I have a friend coming to visit me from Kentucky in a few weeks. As a bourbon fan, I was hoping she might be able to bring me a bottle or two of something good that I cannot get locally. I am on the border of NC and SC, and I do have a wide variety of bourbons available to me, but I assume their may be some that are not. Unfortunately, she is not a drinker and knows nothing about bourbon.
How can I find out what’s available in KY but not NC/SC? I did a Google search but came up empty. By the way, I’m not expecting her to stumble upon a bottle of 23 yo Pappy for me… Just something local and good. Any ideas?
I don’t know that the bourbon industry is really like the beer industry, where every locality has a bunch of local brews these days. I suspect that a lot of the microdistillers out there are pretty much everywhere BUT Kentucky.
The way distribution channels go these days, about the best you can do is have her pick up a custom-dipped bottle of Maker’s Mark. The rest of the stuff gets pretty good national and international distribution.
Until a few years ago, the best friend to have was one coming in from overseas. They could buy 4 Roses for you, as it wasn’t distributed domestically. Luckily that has changed.
Willett 4-Year Old Single Barrel Rye was a bourbon I discovered while I was in Kentucky. I know Willette has fairly good distribution of their regular bourbon, but I had not seen their rye outside of Kentucky. YMMV. It’s a real treat!