ââWhen I was in Lynchburg, Tennessee in December to burn stuff with Barrel Maturation Manager and Master Taster Byron Copeland and the charcoal-making team at Jack Daniel’s Distillery, I got to sign my name in chalk in one of the charcoal storage buildings. I opted for a space a bit below where I saw “Bucks in 6” scrawled in coal.
That, Copeland told me, was written by a member of the Bucks entourage visiting to select a barrel for its Single Barrel Collection collaboration with the legendary Tennessee distillery.
The latest installment of that collaboration was recently unveiled in the Presidential Suite at The Trade Hotel in the Deer District by Copeland and Bucks’ legend Brandon Jennings.
Jennings selected the barrel with Copeland for this second release, coming later this year.
While Jennings told folks at the event that the new batch would be called The Culture – one of the suggestions shouted out at the event when Copeland asked for potential names – it’s unclear if that will actually be the moniker.
“I had a great time, man,” Jennings said of the barrel selection visit. “Just the process, being able to pick a barrel for the city of Milwaukee.
“Last year we did the Six, which was smoother. This year we picked a barrel that was a little more spicy, right? We couldn’t go smooth twice. I think the barrel that we picked, everybody's going to love. I'm excited about it.”
According to Copeland, the sample barrel selected by Jennings will serve as a flavor benchmark, and to meet demand, five more barrels will be found that match the flavor profile of the pick as closely as possible.
That means that technically there will be six single barrel releases (collect them all!) and just by the nature of, well, nature, and science, each will vary at least slightly.
“Can we match everything that we've picked,” Copeland asks, rhetorically. “No, because a single barrel is very unique – 70 percent of the flavor is going to come from the barrel.
“And if you think about what that barrel imparts, the oxidation that's going on inside of it, there’s too much going on inside of a barrel that we can't mimic as humans.”
At the release event we first tasted drams of Six, which did indeed have rounded edges and just a hint of rye spice that quickly faded.
Then we tried a very short sample pour of the new barrel, as quantities are extremely limited, of course.
This one had plenty of vanilla and caramel and butterscotch but with more pepper and tobacco spice that carries through a long finish.
The collab will be released to coincide with the start of the upcoming Bucks season.
Details of which rickhouse on the Jack campus the main barrel came from have not been released, but all of the single barrel picks come from the top floor of a warehouse.
Barrels typically yield about 220 bottles, but that can vary due to how much the angels have taken. That means there will be roughly 1,320 bottles available and Jack says that about 80 percent of the collection will go to the Milwaukee market.
This release is the second of what Jack calls an “evolving partnership between Jack Daniel’s and the Milwaukee Bucks,” so it’s unclear how many years the collaboration will continue.
Get ‘em while they’re, ahem, hot.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
