I love that the Willett team is getting creative with this new Exploratory Cask Finish (XCF) product line. Version 1.0 is a seven-year-old rye finished in Curacao casks. The rye was distilled by MGP of Indiana (I know, I know…) and then aged in Willett’s warehouses for seven years in American white oak barrels with a #4 char.
This is a bottled-blend of four of the Four Roses bourbon recipes including a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, an 11-year-old, and a 9-year-old. The different recipes include a mix of 60% corn, 35% rye, 5% malted barley to 75% corn, 20% rye, 5% barley; and four different yeast strains.
I recently had the experience of following around the distiller of my favorite distillery with my buddies and some camera equipment. We were there when the distiller opened the doors until he packed it up for the day. Willett was nice enough to give us free rein of the grounds and we got to witness each nuance of the process.
A while back I saw an article in “Art Culinaire Magazine” with a few Aperol cocktails and an Aperol falernum recipe. The recipe came from Jane Lopez, Beverage Director at The Catbird Seat, in Nashville, Tennessee. I thought this was a great idea and decided to make my own twist. I used my go to falernum recipe as a starting point, but omitted the fresh juice to help prolong the liqueur’s shelf life. I also cut back on the cloves because my original …
Inspired by my recent hobby of home brewing, I created a unique grapefruit hop syrup to experiment with. IPAs that have a strong grapefruit palette are my favorite. I’ve found that cascade and amarillo hops have a nice grapefruit and citrus profile to them and I wanted to try this flavor combination in cocktail recipes.
