Distilled: How to Score Rare Bottles

Plus: Bourbon winners, cranberry old-fashioned, bourbon pecan pie

The bourbon world has been buzzing since the San Francisco World Spirits Competition announced its top winners recently. A hearty congratulations to Indiana’s Starlight Distillery, which took home three awards, including Best Overall Bourbon. (See more of the category winners below.) But of course, actually procuring a coveted bottle is a whole other game. This week contributing editor Steve Russell runs down the mystifying ways limited, high-demand bourbons (a.k.a. allocated bottles) find their way to consumers, with some strategies for at least upping your chances. With Thanksgiving fast approaching, Kentucky chef and bourbon fan Sara Bradley has just the recipe for that leftover cranberry sauce—yes, with whiskey, in a glass. We’ve also got two dueling versions of bourbon pecan pie (I’m partial to the one with dark chocolate myself). And last but not least, we sample the growing world of nonalcoholic whiskeys. Whatever you’re sipping this Thanksgiving, we hope you have a wonderful Turkey Day.

A few tips, tricks, and strategies for actually getting your hands on a coveted, limited-release bottle.

NA whiskeys are on the rise, and they’re not just for nondrinkers. We sampled a range to see what they actually taste like.

Kentucky native Sara Bradley opened Freight House, a modern Southern restaurant in her hometown of Paducah, in 2015 to celebrate the region’s bounty. This year the James Beard Foundation named her a finalist for best chef in the Southeast. A longtime bourbon fan and collector, Bradley keeps the Freight House bar well stocked with some five hundred bottles.

“I always make way too much cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, so I was looking for ways to use it. We started making this cranberry old-fashioned as our little late-night treat. My own cranberry sauce has brown sugar, red wine vinegar, and walnuts, but canned will work, too—I like the chunky kind. This cocktail is very whiskey-forward. It has a tartness to it, and the bitters balance the sweetness of the cranberry sauce.”

Here’s Bradley’s cranberry old-fashioned:
2 heaping barspoons cranberry sauce
½ oz. lemon juice
3 dashes Angostura bitters
3 dashes spiced cherry bitters
1 orange slice
2 oz. Wild Turkey 101 Rye

Warm the cranberry sauce on the stove to loosen it up. Be sure to strain well. Add cranberry sauce and lemon juice to a rocks glass and stir to combine. Add the bitters and orange slice and gently muddle. Add a large ice cube and the whiskey and stir 25 to 30 more times, until well combined. Garnish with an orange peel and cranberries.

—Lindsey Liles, G&G digital reporter

Because spirited holiday tables often demand spirited takes on the classics, here are two versions of bourbon pecan pie—one with dark chocolate and one that layers in silky pumpkin.

Starlight Distillery’s Japanese Mizunara Reserve Finished Bourbon was named Best Overall Bourbon (and Best Special Barrel–Finished Bourbon) at this year’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition awards gala. The Indiana distillery’s single-barrel bourbon also won best whiskey from a craft distillery.

Other Best of Class winners include Elijah Craig Barrel Proof C924 (Best Straight Bourbon), Safai Bourbon 8-Year-Old (Best Single Barrel Bourbon Up to Ten Years), Frank August Case Study: 05 (Best Wheated Bourbon), and Lasso Motel Darts (Best New Bourbon).

Small-batch winners include 1792 Small Batch, ASW Distillery’s Fiddler Encore Bourbon: Georgia Oak, and O.K.I. Bourbon 15-Year-Old.

Willett Distillery’s prized Family Estate bourbon, previously available only as highly limited single-barrel releases, expands with Willett Family Estate Small Batch Bourbon, a cask-strength blend of two mash bills from the Bardstown distillery.

Heaven Hill commemorates its ninetieth anniversary with a limited-release nine-year-old bourbon. Barrels were filled on December 13, 2015, the family-owned distillery’s eightieth anniversary.

Shiner Beer opens Rickhouse, a restaurant and tasting room at its K. Spoetzl Brewery & Distillery in Shiner, Texas, where you can be among the first to taste Texas Legend (while supplies last), its inaugural three-year-old bourbon blended from the first five barrels filled at the brewery’s on-site distillery.

A collaborative release, the Tennessee Collective blends barrels from twelve Tennessee Whiskey Trail distilleries. Bottles are available for preorder, with in-person pickup on November 22 and December 13 at Leiper’s Fork Distillery.

If you’re around Washington, D.C., a few tickets remain for the Whiskey Washback (November 21) at the Hamilton Hotel, with small bites, live music, and pours of more than a hundred whiskeys from around the globe.

—Tom Wilmes, G&G contributor