PINHOOK BOURBON’S NEXT SARATOGA BLEND IS COMING THIS SUMMER
Last year, we featured Saratoga Maiden, Pinhook Bourbon’s unique Saratoga-blend crafted by a team of Saratoga bartenders. This year Pinhook’s founder, master blender + distributor decided to engage their biggest accounts; the restaurants and bars selling the most Pinhook product.
The Dishing was invited behind the scenes at Kindred, Saratoga, to join master blender Sean Josephs + 18 handpicked industry players as they worked together to decide the next Pinhook blend.
— SDP
The name Pinhook comes from the old Kentucky term for buying young, unraced thoroughbreds, nurturing them to maturity, and selling them as they reach racing age. The Pinhook Bourbon brand pays tribute to the parallels between horse racing and bourbon. Read the Dishing’s full story on Pinhook’s first bartender-blend, ‘Saratoga Maiden,’ here and our tastemaker interview with Pinhook master blender Sean Josephs here.
For this year’s blend, Pinhook and Skurnick identified the area bars and restaurants selling the most Pinhook Bourbon and invited them to collaborate on the next industry blend. After sampling 7 five-year barrel-aged bourbons, the group of 18 professionals tasted them in combinations of four to come up with a final product.
After identifying the characteristics of each bourbon, from texture and mouthful to sweetness, spice, structure, integrity and intensity of alcohol, the team worked through five combinations to reach near consensus on the final blend. Leading the creative process, Sean Josephs emphasized the science of blending here was less about personal preference and more importantly about creating a balanced and unique expression.
Participants included GMs, bar managers and sommeliers from the Bourbon Room, Bocage Champagne Bar, Coatroom, Kindred, Panzas, Purdy’s, Rhea, Standard Fare and Seneca, all in Saratoga Springs, as well as Normanside Country Club in Delmar + The Shaker & Vine in Schenectady, N.Y.
Given the unprecedented response to the Saratoga Maiden release, Pinhook will produce a larger quantity—estimated “around 1,760 to 1,920 bottles after they are proofed down to 100”—to be distributed throughout the Capital Region. And the name? Stahl tells me that this blend will be named the Saratoga Allowance Bourbon. Why? “We are taking the bourbon through the stages of a horse’s racing career.” If all goes as planned, the Saratoga Allowance Bourbon will be released in June 2026.
