I am a big fan of Kelly Ramsey, the founder of Art Eatables, a maker of Bourbon truffles. I have known Kelly since the year she founded Art Eatables and she and her company have grown over the years. She makes her truffles for many of the distilleries and if you have visited a distillery over the years, you have probably seen and tasted her truffles. Kelly has a great talent for pairing whiskey with chocolate. She has opened a tasting room at her store in downtown Louisville, on Main Street, just down the road from Michter’s Fort Nelson Distillery. She has introduced a new feature to the tasting room offering a pairing of whiskey with chocolate. I say whiskey, not just Bourbon, because she has many rye whiskeys as well as Bourbon on the bar of the tasting room. She recently invited me down to taste some whiskey and pair it with chocolate.
The basic tasting is four whiskeys at $8.00 for .25 ounce pours. To pair the whiskeys with chocolate is an additional $1.50 and you can pair the whiskeys with a milk chocolate, a white chocolate or a dark chocolate. The chocolates are inch squares of chocolate so you can easily get four tastings from each square. But it gets better. For $2.50, you can get the next level where you get squares of caramel crunch milk chocolate, a vanilla bourbon & fig caramelized cocoa nibs in white chocolate and a smoked cinnamon & espresso dark chocolate to pair with your whiskeys. But it does not end there. For $4.25 more you can pair your whiskeys with her exceptional truffles.
These are all very reasonable in price and make for a fun pairing. Kelly has a trained Bourbon Steward behind the bar who will help you make the choices of whiskeys. The choices include some of the old favorites such as Old Forester and Knob Creek, but also many artisan distillery products such as Kentucky Peerless and Linkumpinch whiskeys. You are sure to find four whiskeys that will satisfy your thirst for whiskey and chocolate.
Kelly and I sat down and tasted several Bourbons and paired them with chocolate. It was a lengthy tasting and I will follow up with the pairing results at a later time. Look for the blog coming here soon.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller