BOURBON NEWS & NOTES – for 4 December 2020, by Susan Reigler
Woodford Reserve Winter 2020 Master’s Collection: Very Fine Rare Bourbon
I have a fond memory of the very first Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection release. The year was 2003 and the legendary R.W. “Johnny” Apple, Jr. of the New York Times was in Louisville to write about our local restaurant gems. He had quoted me, as the restaurant critic and beverage writer at the Courier-Journal, in an article in the NYT about bourbon, and so the role as his culinary tour guide fell to me.
One of our stops was lunch at the corporate headquarters of Brown-Forman and while Johnny was confabbing with the B-F execs, I was treated to a tasting at the Bourbon Street Café bar (that’s the very elegant company commissary) of the first release of a new limited edition series – Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection Four Grain.
That was also the year Chris Morris became Brown-Forman’s master distiller. This year’s Master’s Collection, dubbed Very Fine Rare Bourbon, includes whiskey mingled from 17-year-old barrels he set aside in 2003. Even though that was 17 years ago, this is the 15th release in the Master’s Collection. And while previous versions have been packaged in a pot still shaped bottle, this one has a sleek, flask-like design. In addition to Morris’s imprimatur, it also features assistant master distiller Elizabeth McCall’s name on the bottle.
Morris explained in a press release, “The name Very Fine Rare Bourbon is a nod to the descriptors used by our ancestors to auction highly-aged Bourbon barrel lots,” Morris said. “While Woodford Reserve will always honor the past, this Master’s Collection is about the present and future.”
So, in that spirit, future master’s c …
