The other day, Rosemary and I were asked to join Kelly and Forrest Ramsey of Art Eatables to create a bottle of whiskey at the Big Bat. Big Bat is a unique place to create a bottle of whiskey. They are located at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory in downtown Louisville. They get their name from the big baseball bat outside of the museum. What happens is you go into the Big Bat and you are assigned a person, Sydney was our person, and sit down at a table with six samples of whiskey. Three of the samples are Bourbon and three are Bourbon finished with different woods. You create your own blend from these six samples.
The first three samples were Bourbons aged in American oak, European oak and 200 year old oak. The next three samples were finished with cherry wood, maple wood and smoked oak. They give you a “spoon” with 1 ml and .5 ml sizes and you take whiskey from the samples and create your own blend. You can make as many combinations as you want and we created five samples each. We took a favorite sample from each person and did a taste comparison to pick our favorite. My favorite was 3 ml 200 year old oak, 1 ml European oak and 3 ml American oak. The overall favorite was Kelly’s sample of 4 ml 200 year old oak, .5ml European oak and 1 ml American oak. They then take this recipe and fill bottles of whiskey with this recipe. They print labels and fill the bottles while you wait. It takes about 15 minutes to fill the bottle. Kelly was kind enough to purchase a bottle of everyone’s favorite recipe for us.
We tried many different combinations. We decided the pure Bourbon was the best combination. The cherry wood was nice and added a nice fruit note to the Bourbon. The maple wood was also very good and added a caramel, maple note to the Bourbon. The smoked wood was interesting and had a Scotch whisky smokiness to the whiskey, but we all agreed that would not make a good truffle.
Frederick Hillerich and his son, Bud are famous for making Louisville Slugger baseball bats, before they were making bats, they made furniture and barrels for the Bourbon industry. A few years ago, I met with the people who were creating this idea of playing upon Hillerich’s history of making barrels and creating a unique whiskey experience to complement the bat factory. It is an excellent way to learn more about the talent of blending whiskey.
Kelly purchased six bottles of the choice Bourbon for her store. She is going to use some of the bottles to make truffles at Art Eatables. Other bottles will be available to taste at her store at her tasting bar. I would recommend every Bourbon enthusiast give it a try and create their own personalized whiskey. The cost is $35.00 for a ticket or you can pair the ticket with a tour of the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory for $50.00. The bottles cost $59.95 each.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller