Pinhook 2023 Flagship Bourbon Whiskey

Pinhook treats bourbon like a racehorse and a wine vintage at once — every release is named for a thoroughbred, blended fresh each year rather than to a house profile, and the Flagship is the annual bourbon that started it. Sean Josephs, a sommelier who ran Char No. 4 and Maysville in New York, founded Pinhook in 2010 — a pinhooker is someone who buys young horses and sells them trained — and blends every vintage with Castle & Key in Frankfort, where Pinhook now distills; the Flagship is a small-batch Kentucky straight bourbon from a 75% corn, 15% rye, 10% barley mashbill, aged more than three years, blended to a proof chosen for that year's barrels, and the 2023 vintage landed at 101.48 proof. The house notes for 2023: butterscotch, dried apricot, and graham cracker on a warm nose, transitioning to coffee, roasted peanut, candied cinnamon, and crème brûlée on the palate. Uproxx and InsideHook both note the vintage-to-vintage variation as the point — you're buying a year, not a formula. Expect a young, lively, high-proof bourbon with real sweetness and a spiced finish. Honest note: the Flagship is the entry to a brand bourbon geeks follow the way wine geeks follow a vineyard — the Vertical Series is the deep end; this is the vintage you drink now. Neat, on a cube, or in an Old Fashioned. Pinhook, 2023.

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