In November 2023, Bourbon Lore® brought together a select group of whiskey collectors, connoisseurs and industry leaders for a luxury three-day weekend at the Arizona Biltmore, one of the oldest and grandest hotels in the American West. The event was both a celebration of everything Bourbon Lore® has accomplished and a test run for the sort of experience we will offer to future members: a combination of world-class accommodations, once-in-a-lifetime experiences and, of course, encounters with priceless bottles of bourbon and rye.
The weekend began on a Thursday night, when our guests were met at the Phoenix airport and ferried in black SUVs to the Biltmore. There we welcomed them with a poolside cocktail hour and gourmet buffet, followed by a postprandial evening at our on-site villa, where we opened several highly coveted, absolutely stunning dusty bottles, including an early 1980s Old Grand-Dad.
The next morning we piled back into our SUVs and traveled to a private airport, where after a light breakfast we boarded three private planes. We flew northwest over the Red Rocks of Sedona, then up over the Grand Canyon, passing just 1,000 feet above ground. It was a clear day, and we could see for miles. Once on the ground we drove to the southern rim of the canyon, where we opened a bottle of gold-foil 16-year-old A.H. Hirsch and toasted the view.
After lunch and some more sightseeing, we flew back to Phoenix, where after freshening up we headed to a private feast on the lawn at El Chorro, a local institution. Before eating we took in a private performance by Navajo basket dancers and gave respect to the Native Americans whose heritage has defined the lands of Arizona for millennia. To top off the night, we returned to the Bourbon Lore® villa at the Biltmore, where we opened more epic bottles, including an early bottling of Elijah Craig and the first release of Thomas H. Handy Rye, from all the way back in 2006.
Day Three saw us up early again, this time to climb Camelback Mountain, on the border between Phoenix and Scottsdale; from the 2,706-foot summit we could see the entire Valley of the Sun. After a lunch buffet at Culinary Dropout, a trendy North Scottsdale restaurant, we walked to Tecovas, one of the country’s leading makers of high-quality cowboy boots. Our founder Mason Walker had arranged not only for the store to shut down for us, but for each guest to receive a pair of boots, with the Bourbon Lore® logo branded on the heel, while they waited. Because this is Bourbon Lore®, we had to have something special to accompany the visit, so we opened a rare bottle of Heaven Hill 17-year-old bourbon, a special treat for one of our guests, Conor O’Driscoll, the master distiller at Heaven Hill.
That evening guests gathered at the Bourbon Lore® mansion, a Mission-style spread on the Biltmore property. After enjoying cocktails prepared by Lucas Assis, a Los Angeles mixologist, and dinner from Wadaa Street Tacos, one of Phoenix’s best-known Tex-Mex restaurants, we settled in for an intimate performance by Deric Ruttan and Jimmy Yeary, award-winning songwriters from Nashville who have penned number one hits for the likes of Kenny Chesney and Blake Shelton.
As if the evening couldn’t get better, after the show we got a surprise visit from Cody Sanderson, the leading Navajo silversmith, who presented each guest with a small piece that he made custom for the weekend.
We closed it all out with a world-beating whiskey tasting, including a pre-Prohibition bottle of Mammoth Cave, a 1967 Very Very Old Fitzgerald, a 1989 export-only Wild Turkey and both Martin Mills and Bourbon Valley, two 24-year-old whiskeys from Heaven Hill released in 1998 and widely considered some of the best whiskey ever bottled.
By all accounts it was a once-in-a-lifetime weekend: Friendships and memories were made, adventures were had, and indescribably amazing whiskey was enjoyed.
In 2024 Bourbon Lore® will hold several similar weekends around the country – Jackson Hole, Louisville, New York City and back to Scottsdale. Each will be a unique program, and each will be unlike anything you have ever done before. They will bring together like-minded collectors and enthusiasts in luxury settings, with no expenses spared along the way to providing truly epic experiences.
Sign up to follow Bourbon Lore® to get details about our upcoming events, as well as information about our upcoming membership program, which will offer access not just to weekends like this, but to exclusive bottles, dinners, merchandise and so much more.
