Made in tiny batches of around 19 barrels at a time in Loretto Kentucky, Maker’s Mark is some pretty great Bourbon.
Although the website recipe for an Old Fashioned cocktail calls for the use of soda, which would be such a waste, this is a premium spirit designed from its inception to be special. The labels on the bottle are turned out on a couple of hundred year old rotary press. The bottle is expensively and uniquely sealed with the trademark red wax that drips iconically from the neck of the bottle. It is remarkably smooth, but so are most in this category.
I like the full taste, I feel like I can pick out pieces of the ingredients and the love that went into making it. Legend has it that when the original distiller, Bill Samuels, was coming up with the recipe he baked loaves of bread with different ratios of barley and red winter wheat and chose the best tasting loaf as the basis of the original recipe.
The good folks at Annandale Cellars flog it here in Sydney and online. If you’re quick, the Liquorland at Bondi Junction was selling bottles for $49.95 over the weekend, and in case you didn’t realise, that’s not a bad deal.
I’d suggest having some of this spirit mixed into an Old Fashioned. without soda as it wasn’t invented when this drink was.
Maker’s Mark are smart about the way they use people with passion for their product. They’re leading the industry with their ambassador program. Most brands use ambassadors, talented bartenders to get out on the road and into the bars, training staff and consumers and telling the story of the brand. The Mark has taken this one step further asking anyone who tells the Maker’s story to register online, offering a bottle from their very own named barrel as an incentive and opening a great channel for news and special product offers to those that care a little more than most.
Everyday Drinking 