Category: Articles

We Needed a Holladay

Bybrettatlas April 17, 2023 0 Comments
Well, that was certainly not what I expected. As my friend and distributor specialist Pep Cavazos pulled onto I-29, neither of us was quite sure whether we were leaving Weston, Missouri or Bardstown, Kentucky. Back in 1804, on the same spot we just left, Lewis and Clark discovered a limestone spring just off the Missouri River. In 1856, the Holladay brothers build a distillery there. And today,...

In With the Old

Bybrettatlas December 27, 2020 2 Comments
Back in 2016, a small group of Bourbon & Banter members met in St. Louis to attend Whiskey In the Winter. Following a wonderful evening gathered around Pops' dining room table sipping pre-prohibition whiskey and other mid-century dusties, the actual show itself was largely forgettable - save for one large exception. In Seminar Room C, Luke Castle and I were blown away by the magnetism,...

A Barrel Full of Roses

Bybrettatlas November 12, 2020 2 Comments
If there is one thing about bourbon I haven't gotten bored with over the years, it's selecting a private barrel. Every so often, a truly special one stands out from the others. Such was the case when, earlier this year, we got this incredible short barrel OESF for Mike Bridges at Jack's in Fremont, Nebraska. It's the "Bitch Wolf Barrel" we named after Ruthie from the show 'Ozark.' Bottle from...

Be Smarter Buying Private Barrel Picks

Bybrettatlas September 5, 2020 36 Comments
Last year, I was in one of my favorite distillery’s rickhouses doing one of my favorite things with some of my favorite people. Picking a private barrel of bourbon is still exciting for me, even after doing it many, many times. On this particular occasion, we tasted through three barrels of bourbon and collectively decided we weren’t going to take any of them. Noticing the visible shock on...

How The Bourbon Crusaders Determined the Best Bourbons on the Shelf

Bybrettatlas November 12, 2018 0 Comments
On Monday, November 5 2018, the Bourbon world was abuzz about a little charity event that raised over $340,000 for the American Cancer Society over the weekend. For more about the auction itself, Fred Minnick’s excellent Forbes piece captures it beautifully. What may have been overshadowed by the shocking and magical live auction at “Willett To Be Cured” was the months-long, massive blind...

Bourbonomics

Bybrettatlas April 18, 2018 0 Comments
Mark Twain wrote that Tom Sawyer “had discovered a great law of human action, namely that in order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.” That was true nearly 150 years ago, when whiskey was anything but coveted, referred to by popular nicknames like “coffin varnish” and “strychnine.”  Today’s Tom Sawyer would be running the...

Gordy Hue and the Greatest Bourbon Story You’ve Never Heard

Bybrettatlas February 28, 2018 0 Comments
If you're a fan of Bourbon, then you’ve likely heard of Pappy Van Winkle.  And if you’ve heard of Pappy Van Winkle then know it’s coveted by everyone from aficionados to the people who cut their hair. I’ve even seen annual releases of Pappy advertised as “The Holy Grail of Bourbons.” However, seasoned Bourbon drinkers or collectors with an interest in history have...

Taste More, Listen Less

Bybrettatlas November 10, 2017 0 Comments
In a Louisville hotel room overlooking the Haymarket whiskey bar, my friend Brian had arranged something special. As I entered the room, I instantly spotted three rows of semi-filled glasses, each row dead-ending at an amber bottle marked with the letters ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. “Oh, hell yes!” I giddily exclaimed. Nothing brings a room of whiskey ‘experts’ back down to earth like...