Yesterday, I was given one of the coolest opportunities I've ever experienced. A local liquor store I frequent invited me to go to Maker's Mark and pick out a private barrel of Maker's 46 Cask Strength (right now only available at the distillery) for their store. I expected to sample from 5 or 6 barrels and give my opinion about the one I liked best. My Expectation was WAY off.
Maker's has a Private Selection program where a store or restaurant can have their own barrel. Maker's 46 is basically regular makers that has 10 toasted french oak staves put in the barrel for 9 weeks, then bottled and sold. For this program, Maker's has actually come up whiskey made with 5 different staves to choose from. We got to sample each of those. Then we were broke into groups and had to come up with a combination of the 5 different staves, to be the 10 staves that would be put in a barrel of Maker's cask strength, to come up with our own unique barrel of Maker's 46 Cask Strength. Tasters from Makers helped us in the mixing and it was quite scientific.
After trying about 6 combos, we had selected our group's expression. The other small group came up with their expression as well. The folks from Makers kicked us out of the room so they could prepare our two expressions for a final blind taste test. The brought us back in and as one big group we tasted and chose the expression we liked the most for the store's barrel. My group's expression was the winner. From there they took us to the cooperage to put our combination of staves in the barrel. Then let us go to a room and initial labels that will be put on our bottles. We then went to fill our barrel. It will now rest for 9 weeks, and will hit the shelves soon thereafter.
Maker's Mark isn't my favorite bourbon, but the folks down there are first class all the way. We got a tour and they had wooden name tags with our names etched in them waiting for us when we arrived. On the way home a few of us were talking and I said, ya know, we didn't pick a bourbon today, we just created a whiskey that will be completely unique. There will never be another barrel the same as this one! That was pretty awesome!
