I was talking to Carey Bringle, aka The Peg Leg Porker, last week on the phone and asked him what he was doing. He told me he was burning some hickory down to charcoal to use in the filtration of his new 15-year-old Peg Leg Porker Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
Wait, what?
Bringle has released several versions of Tennessee whiskey under the Peg Leg Porker label, with ages ranging from four to six years to 12 years, and he’s earned a favored spot in the liquor lineup with bars, restaurants and whiskey lovers as he’s expanded his distribution to seven states. But one sandbox he’s not played in yet is the high-end, collectible, ultra-aged whiskey world.
When you aim at that market, everything has to become more upscale, and Bringle has made the effort to create a memorable product. This edition is known as the “15-Year Pitmaster Reserve Label” of Peg Leg Porker Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey. That’s a mouthful, but then again so is this 90-proof spirit.
The collector’s edition packaging includes a striking label design with metallic accents on a bottle that is sealed with a signature Peg Leg pig stopper, reminiscent of the cork in a bottle of Blanton’s. The bottle is sold packed in a satin-lined wooden box for proud display on your home liquor shelf. That’s the main place you’ll find a bottle — retailing at $400, this is above even the top shelf at most bars.
Bringle is quite proud of the presentation, saying, “We worked on the packaging for a year and want to deliver the award-winning taste that our fans have come to expect from Peg Leg Porker.” He continues: “Our signature hickory-filter finish makes our product unique in the market. It has a hint of smoke without being overly smokey. The fact [that] I am a pitmaster who has spent 35 years working with smoke has given me the ability to understand the nuances of this element in our bourbon.”
Bringle has been in the whiskey business for less than a decade, and thus this is sourced whiskey — blended from 25 carefully selected barrels from a single year’s distillation at a Tennessee producer. (Fermentation obsessives might note that the listed mash bill of 84 percent corn, 8 percent rye and 8 percent malted barley is the signature of the George Dickel Distillery in Tullahoma.) Bringle did more than just scrape together the change from a million couch cushions and bottle somebody else’s whiskey, though. He’s spent years building relationships with the producers, brokers and blending-and-packaging experts, while setting up his own barbecue version of the Lincoln County Process of charcoal filtration to create this unique product. In fact, most of the whiskey in that $500 bottle of Boss Hog you see displayed on the front counter of finer spirits stores (just in case you were open to an impulse purchase) came from somewhere other than the WhistlePig production facility. This is all to say that, yes, this is a really expensive splurge whiskey aimed at the collectors who yearn to have a bottle of every premium release, and the harder they are to find, the better.
Inside the bottle, the whiskey is pretty remarkable, with lots of fruit notes on the nose and hints of cedar. A lovely copper-penny color in the glass, the first attack on the palate is surprisingly sharp for a 90-proof whiskey, with a quick punch of toffee and an almost tannic sweet-tea note. That intense entry fades into a long, complex finish with elements of nuttiness and a lingering backbone of wood and char, either from the long nap in oak barrels or the short kiss of hickory charcoal. The wood character is not overwhelming or unpleasant, but if you're not a fan of oaky chardonnays or if you cringe when confronted with a tongue depressor, this might not be for you.
In fact, it’s a matter of debate whether charcoal filtration adds or strips flavor when bourbon is transubstantiated into Tennessee whiskey through the holy ritual of the Lincoln County Process. I always swear that I can detect hickory smoke in the glass whenever I drink a Peg Leg Porker product — though maybe that's because I know it has flowed through hickory charcoal. But then again, the barbecue olfactory sensory neurons in my nose have been stuck in the “on” position for years now.
If I had a quibble with the product, it’s the choice to bottle it at 90 proof. Most collectibles are released at higher proof or even barrel strength to showcase the true essence of what came out of the casks. At such an elevated fare, I want to take the whole ride. I can water down my own whiskey, and I actually do prefer to drink most aged spirits over a single rock and with a splash to open up the ester molecules and release more aromas and flavors. Unfortunately, this 90-proof whiskey begins to flatten out at less-than-bottle strength, so drink accordingly. But that’s a personal choice by the producer, and it certainly does drink well at the selected proof level. It also allows for a considerable stretching of the supply, allowing Bringle to release hundreds more bottles than if it were at barrel strength. Still, he only has 2,500 bottles to stretch across the states of Tennessee, Oklahoma, New York, North Carolina, Kansas and Louisiana, with Kentucky and Georgia joining the Peg Leg family this week. Allocations will be tight.
I probably can’t and won’t spend four bills on this whiskey for myself. I understand people who collect commemorative bottles and special editions, and I have plenty of bottles on my bookshelf that have been signed by the master distillers who made them. But they’re all empty, because I believe the best way to show respect to a whiskey is to drink it.Â
Nonetheless, the 15-Year Pitmaster Reserve Label shows that Bringle has officially arrived in the world of whiskey, and he’s dead serious about playing in the game at all levels. He will sell out of this initial allocation soon enough, and with luck, he’ll use it to grow his business even larger, including offering new products at different price points each year. This release is likely the first in a line of Pitmaster Reserve labels, so there will certainly be more surprises coming in the future. I’ll start rummaging through the sofa cushions in preparation.
