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| The still at Old Scout. |
Back in December, I was lucky enough to travel to Maxwellton, West Virginia to visit the
Smooth Ambler distillery. The purpose of the trip was to select a barrel or two (we actually picked three) and establish a relationship with the proprietors, John and John. The Johns were incredibly generous with their time--they spent several hours taking us through their rick houses and explaining their approach to the business. Best of all, they let us taste as many barrels of whiskey as we wanted.
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| One of their two rick houses. |
Smooth Ambler has taken a unique approach to the business. They are distilling their own juice, but everything (with the exception of the Yearling) bottled so far is from the LDI distillery (now MPGI) in Indiana. They are completely forthright with the source of their juice, which is refreshing in an industry not known for its honesty. Their oldest juice produced in house is nearing four years old and the exciting news is that it is a wheated bourbon! They plan to release it when it's ready--they've done an adequate job establishing solid lines of revenue, so there is no need to rush it to market.
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The rick house holding the juice
distilled on-site. |
As I said, the Johns let us taste at least 15 samples--it could have been more--of the sourced bourbon and rye of various ages. I'm not a huge fan of LDI's rye, but if you've not had their bourbon, get yourself some Old Scout, because it is damn good. We ended up choosing three barrels: one seven year old, one eight year old and one ten year old. Smooth Ambler will bottle at barrel proof, which is a nice touch. The Johns were really fun to work with--at one point we were sort of lukewarm on a couple of samples so one of the Johns ran out and got several more for us to taste.
The bourbons are schedule to arrive this month and I can't wait to post tasting notes. All three of our picks were complete winners, but I'm most excited about the eight year old as it was my favorite of the line up.
