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You can own Alabama's first bourbon
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Bid on "the absolute first bottle of the absolute first barrel of bourbon distilled in Alabama" at this year's wine and spirits auction at Pro Hops Vino! on Thursday, September 21st, at the Negro Southern League Museum.
The bottle of bourbon up for auction will be notable for more than just its historic nature, said Seth Dettling, the owner of Big Escambia. Based in Atmore, Big Escambia is one of the very few distilleries in the country that grows the corn that ultimately becomes its bourbon.
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Seth Dettling
, owner of Big Escambia Spirits, is providing the first bottle of his Alabama-distilled bourbon for auction at Pro Hops Vino!
Photo by Matthew Coughlin
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"We are one of the handful of true field to bottle distilleries," Dettling said. "There's maybe a dozen, a dozen and a half out of 2000 distilleries ... So our process is part of what differentiates us."
Another equally important differentiating factor is the quality of the bourbon's other ingredients.
"The vast majority of bourbons and whiskey in the United States are made using essentially horse feed: massive quantities, trainloads of bulk grain blasted in every day, mass distilled as fast they can churn and burn," he added. But not at Big Escambia: "We took expensive, very detailed craft grains from the brewing world, and we're using these expensive, fantastic, beautiful ingredients to make bourbon. We have malts roasted to different degree, oats, beautiful ryes that you can just eat like a granola bar. So when you taste this bourbon, it's night and day different from the factory juice."
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