Bourbon Review - Black Patch Distillery

In a rather sketchy-looking light-industrial park behind a Wal-Mart in Madison, Alabama, there is a hidden gem of a distillery.  Black Patch Distilling Company is a veteran-owned and operated small family-business distillery.  Those who were here for the Hye Rum review probably remember that I like to get the site description out of the way up front, so here goes: Black Patch is in the back of an industrial park in Madison, which is like Huntsville's boring cousin.  Madison isn't bad, but it's like the Hollywood version of the boring nerd girl everyone neglects while noticing her cool sister Huntsville.  Driving up on Black Patch, it doesn't look like much.  We didn't even think it was a distillery until we saw the logo.

Personally, I find the logo a little on-the-nose, I don't like the Corinthian as a helmet, and I was a tad leery of the vet-bro vibe.  There is nothing about owning a DD214 that automatically makes you less of a jerk, or makes your product better than someone else's, and there is a tendency to use being a veteran as a cover for being an ass.  I know this because I have done it myself more times than I should - I spent much of my 20s and 30s being an ass because I had a DD214.  The bit about the Corinthian is just that an original Corinthian is a heavy helm that obscures much of your vision and reduces head mobility, and the Spartans were among the first to abandon it for something with better field of view, but thanks to Hollywood, it's what we think of as "Spartan," and Sparta is what we think of as a warrior culture, so it's difficult to extract from the modern US Army mind.

That's neither here nor there, though.  Entering Black Patch's storefront, you immediately realize several things: they are proud of their service; they are a service family; and this is very much a family business.  I have no doubt that they have investors and non-family employees, but the heart and soul of the place is the Cooper family, and the story their service is written on the walls of the place.  There is the usual collection of T-shirts and merch that you find in most businesses, but the walls of military memorabilia and awards stretching back a couple of generations wound up giving us some units in common and things to talk about, wherein I discovered they were Texas refugees (hardly the first Texans to wind up there - my dad's first job was on Redstone, and my grandfather was a Boeing-Rocketdyne engineer once upon a time).  This led to finding out that there are apparently a handful of places between Beaumont and San Antonio that carry their spirits.

What about the spirits themselves?

Well... I led with "a hidden gem."  Their line includes bourbon, rye, tequila, and cinnamon and agave flavored whiskeys.  The truth is that it is fairly easy to make an impressive cinnamon whiskey, and I lack enough experience or basis for evaluation for tequila of any sort, but the agave, rye, and bourbon caught my eye.  I shall start with the one I had the least of; the rye was pleasant, smooth, and spicy.  If I were going to assign any of those labels to it, I would say that it tasted pleasantly like mesquite - just a hint of thorn, lot of complex flavor behind it.

"Blue," their agave whiskey, is where things got interesting.  I've heard descriptions of Atholl brose or sochu where you somehow overlook that you're drinking 40 to 60 proof because they mask the burn.  There is no way to mask the burn at 80+ proof, which is where all their spirits operate, but it is possible to make you not care.  Blue does that very nicely.  It is sweet and smooth, and is one of the few things I have found where sipping is rewarding, rather than my usual hard and fast consumption method.  It is also the only agave whiskey I've ever seen on the market, which, having tasted this one, I can't decide if it's a damn shame, or a good thing.  Blue would be a hard act to follow.

Which brings me to their Black Patch Bourbon.  Black Patch is everything a bourbon should be.  You can taste the char of the barrel and the vanilla of the oak.  They're there.  But it's also sweet.  It isn't overwhelming, it's more an accent than anything heavy, but it is present.  I have a glass of it in front of me as I write this, taking small, infrequent sips to make sure my palate doesn't get overwhelmed and I don't get hammered, and every single sip returns the same feedback: in addition to the oak and the fire, I can taste the sugars of the corn, and the result is a remarkably good bourbon.  As a bourbon, I find it excellent.  I would imagine, though I am unlikely to use it as such, that it would be an outstanding foundation for an Old Fashioned or similar cocktail.

So - if you're passing through Huntsville, and you like bourbon, and you want to support a small local business, check out Black Patch.  They're worth the side trip, and if they ever start stocking in Spec's or Twin Liquors, you can bet I'll be raiding their stockpiles.