Roll out the single-barrel
Bay Area watering holes snap up bottlings of exclusive whiskeys
Camper English, Special to The Chronicle
Friday, September 7, 2007
The Cigar Bar & Grill in Jackson Square in San Francisco serves a Manhattan you can’t get anywhere else, as it’s made with the restaurant’s exclusive 10-year-old bourbon. Harris’ Restaurant and Nopa have exclusive bourbon, too, as does T-Rex Barbecue in Berkeley. None of these watering holes have stills in their backyards to produce their own spirits, but they each serve a different barrel of whiskey.
Most whiskeys are blends of dozens of different barrels, sometimes fewer if they’re “small batch” whiskeys. The distillery’s master blender mixes barrels together to achieve the desired flavor profile consistent with previous batches.
In the past few years, the master blender has had slightly less work to do, as single-barrel bottlings have become popular. In these bottlings, a barrel of exceptionally high quality (or an exceptionally old one) is put into bottles and labeled on its own. The resultant bottles are usually sold to multiple liquor stores, bars and restaurants, but increasingly, distilleries have begun promoting single-barrel bottlings to individual customers.
Read the rest of my story in today’s Chronicle here.
Labels: bourbon, camper_clips, scotch, whisky
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