For the first time in Kentucky history, individual consumers have the opportunity to buy their own personal barrel of whiskey. Now, the question is: What are you going to do with it? You could share the resulting bottles at your daughter’s wedding or reserve them for a grand retirement party. Consider impressing your closest business partners with bottles from your unique bourbon label. Alternatively, you could leverage your private stock for a distinctive brand partnership, showcasing your company’s prestige. On the other hand, there’s no obligation to share it—why not stock your personal bar and use the specially crafted bottles as bragging rights when friends come over to share carefully chosen brown elixirs? The decision is yours when you invest in an Angel’s Envy Private Selection Single Barrel—approximately 250 bottles with your personalized motif.
In March 2022, this all became possible when Kentucky distillers celebrated a significant landmark with the successful passage of House Bill 500. The legislation legalized the private-barrel selection program, allowing distilleries to sell single-barrel selections not only to bars and liquor stores but also to individual consumers. Angel’s Envy seized the opportunity presented by the ruling and introduced the Angel’s Envy Private Selection Single Barrel.
“This is an incredible opportunity, and we have a long waiting list of loyal customers who have been hoping for this,” says Angel Teta, national whiskey guardian for Angel’s Envy.
For years, Angel’s Envy has made single barrels available to exclusive clients, such as cocktail bars and leading brands. “That’s where it started,” Teta says. “We sold forty-one barrels the first year, then 250 the second. This year, we’re going to sell, I think, over one thousand single barrels.”
These clients were invited to hand-select their specific batch and become the private owner of 250 bottles of the barrel of their choice. Now Angel’s Envy enthusiasts have the same rare opportunity, available at only a handful of other Kentucky distilleries. “With this barrel program, we wanted to give something special to people who love Angel’s Envy,” Teta says.
Angel’s Envy blends Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey for four to six years prior to finishing in ruby port barrels for another three to six months. Beginning in spring 2024, select customers will be invited to take a private tour of the distillery and then offered three single-barrel samples.
“Because these barrels are at a higher proof, about 110, they have a longer finishing time, which imparts more port character,” says Owen Martin, Angel’s Envy’s master distiller.
Martin likens the process to steeping tea. “We use first-use port barrels shipped directly from Portugal. Each time you’re using the port barrel, if you steep it a second time or fill it a second time, you’re getting less color and less flavor out of it. For us, that’s not bad because that gives us a lot of different ranges of flavor to play with,” Martin says. “Because a single barrel is a higher-proof offering, we want a heavier amount of wine to balance that higher proof, which is why we use the socalled first-use barrels that have not been filled with anything other than wine.”
The result is a diverse range of tasting notes. “You’ll have some that are very fruit-forward; then, one will have more of a nutty, rich flavor, and another with a dried-fruit flavor,” Martin says.
Cask finishing is the distillery’s hallmark, and Martin says he thinks of himself as much as a blender of a whiskey as a distiller.
“We employ port barrels so they are completely in tune and balanced with the bourbon we fill them with,” Martin explains. “That means we understand the whiskey we’re putting in, so the aging process plays to that whiskey’s strengths—be it an older whiskey with more oak versus a youthful whiskey—so that the result highlights and complements that base bourbon.”
And to make the experience even more elevated, “everything is bottled up for the customer in their signature design,” Teta says. For example, Garden & Gun and Clayton & Crume partnered with Angel’s Envy to produce a specialty single-barrel whiskey for an event during the magazine’s G&G Distilled experience in the spring.
With your barrel, suddenly sharing a bottle of the good stuff with friends takes on new meaning. Your spirited surcee isn’t just whiskey. It’s your signature Angel’s Envy Private Selection Single Barrel, an expression personalized for you and your special occasion. No one will find another bottle like it anywhere else. Just as they won’t find another occasion as distinctive as the one for which you share it.
Learn more about Angel’s Envy Private Selection Single Barrel program at AngelsEnvy.com
