Get Your Own Angel's Envy Single Barrel
Master Distiller Owen Martin in the Angel’s Envy tasting room photo credit Maggie Kimberl
Have you ever wanted to do a private barrel selection but you didn’t have a package store nearby to partner with? Angel’s Envy has become one of the handful of distilleries that offer a retail private barrel selection process, open to the public.
Angel’s Envy
Angel’s Envy Distillery is on Main Street in Louisville, Kentucky. It was founded by father-son duo Lincoln and Wes Henderson. Lincoln was one of the three main visionaries behind the Woodford Reserve brand, the other two being Dave Scheurich and Steve Thompson. After he retired from Brown-Forman his son convinced him to open a new distillery. Lincoln decided to make their signature product a Kentucky Bourbon finished in ruby port barrels, releasing the first bottles in 2010. Ground was broken in 2013 for the Louisville distillery, located in a former elevator factory-turned saw blade factory. In 2015 Bacardi bought the business, keeping the Hendersons on to run it until 2022, when they left to start yet another new brand, True Story.
Private Barrel Selections
On the Angel's Envy distillery tour photo credit Maggie Kimberl
Private barrel selections have gained popularity in the last decade because it’s a way for a package store, bar, or whiskey club to get a bottling that no one else has access to. For most distilleries, private barrel selections are limited to those with liquor licenses because getting them shipped requires participation in the three-tier system. Clubs and enthusiast groups will often partner with a bar or package store with the guarantee that most if not all of the bottles will be sold to group members almost immediately.
A few distilleries now offer a retail private barrel selection program. Angel’s Envy’s private barrel selection program is open to the public for any group or company that wants their own special bottles. The average cost of this experience is around $26,000 and will yield close to 280 bottles. The group can choose what goes on the label within reason — the private barrel selection label can be printed with one to two lines of text, and while the font size can be changed it’s recommended to choose no more than 30 characters per line.
The Logistics
Preparing a barrel at Angel's Envy photo credit Maggie Kimberl
There’s only one catch when you’re doing a retail private barrel selection at Angel’s Envy — you have to pick up the bottles yourself a few weeks later.
I had some questions about the logistics of picking up what is effectively a pallet of whiskey with a standard vehicle. Billy Hendriksen, the Brand Home Single Barrel Coordinator at Angel’s Envy, says that people have picked up their single barrels in all kinds of vehicles, from a rented box truck that he was able to place the pallet into using a forklift to an SUV to a minivan, both of which were able to contain all the boxes when the rear seats were folded flat. He even said that one of the warehouse managers he works with has fit an entire pallet of cases into his Prius, though it left no room for additional passengers.
A Tour, a Tasting, a Selection
Angel's Envy distillery photo credit Maggie Kimberl
The private barrel selection starts with a distillery tour, which is a great way to get your group excited for what, until now, has been an experience mostly limited to those in the trade. Hendriksen recommends no more than 6 people in the group, although he has accommodated more when necessary. The tour goes through all of the production areas of the distillery, the cistern room where barrels are filled, and the bottling line. The last stop on the tour is right outside of the single barrel bottling line where the current choices for single barrels are lined up on pallets. The group has the opportunity to thief whiskey out of a finishing barrel, and that sample will be one of the ones offered in your private barrel selection lineup.
Tasting at Angel's Envy private selection single barrel photo credit Maggie Kimberl
Different groups have different approaches to choosing a single barrel. Some will collaborate from the start while others will secretly take notes and then come together when everyone is ready. Some will vote, some will rank choices, and some will assign numerical values to be averaged out with the most points choosing the winner.
After you’ve chosen your single barrel, the group chooses the name that will go on the stickers on the front of all of the bottles. Then it’s into the bar for cocktails and snacks before heading into the gift shop for any souvenirs of the day.
The private barrel selection process generally takes place in Bar Ten/10, a quasi-secret bar behind the retail shop. Larger groups may not fit in this tiny space, however.
It takes about four to six weeks, depending on the time of the year, to bottle your barrel for pickup. Hendriksen says that a lot of people will time their barrel pick so that bottle pickup will take place when they are back in town for Bourbon & Beyond or the Kentucky Bourbon Festival or the Kentucky Derby. Groups that have done this experience already include corporations looking for unique corporate gifts, people planning weddings looking for unique party favors to give out, people celebrating a retirement, and even just Angel’s Envy fans who are building a special room to house their Angel’s Envy collections at home.
The best part of doing a private barrel selection is that you get to see how much variation can take place in even the most homogenized whiskeys. Angel’s Envy starts with fully matured Kentucky Bourbon, vats those barrels of whiskey together, and then fills the ruby port casks with a homogenized batch of Bourbon. Because there are so many micro differences between the type of wood the cask is made from, to where it’s stored for finishing to how many times it has been used, the whiskeys selected to be offered as private barrels are all very different.
Learn more about the Angel’s Envy Private Selection Single Barrel program.