Best of Cleveland 2015
Food & Drink
Best Use of a Wooden Barrel (Save for Conquering Niagara Falls)
Tom’s Foolery Ohio Straight Bourbon Whiskey
For about three years now, Tom Herbruck has been filling wooden barrels with new-make whiskey at a rate of nearly one per day. The sour mash bourbon is made the old-fashioned way, with copper pot stills and open wood fermenters. Herbruck has slowly, methodically filled an entire rickhouse with these barrels and allowed them to age – expanding and contracting along with the seasons – until they reached the point when they could be called Straight Bourbon, a term of art for whiskey aged between two and four years. The result is a world-class bourbon that holds its own against any other two-year-old on the market. We can’t wait to try the four-year-old hooch next year.
