BOURBON BLOG
January 10, 2011

Want to try something no one in Texas has ever done before?

In February, we’ll be bottling our largest bourbon release ever – more than 80 barrels of our straight bourbon will be emptied into stainless steel tanks, married with crisp, clean rainwater, proofed and entered into bottles. Each hand-numbered and signed bottle is sealed with a cork, wrapped in deerskin lace, and then dipped in hot wax. These bottles will be sold throughout the Hill Country and a few hundred cases will be distributed to fine liquor stores, bars and restaurants in the big cities. (We can’t say where just yet.)

We thought a few of you might like to come to Hye and give us a hand.

A word of warning: Bottling at Garrison Brothers is not for the faint of heart! It means hard work, careful attention to detail, reliable, consistent help, and above all else, patience. Every finished bottle has to get past Inspector Number 1 — me. To get a glimpse of what I mean, please take a look at this 5 minute video our good friend Rob Cordes put together: http://gallery.me.com/robcordes/100000.

We’ll be bottling from 8 am to 5 pm, Monday thru Friday, the weeks of February 7, February 14 and February 28. We need 8 people each day and already have about 40 sensational volunteers. We provide meals, beverages and plenty of bourbon throughout the day. (In fact, tradition holds that we celebrate with a little “quality control” sample every time we finish 200 bottles.)

If you’d like to take part, it will take us a couple of hours to train you, so we ask those who participate to commit to work two full days. At the end of your shift, we’ll reward you with your own bottle to take home with you.

If you can handle your own travel arrangements, and commit to giving us two days hard work, please send an email to Laurel Hoekstra, our Bottling Queen, at laurel@garrisonbros.com and give her your contact information and the 2 days you can work. The deadline for contacting her is Sunday, January 16, so that we can invite others to fill all the slots.

As always, thanks for your support!

SEARCH

RECENT

More from the Bourbon Blog

March 11, 2026

There’s a particular kind of spring morning in the Hill Country that makes you stop talking mid-sentence. The air is cool enough to keep you honest, but the sun is already warming the limestone. A breeze comes through and you catch cedar, damp soil, and that faint chalky smell of caliche dust when a truck […]

January 28, 2026

Out here the Hill Country keeps its own clock. Gates swing slow. Live oaks whisper when they feel like it. The wind rakes a rickhouse roof until it finds the right note. That is where this story started and where it kept circling back, barrel after barrel, summer after summer, until the whiskey finally said […]

RETURN TO BLOG