Background

Last week, our whiskey group here in DC, J St Whiskey, had a wonderful opportunity to pick a barrel in person at Old Forester. Back in July, I wrote about our previous experience picking at Peerless, so we were excited to see how the process would overlap and/or differ at Old Forester. Before we get into the pick process, let’s run through a quick tour of Old Forester and its history!

Old Forester Tour

We have to start with Barb, the sublime single barrel manager at Old Forester. She had the misfortune of being stuck with us for two hours, and was a veritable fount of knowledge as we went through the facilities. A couple of Old Forester fun facts gleaned from our tour:

• Old Forester is “back where they started” on whiskey row. Pre-prohibition they had the same building, but a stipulation of medicinal whiskey licenses during prohibition was that they could not operate out of an “urban” building, forcing them to the “rural” area a bit down the road.

• Old Forester is considered to be the first bottled whiskey commercially sold. There has not been a year since 1870 that Old Forester has not been available for sale (recreationally or medicinally).

• Brown-Forman’s in-house cooperage is their largest profit center, thanks to the high demand for bourbon barrels and used bourbon barrels.

Anyways, we start in the basement, where the fermentation tanks sit. The mash we see in the tanks is set to be distilled the day after we depart through BIG PENNY, the giant still that functions as a centerpiece to OF’s Louisville facility. I should now note, I’m sure not there’s a better use of space or building design that I’ve seen in a distillery tour to date. Glass is everywhere, allowing for photo opportunities of Big Penny or various OF signage at absolutely every stop. Someone seemingly went step by step through the tour and thought “how can we make this as photogenic as humanly possible?”

We take the Wonka-esque glass elevator up past Big Penny to the top floor, where we walk past the lab and into the cooperage. Brown-Forman is the only major distillery that owns a cooperage, and within it there’s a blinking green button sitting in front of a barrel on a conveyor belt, we desperately want to press it. PLEASE LET US PRESS IT.

We press it. the barrel gets charred for 30 secs. It will then be pressure tested before it’s filled with Old Forester distillate at 125 (ok, 124.99) proof. Another fun anecdote, barrels aging at the downtown facility are purely experimental. This is because the room is kept at one consistent temperature, which is not great for aging! We traverse the barrel room, passing an absolutely delicious, flambeed banana smelling barrel getting dumped, and settle into an ornately adorned platform where we go to pick our barrel.

Pick Process

The level of consideration that goes into the pick process does not stop at the badass setting. Prior to our group showing up, Old Forester had pulled three barrels. Mind you, not three samples, three whole barrels sit waiting for us next to the table. Old Forester allocates roughly 1400 barrels a year to a combination of picks, President's Choice, and their Single Barrel Rye releases, and these three sit awaiting our tasting. We drill into the barrels (well ok, Barb drills into the barrels, they apparently have had some bad customer power drill experiences in the past), and pull a nice sample from each.

We start with a sample of Old Forester 86 proof to warm the palate up, and then we roll into the tasting. We tasted all three barrels blind, no information on proof, warehouse, or age. Each person sat silently as we took notes, and Barb helpfully recommended we look for a barrel to eliminate first. She didn’t need to tell us twice, Barrel A is what I like to call a classic Total Wine pick- straight heat. It did seem to open up some as we let it sit out, but not enough to stave off elimination. It was unanimously voted off the island. Much tougher, however, was picking between B and C. For me, barrel B was anchored by a lovely amount of candied orange and citrus notes intermingled with mulling spices. C was more fruit forward, with notes of muddled cherries, pixie sticks, and cantaloupe- though still balanced by a nice amount of oak. I will admit, I was initially barrel C, but as a group we were split and the general feeling was we couldn’t go wrong with either. We therefore let a final blind decide our fate! With a resounding 5-1 result on the blind (and I’ll admit I reversed course), barrel B took it.

One of the unexpected wrinkles occurred when Barb then walked us through what we picked and tasted as a conclusion. They were all sister barrels! Each barrel was from the same floor (three) in warehouse L, all were the about same age (barreled in 2019) and all were roughly the same proof (~130, hilarious given Barrel A gave notes of jet fuel). This is what makes this hobby truly great in my opinion, you can have three barrels, all aged within roughly 6 barrels of each other, and end up with wildly different results. Thanks so much to Barb and the Old Forester team for walking us through the pick, we can’t wait to see this one get bottled!