Per Freddie Noe: The first release of Little Book draws inspiration from something close to home for me—the components of making a great bourbon whiskey. Little Book “The Easy” features uncut, unfiltered Kentucky Straight Bourbon blended with corn whiskey, rye whiskey, and malt whiskey- the three ingredients commonly found in a bourbon mash bill—to create an easy-drinking whiskey that's blended to be one of a kind. It all started when I was working in our Global Innovation Center, learning all about blending. I looked at the different types of whiskies available and saw that we had individual corn, rye and malt barrels. I wondered, “If you blend those together to the exact proportions of a bourbon mash bill, will it taste like bourbon?” So I tried it. I blended 4-year-old corn, rye, and malt whiskey, and let me tell you, it didn't taste like bourbon at all! The corn whiskey overpowered everything else, since the rye whiskey also had some corn in it. It wasn't balanced at all. That's when I was inspired to blend in the fourth component—some actual finished bourbon whiskey. When I started my search, our team gave me access to nearly every barrel we had in storage. I tasted and tinkered with bourbon aged six and even nine years, trying to achieve just what I was looking for in my inaugural release. What I found was that blending in four-year-old bourbon did what those others could not—ensured that all ingredients could complement each other without a single piece overpowering the final taste profile.

The batch is made up of barrels from two production dates that were aged in five different rackhouse locations. The breakdown of barrel storage for Booker's Pigskin Batch is as follows: 14% came from the 6th floor of 7-story warehouse L, 15% came from the 6th floor of 9-story warehouse H, 27% came from the 5th floor of 7-story warehouse M, 32% came from the 4th floor of 7-story warehouse X, 12% came from the 5th floor of 7-story warehouse Z. This batch of Booker's has a beautiful color that previews the complexity you will experience when you stick your nose into the glass for the first time. The brown sweets come through with some slight vanilla notes. The taste is big and bold, and this batch is bottled straight from the barrel - just the way all Booker's batches have been since Dad created his namesake brand more than 30 years ago. The finish is long and warm. This will be a great batch to enjoy as the temperatures start to drop a little and you're watching your favorite football teams this season.