Welcome to the second part of my Angel's Envy distillery tour review. If you missed the first part you can find it right before this one. I encourage you to check it out after you finish with this post. The order doesn't really matter but I would suggest reading both so you get the full experience of what Louisville and Angel's Envy are like. Since you all have been so kind I will also throw in a review of Angel's Envy Cask Strength 2018 at the end of this. We bought that special edition while we were at the distillery. Let's dive back into the wonderful world of whiskey!
While we looking up what kind of cool things there was to do around Louisville for our weekend trip with my family, we found a very unique experience. Angel's Envy had just started offering a different twist on the normal distillery tour. They were allowing you to bottle your own whiskey! I had never seen anything like that before and I was super excited to try it out. My brother-in-law and I made reservations for that weekend right after our normal tour. The day finally came and we were ready to do something that I don't think any other company was offering at the time. When our guide greeted us he was jovial and excited to share this experience with us. They do a great job of finding engaging people to lead their tours. He went through the normal safety and follow the rules brief that everywhere has to give always. Nothing that new, except for one piece that immediately explained why more places don't offer this. The liquor laws in Kentucky are pretty strict, and it took Angel's Envy quite a while to find enough loopholes to make this work legally. For example, distilleries are not allowed to sell their product directly to the customer. They have to sell it to a distributor and then buy it back so they can sell it in their own stores. Yay taxes! Also, they get audited very heavily to make sure they are staying within other strict tax rules so we had to be very precise when we were labeling our bottles. Yay taxes! Enough with the boring legal stuff though. Let's get to the good part!
Our guide gave us a quick intro to the company and talked about the factory as we walked to the bottling station. This would have been a nice addition if we didn't just leave the normal tour minutes before. While I still would recommend doing the normal tour, this was a useful touch if this was all you were doing. Our bottling station was just off the mainline so it was fun to watch all of the production bottles being filled and labeled while we were waiting for our turn. Once we got settled, our guide then explained all the rules and challenges Angel's Envy had to overcome to make this happen and greatly stressed the importance of us not messing up the labeling. I was starting to worry this would be more nerve-wracking than fun, he made sure to keep the mood light and was there if we had any questions whatsoever. The cask you are filling from has not been blended with others and we are just filling straight from it. So while this is technically the normal Port Finished version it will taste a little different than the store-bought ones. As of writing this I still have not tried it because it just looks so cool in its box.
The process of actually filling your bottle is pretty easy. You will get a detailed rundown of the process with the guide demonstrating it but it is relatively straightforward. You pick a clean glass bottle out of the ones presented to you and think of a name for your "batch". Then you accurately write your "batch's" name into their tax records and write it again on the label of your bottle. Your guide will make sure everything matches and then you proceed to fill it. That is the fun part! You walk up to the barrel, turn a spigot to fill a tube to the required level, put your bottle underneath, then open another value to pour it into your formally empty bottle. Once filled you pick a cork out of the box next to you and put it in. The hardest part for me was putting the sticker label over the cork to seal the bottle. I have also been terrible at precise movements with stickers. My Lego and happy meal stickered toys were always messed up. Carefully though I figured it out and completed the task. Next came the best part. Not because it was particularly neat but because it was hilarious. Angel's Envy is not allowed to sell their product directly to us remember? So what happens to the bottle I just filled at their distillery? Well, it went through a distributor first of course! The distributor is a cart that they set my bottle on, wheeled it out to the gift shop, then handed it to me (Yay taxes!). They took care of the legal junk behind the scenes. Angel's Envy told us this bottle would taste different than the normal Port Finished ones because it isn't as blended but we still have yet to try it so an update on that will be coming. The box you get the bottle in is pretty cool and you get a piece of a barrel to display your new creation. Overall, it was an amazing experience that I would highly recommend to any bourbon lover.
While we were perusing the gift shop waiting for the tours we also noticed they were selling the 2018 Cask Strength there. Since it is always so hard to find we naturally picked one up.
Angel's Envy Cask Strength 2018 is 124 proof and you could definitely feel that heat. These are the listed notes but I don't always get all of these. I am curious to hear what you got.
Appearance: Golden Ruby
Nose: Banana and honey, lightly burnt wood
Palate: Caramel, sweet raisins, cola, herbal notes
Finish: Dark chocolate, heavily toasted oak, fresh figs
I would recommend a glass of this with a few drops of water to help minimize the burn but as always drink it the way you will enjoy it most. Overall, I wouldn't recommend making the effort of trying to find Angel's Envy Cask Strength 2018. This was our least favorite of their cask strengths to date.
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