Pinhook Bourbon Tasting with Katya Fong - CA Brand Ambassador

As some of you may know, we have a standing tradition with Sean Josephs, founder of Pinhook, to taste his latest release in the vertical series bourbon before anyone else in the country.

This year, Sean can’t make his usual trip to LA, but he’s sending in one of his reps and shipping me a bottle of the brand new expression (10 year old bourbon) for us to try!

Bino has graciously offered to host so we can cut down on overhead costs.

We’ll have a full taco dinner for you with our favorite taco vendor and an insane lineup of Pinhook whiskies to try.

Here is the confirmed pour list but we’re expecting to taste:

• Flagship bourbon - 2025
• Flagship rye - 2025
• 5yr Cask Strength Bourbon
• Vertical Series Rye 8yr
• Vertical Series Rye 9yr
• Vertical Series Bourbon 9yr
• Vertical Series Bourbon 10yr – Sneak peek bottle!
• Collaboration Series #3
• Possibly more!

After the tasting, we’ll light up a cigar and share some bottles. Everyone is encouraged to participate and bring something to share.

The event will begin at 6:30pm so please don't be late.

Here are a few words about the brand:

Pinhook was founded in 2010 by three friends who shared a passion for bourbon and separate ties to the American South. The founders include Sean Josephs, a whiskey industry veteran and award-winning restaurateur known for helming Char No. 4 in Brooklyn, Maysville in Manhattan, and Kenton’s in New Orleans and serving as the brands Master Taster and leading the brand’s national sales efforts; Charles Fulford, another Pinhook founder, is a career creative director and current Global Executive Creative Director of Candid, who spearheads all of the brand’s packaging and digital design. To complete the team, Alice Peterson joined the company in 2017 as the Chief Executive Officer whose career includes roles ranging from operational roles with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and American Express.

Blended and proofed to be different.

Each year, Pinhook releases a new vintage of bourbons and ryes. Every expression is the best representation of our barrels at that moment in time and dedicated to a promising young thoroughbred. Through a combination of careful barrel selection, blending in small batches, and meticulous proofing, each Pinhook vintage has a character as unique as the horse on the label.

Pinhook Approach

The standard approach to American whiskey uses blending and a fixed proof to replicate an established flavor profile batch after batch. Breaking with this tradition, Pinhook treats each set of barrels as a new vintage, shaped by the natural variations in the ingredients and the elements. Working in small batches, we craft each vintage to express the best whiskey rather than the same whiskey, and set the proof to optimize the unique attributes of that group of barrels.

Pinhook Brand

The name Pinhook comes from the old Kentucky term for buying baby thoroughbreds, holding them while they mature, and selling when they are ready to run. Successful pinhooks – much like whiskey -- are made on instinct, experience, an appreciation of quality, a little luck, and a lot of patience. The brand pays tribute to the parallels between horse racing and bourbon, with bottles inspired by the bright colors and bold geometry of jockey’s silks and portraits of the up-and-coming thoroughbreds on the label.

Pinhook History

Pinhook got its start in 2011 with the purchase of 20 barrels of bourbon distilled by Midwest Grain Products (MGP) and began releasing very small batches in 2014. When Castle & Key embarked on its restoration of the abandoned Colonel E.H. Taylor distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky, Pinhook came on board. All Pinhook barrels are now aged, blended, and bottled there, and since Castle & Key’s stills came online in 2017, Pinhook has been distilling proprietary mashbills of bourbon and rye there as well.

Pinhook’s founders set out to make an excellent, yet accessible whiskey. To that end, the core bourbon and rye are meant to retail at less than $40 and be only slightly above $1 per ounce wholesale, making Pinhook a great candidate for cocktails as well as straight pours.

We’ve received great feedback from both on- and off-premise partners, and been featured in the New York Times; on the cover of the Bourbon Review and as one of their Six Special Releases to Hunt For; as one of the best bourbons or ryes for the Kentucky Derby in Forbes; and with Castle & Key Distillery in Departures.

Details:

• This is an in-person event! Please be responsible!
• Attire: Business Casual.
• This event is 21 and over. IDs will be checked at the door.
• No refunds. Tickets can be transferred.
• Please drink responsibly. We recommend Uber or Lyft.
• By attending this event, I acknowledge that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 and any other communicable or infectious disease, exists in any public place where people are present.

Host or Publisher VirtualTastingSociety