Whiskey Wednesday: Whiskies of the World and of Chattanooga Edition

Dec 08, 2023

One of the largest and most significant whiskey-tasting events in the country has chosen Nashville as one of the dozen stops on its nationwide tour for 2023. Whiskies of the World is coming to the Loews Vanderbilt on Saturday, July 8, from 6:45-9:30 p.m., with VIP-level tickets gaining admission at 6 p.m. The event will feature tastings from whiskeys from around the world, including lesser-known producers from France, India, Israel and Wales along with the more traditional producers of the U.S., Scotland and Japan.

In addition to the tastings, your ticket includes half-hour masterclasses from international whiskey experts for $10 apiece as well as food pairings. In addition to the early entry, the $175 VIP ticket entitles attendees to extra special tastings, but the $125 General Admission level should also have plenty of unique spirits to sample. The event is, of course, 21+, and adults can purchase their tickets in advance at the event website.

Down in Chattanooga, they’ve got something to celebrate, too! In honor of their 11th anniversary as a distillery, Chattanooga Whiskey Company has released the latest edition of Founder's 11th Anniversary Blend, a unique spirit crafted from a blend of three whiskeys specially designed by founder Tim Piersant.

In addition to their flagship Tennessee High Malt offerings, Chattanooga Whiskey creates special small-batch spirits on an ongoing basis at the small experimental distillery in downtown Chattanooga. Founder's 11th Anniversary Blend is meant to represent an expression of the past, present and future of the distillery through the use of a unique solera process.

Solera blending usually revolves around melding different ages of spirits to age in large oak casks, adding newer distillates to the blend every year. In theory, this means that in any bottle culled from the solera, there should be at least a few molecules of the oldest whisky in the blend. Whether the older spirits actually add much character to the final product is debatable depending on the percentage of new whiskey in each batch, but it is a nice symbolic way to maintain the history of production through the years.

In the world of rum, the solera is usually set up as sort of a pyramid of barrels with the oldest spirits on the bottom and the youngest on top. Yearly bottling comes from a portion of the most aged spirits with each barrel being topped off from barrels in layers above. Unlike American whiskey where age statements on the label must share the youngest spirit in the blend, rums can just call any old spirit 23 years old as long as there is at least some rum that old in the mix.

At Chattanooga Whiskey, they don't obsess over the age of their spirits, preferring to look forward rather than backward. So the Founder's blend is more of a manifesto in a bottle, reflecting where they’ve come from and where they are going.

The spirit is actually a blend of three separate solera casks. The past is represented by a 625-gallon solera filled with the distillery's first commercial releases, sourced from MGP in Indiana. This was the whiskey that allowed Chattanooga Whiskey to launch as the first distillery in the county since Prohibition, and it was really good stuff. The second solera showcases the present and is filled with 4,000 gallons of their signature Tennessee High Malt. The future solera is where the action really is. The 1,645-gallon cask is a constantly evolving blend of the small batches and experimental whiskeys created by the distillers as they mess around with mash bills and inventive malts.

Piersant is constantly tasting from each solera to see how they are evolving over time, and when it's time for the annual Founder's Blend, he determines the proper percentage of each solera in the final product. This year, he chose to use 50 percent of the current Tennessee High Malt along with 25 percent each of the original MGP product and the "infinity" cask that continues to be topped off with new products.

Bottled at 100 proof, Founder's Blend represents the equivalent of about ten barrels of whiskey, so it's a pretty limited offering. If you can get your hands on a bottle, you’ll discover a fascinating spirit that is vastly different from its component parts. Yes, you can detect the prototypical biscuit elements of the high malt, but the fact that there are many other sorts of levels of toasted malts as well as even rye whiskeys in the final blend mean that you can discover layers of orange blossom, baking spices, vanilla and chocolate that make for a delightful sipper.

With a suggested retail of $55, this is a steal for a whiskey that shan't pass this way again. If a bottle does happen to pass to your favorite liquor store's shelf, it's definitely worth grabbing.

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