Spirited Perfection: Building Your Bourbon Bar

By Carla Harris Carlton

In the past 10 years, choosing a bourbon has gone from underwhelming to overwhelming and author Carla Carlton is here to help you navigate this boom. In this book, she offers tasting notes on various bourbons and rye whiskies so you know what to stock at home. Carlton also helps you choose the appropriate bar tools, glassware and mixers to have on hand.



In addition to outlining the basics you’ll need for your home bourbon bar, Carlton shares insights, recipes, and historical trivia sure to round out your experience of entertaining the guests gathered around at your next party.



This special edition e-only book is a wonderful and informative read on its own and is also the perfect chaser to Carlton’s Barrel Strength Bourbon, now out in bookstores and online everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clerisy Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781578605781

Book preview

Spirited Perfection:

Building Your Bourbon Bar

COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Carla Harris Carlton

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any fashion, print, facsimile, or electronic, or by any method yet to be developed, without express permission of the copyright holder.

For further information, contact the publisher:

CLERISY PRESS

An imprint of AdventureKEEN

2204 First Avenue S., Suite 102

Birmingham, AL 35233

clerisypress.com

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-1-57860-578-1

Distributed by Publishers Group West

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, first printing

Editor: Lady Vowell Smith

Project editor: Ritchey Halphen

Cover design: Travis Bryant

Text design: Steve Sullivan and Steve Jones

Cover photo: Alonso Aguilar/Shutterstock

Interior photos: As noted on page

Frontispiece: To make the Seelbach Cocktail, created by Adam Seger, bartender at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, chill a Champagne flute and add 1 oz. bourbon (such as Old Forester), followed by ½ oz. Cointreau and 7 dashes each Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters. Top up the glass with your favorite Champagne, and garnish with an orange twist.

(Photo courtesy of the Greater Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau)

To all the friends and family with whom I’ve shared a drink—and especially to those I may have driven to drink

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Stocking the Bar

Best for Beginners

Wonderful Wells

Made for Mixing

Winter Warmers

Summer Sippers

Good in the Wood

Nicely Dressed

Ideal with Dessert

The Winner’s Circle

Elite Elixirs

Selecting the Barware

Proper Glasses

Essential Tools

Must-Have Mixers

Cocktail Recipes

Classic Cocktails

Seasonal Cocktails

Bourbon Punches

Appendix: An Alphabetical Listing of Whiskeys in This Book

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE BOURBON TASTING NOTEBOOK, by my bourbon pals Susan Reigler and Michael Veach, was a handy reference with regard to proof levels and other production notes.

Thanks to my fellow BARDS (Bourbon and Rye Drinking Society) members for providing the opportunity to taste many of these bourbons and ryes, and to both Bourbons Bistro and Westport Whiskey & Wine for having such great bourbon flights.

Thanks to Brown-Forman Master Distiller Chris Morris and his Woodford Reserve Bourbon Academy for helping me refine my tasting vocabulary.

A shout-out to Eric and Kerri Richardson Cheng, who are as generous with their bourbon cellar as they are with their friendship.

Thanks to my editors, particularly Tim W. Jackson, senior acquisitions editor at AdventureKEEN, for their patience and kindness with a book-writing novice.

I cannot express enough gratitude to my parents, Carl Harris, who was proud of my bourbon scholarship even though he was a teetotaler, and Joyce Harris, who occasionally joins me in drinking an old-fashioned, for their unconditional love and support.

Finally, a huge thank-you to my children, Harper and Clay, who put up with a lot of bourbon-related research and book-related stress over the past two years, and to my husband, Chad, who kept believing in me even when I didn’t and really deserves a drink right now.

INTRODUCTION

BOURBON IS BACK—and better than ever. The all-American elixir, which was created by farmers more than 200 years ago and did a spirited business until it fell from favor in the late 1960s, is in the midst of a renaissance that even Mad Man Don Draper, a committed fan of the old-fashioned, couldn’t have scripted.

In the past 10 years, consumers’ appreciation for bourbon has grown as distillers have created new products