t actually part of the festival proper — we media types got to do some fun additional stuff. Among other things, we paid a visit to Sazerac’s Barton 1792 distillery in Bardstown. One look at the place, built in 1879 (making it the oldest operational distillery in Kentucky), and you know it’s a serious whiskey-making operation. Of course, that’s borne out by the whiskeys. Master distiller Danny Kahn makes some amazing hooch, including 1792’s Sweet Wheat and Full Proof, the latter of which was awarded World Whisky Of The Year by Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible.

We didn’t really get a tour of the place, contrary to almost all the other distilleries I’ve visited as a journalist, because Kahn figured we’d seen enough stills and heard enough about the process from the other places we’d visited. I love to see (and especially smell) a distillery in action, but cutting to the chase and sitting down for a tasting with Danny Kahn wasn’t exactly something to complain about.

We tasted a half dozen bourbons in all — three from the 1792 line and three from barrels still aging in their rickhouses, from which he’d pulled samples. “They’re essentially random barrel picks,” he said. “We simply drilled a hole in the barrel, pulled out a sample, and plugged up the hole. They were not pulled out of the rick, we sampled from the rick. They were as they are resting now.”

We tasted the three barrel picks in ascending order of age: a 10-year-old (roughly) taken from the barrel at 131 proof; a 12-ish year old at 138 proof; and a 14-year-old “Distiller’s Choice” at an eye-popping 148.3 proof. The 10 and 12 were terrific, and of course it was exciting to taste them totally unadulterated, with no filtering or water added.

But the Distiller’s Choice was something special. Even at close to 75% alcohol it was very drinkable neat. More than that, it was astoundingly flavorful — Danny said, “When I talk about aged stone fruits, that’s what I’m talking about.” A couple of drops of water brought out even more cherry and plum notes to go with the oaky tannins. A few more drops and suddenly the gingerbread and baking spices came up in the mix. The media folks with whom I was drinking it — and who are used to drinking top-notch whiskey on a regular basis — were muttering “Amazing…” and exclaiming, “This is like… whoa.”

This was what distiller folk call a “honey barrel.” A barrel that, for whatever reason, takes on a little more magic than those aging beside it. Danny Kahn said it was dumb luck: “I did not pick this, saying I know this barrel, I like it. I just looked at our inventory and said, let’s get a little diversity and try a couple of different barrels. “Every once in a while,” he said, “we’ll get the true honey barrel — the ones that stand out as uniquely special. And there’s no rhyme or reason. It’s a frustrating thing; it would be nice to identify it.”

And speaking of the barrel, I couldn’t identify it for you even with a gun to my head. The specs were on the sample bottle, but Danny asked that I not photograph it. What’s going to become of it? “I’d like to take it home for myself,” he said when I ran into him the next night. Barring that, it’ll doubtlessly be sold as part of 1792’s private barrel program. And we’ll likely never get to taste it again. Which is a little heartbreaking.

Before we left, I and a couple of my cohorts grabbed any untouched glasses of the Distiller’s Choice and poured them into whatever vessels we could find — in my case, an empty water bottle. I brought home maybe an ounce of the precious elixir… and gave it to my wife, who was almost as impressed with it as I was. Much as I would have liked another taste of the honey barrel, whiskey, as well as most good things in life, is best when it’s shared with the ones you love.