Castle & Key – Sipology

Pinhook “Bourbon Resolve” (orange wax, 2023)

May 10, 2024 JoshLeave a comment

Maker: CJS Beverage Corp, New York, New York, USA.

A tall, thin bourbon bottle with orange wax on the neck and the neck and head of a racehorse on the label.

Distilled: Castle & Key, Frankfort, Kentucky, USA.

Aged at Kentucky Artisan, Crestwood, Kentucky, USA.

Style: Rye recipe Kentucky Straight bourbon.

Mashbill: 75% corn, 15% rye, 10% malt.

Age: 3 y/o

Proof: 101.48 (50.74% ABV)

Purchased on sale for $30 at Vine & Table.

Appearance: Light copper.

Nose: Caramel apple, roasted almonds.

Palate: Sweet, and medium bodied. Fruity with green apple, then some berries, then burn. Water tames the burn.

Finish: Minty with a little blackberry.

Parting words: This is the “flagship” Pinhook release. Like every other Pinhook release, this one is paired with a racehorse. This is for marketing, not culinary, purposes. This 2023 release is paired with Bourbon Resolve, a fairly successful stallion born in 2020. So far his best finish was first at Keeneland in April of 2023. He’s earned around $111,000 so far. Pinhook is hardly the first bourbon brand to use horses in its marketing, and I’m sure it won’t be the last, but it’s currently the most specific.

Anyway, enough about the dang horse. The bourbon is only three years old, but, aside from a dimly remembered Willett release, this is probably the best 3 y/o bourbon I’ve ever had. That’s not the highest of praise, but it’s not nothing. It’s fruity, which isn’t something one encounters much in bourbon anymore. It’s best on the rocks, but does fine in an old fashioned, and with a splash of water.

As corny as the horsey gimmick is, I expected to be annoyed by this, but it was actually pretty good for the price. Pinhook Bourbon Resolve/orange wax/flagship/whatever is recommended.

A Visit to Castle & Key: A Photo Essay, pt 2

July 7, 2017July 5, 2017 JoshLeave a comment

Last week, I posted part 1 of my photos of the Castle & Key distillery, FKA The Old Taylor Distillery. The photos were of the World’s Longest Rickhouse and some other buildings on the site that were not yet restored. This week, the photos will be of the distillery itself (and associated buildings), the springhouse and the the dam.

For further reading on this building and Castle & Key check out what friend-of-the-blog Chuck Cowdery has had to say about Old Taylor/Castle & Key here, and posts on Old Taylor’s sister distillery, Old Crow here and here.

Other friend-of-the-blog Fred Minnick takes better pictures than I do. He’s been to OT/C&K several times. Here’s his visits from 2015, and 2013, just before the current owners purchased the property.

Also check out the Lipmans’ piece about Old Taylor and Old Crow from 1999 (with a 2015 update).

Without further ado…

20170429_121841 — The iconic springhouse.

20170429_121324 — Columns holding up the springhouse roof. All of the springhouse is original, except for that roof, which has been replaced.

20170429_120856 — The iconic view of the iconic key hole shaped springhouse. The pool is ten feet deep. The water looks murky but is perfectly clear when drawn out. Minimal filtration is needed for use. The water is high in calcium and magnesium. The benches now placed around the pool were found inside it!

20170429_121344 — The top of the key with the new roof visable. The springhouse is popular for wedding, prom and other photos.

20170429_121807 — The well house between the springhouse and the dam on Glenn’s Creek.

I took a short video of the dam and the well house too.

20170429_121929 — Entering the boiler building.

20170429_122405 — New skylight in boiler building, to eventually become a visitor’s center. The roof was repaired with materials recovered from other buildings on the campus.

20170429_122009 — Where the boilers was.

20170429_122530 — The front entrance to the distillery building, aka the castle.

20170429_122621 — The tower by the main gate, for defensive purposes, obviously.

20170429_123225 — Original hardwood floor inside the entrance.

20170429_123400 — Fermentation room. White corn is used for the bourbon.

20170429_123254 — Heating coils inside the fermenter.

20170429_123604 — The still column behind our guide. They’re distilling a lot already about 20 barrels worth a day. They have capacity to go up to 60 a day. They’re doing a lot of contract distilling too. According to our guide, 70% of their output is contract, 30% for themselves. He said it was “no secrets” contract distilling, at least on their end.

20170429_123538 — The pot still, thumper, doubler, whatever it’s called. The second part of the still. Their bourbon enters the barrel at 107 proof, rye at 118 proof. I should have mentioned it earlier but they will be using barrels from the Speyside Cooperage in Jackson, Ohio. They swear by them. Laser cut, never leak, apparently. They use numbers 3 and 4 char.

20170429_125716 — Distillery building on the right, on the left is the building that was the lab, now serves as an office (upstairs) for Master Distiller Marianne Barnes and a bride’s room (downstairs).

20170429_124424 — Walkways from the distillery building to the old lab.

20170429_124454 — Second floor walkway to old lab, with Old Taylor stone.

20170429_124526 — Same stone as above, from a different angle. Construction began on the distillery building in 1887 and it took twelve years or so to complete, according to our guide. That stone is visible from the road, but before the restoration, it was overgown with vines. I have a picture of this somewhere, but I haven’t been able to track it down.

20170429_125946 — Panoramic photo of the beautifully sunken garden behi

20170429_131058 — View from the garden looking back at the castle and the old lab.

20170429_130321 — Opposite view with Warehouse E on the left.

20170429_130048 — The fish pond at the center of the garden.

20170429_131123 — Closer view of the pond. When the sunkern garden was being restored, the pond was called “the snakepit”. It was meant literally.

20170429_122556 — View of the old office building across McCracken Pike. The roof has collapsed entirely. Eventually, Castle & Key hopes to restore this building too. Hope you enjoyed the photos! Peace.

A Visit to Castle & Key: A Photo Essay, pt. 1

June 30, 2017 JoshLeave a comment

Back when I first started going on annual/semi-annual pilgrimages to Kentucky, I heard tale of two abandoned distilleries on McCracken Pike, near Frankfort Kentucky and even nearer to the Woodford Reserve (aka Labrot & Graham, aka Oscar Pepper) distillery. To get there, you turned left out of the Woodford reserve parking lot and kept going until you thought you were lost in the woods and needed to turn around. Then you went around a bend and a giant castle-like building virtually lept out of the woods at you. That was the Old Taylor Distillery (shuttered in 1972). Just a little down the road was the Old Crow distillery which was also interesting in its own right, but not nearly as impressive as the Castle, as it was called. You could park across the road at the collapsed office building if you wanted to take a look at the castle, but you had to look out for The Guy in the Red Truck, who was guarding the place. The Guy in the Red Truck was not a monster, though, and you could reason with him and he might let you get close and take pictures. He would also show you the grave of a Revolutionary soldier that he preserved nearby.

The Castle was wild looking and a little sad and occasionally spooky like in this picture I took on a rainy day in 2010. “Legit” whiskey bloggers (i.e. actual journalists) would occasionally get a chance to wander around and take pictures. At the time, we bourbon lovers all wondered what it would take to restore the building. The conventional wisdom was that the building would be too expensive to ever restore, let alone reuse.

We were wrong. The Old Taylor Castle is now being restored, thanks to the partners who own what is now called the Castle and Key (after the key shaped spring house) Distillery. In 2014 it was purchased for less than a million dollars from an Atlanta investor group that was selling the distillery buildings for scrap. The destruction was stopped and restoration was begun. The invester group managed to snag Marianne Barnes, rising star at Brown-Forman (makers of Old Forester, Early Times, Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniels), to be their master distiller. The intention is to produce gin, vodka, rye and bourbon. The Bourbon, at least, is going to be released as a mature, bottled-in-bond product.

In late April of this year (2017) a group of folks from StraightBourbon.com including yours truly, Mrs. Sipology Blog and friends of the blog Amy and Pete were graciously allowed a tour of the campus, even though it’s not open to the public yet. Here are some pictures I took. I hope you like them.

For a concise, illustrated history of the property check out http://www.distillerytrail.com/blog/castle-key-distillery-rising-ruins-old-taylor-distillery-narrowly-escaped-wrecking-ball/