Tonight's Tipple: Chicken Cock Kentucky Small Batch Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Here's what I am having for happy hour tonight.
It is Friday, and happy hour is coming. So Chicken Cock Small Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is what I’ll be enjoying.
How smooth is this whiskey? So smooth that I did not realize it was 100 proof the first time I poured it in a glass. This is a fine 5-year old Bourbon that has aromas of orange and corn. Sip it (preferably with several drops of water) and you may taste butterscotch, orange, apricot, and toffee.
Chicken Cock has a wild story. The brand was born in the mid-19th century. The Tarr family, which bought a distillery near Stoner Creek in Bourbon County, Kentucky, could have called this brand “Rooster Whiskey” or somesuch. Instead they picked the common-in-those-days synonym, and Chicken Cock whiskey was born.
Production and sale grew, and Chicken Cock was being shipped to Canada and Germany by the fin de siècle. But as so often happened in the whiskey industry there were turmoils and troubles: cut throat competition, wheeling and dealing, counterfeiters trying to profit off Chicken Cock’s good name, and a distillery fire.
The 20th century brought much grief: a world war, Prohibition, a Great Depression, and a second world war. But the 1950s production of Chicken Cock ended and the coffin nails came when the distillery burnt to the ground in 1961.
So how can I be sipping this brand today?
Entrepreneur Matti Anttila of Grain and Barrel Spirits rediscovered Chicken Cock in 2011, and worked with Bardstown Bourbon Company to collaboratively produce it. There have been more than a dozen offerings of Chicken Cock, in recent years, with a variety of ages, proofs, and finishes. Interestingly, there also is a 20-year old Chicken Cock rye.
Cheers!