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Pinhook Bourbon Single Barrel Release

In thoroughbred auctions, the term pinhooking refers to the practice of buying yearling horses at auction or privately, overseeing their breaking and training, and eventually re-selling them as race-ready two-year-olds in training. The same practice can be done with weanlings to resell as yearlings.

Pinhook Bourbon is the brain child of Sean Josephs who saw the opportunity to capitalize on an emerging trend in bourbon by applying the pinhooking concept.  Part of that plan was to buy young barrels of MGP bourbon and age them himself and then partially release them each year beginning in year 4 and ending in year 12.  Through this process, his followers could see what happens to whiskey as it sits in cask.

At Harry’s we saw the brilliance of his idea even before Sean officially started the Pinhook label.  He started by doing limited releases with different colored capsules providing for easy differentiation of each bottling. We were fast fans of his ideas and his future plans and pinhooked, Pinhook! The first Pinhook single barrel was sold at Harry’s in 2019 and was well received primarily because, as we explained the concept of Sean’s plan, others quickly saw the unique idea and wanted to be part of it. Another big draw was the idea that Sean came by the store and signed each bottle before we released that barrel which added another layer of collectability. Now in the 3rd annual release, the quality of the whiskey is really starting to show.

Our newest single barrel is a big step up in overall quality and on top of that, Sean, knowing it was our 80th anniversary, sent us a barrel that he had hand selected for us. And what a barrel it is! The step up in quality has already been noted by followers that got a sneak peak earlier this week and the internet is buzzing with anticipation for the formal release.

Tomorrow, Thursday, December 16th,  from 5:00-7:00pm Sean has agreed to fly in and do a holiday bottle signing at our store. People will have the opportunity to meet him and get their own personally signed bottle and, because this will be something we expect people will want to be able to gift to their favorite collector, we will offer as many as 3 bottles per person in-store. Whatever remains will be available online beginning at 8:00pm (link below with tasting notes).

We hope you can join us for this very special opportunity to meet the man himself, speak with him about his present and future plans and pick up a great bottle of bourbon.

Best

Patrick, Renzo and the Harry’s team