Roundtable selects fourth Booker’s Bourbon release

Booker’s Bourbon has unveiled the fourth batch of its 2015 Collection, which was hand-selected during the brand’s official roundtable tasting.

The variant earned its nickname, “Oven Buster Batch”, from a culinary mishap

Batch 2015-04, also referred to as the “Oven Buster Batch”, is the second of four batches this year to be selected by the Booker’s Bourbon Roundtable during a tasting with Fred Noe, seventh-generation master distiller.

The roundtable panelists are a combination of Bourbon experts, enthusiasts and writers. Charged with deciding Batch 2015-04 were Chuck Cowdery, author of Bourbon, Strange: Surprising Stories of American Whiskey; Geoff Kleinman, founder and managing editor of DrinkSpirits.com; John McCarthy, spirits writer and senior managing editor of Men’s Health; Jack Robertiello, spirits writer; Tony Sachs, blogger for Huffington Post, and guest Fred Minnick, author of Bourbon Curious: A Simple Tasting Guide for a Savvy Drinker.

The variant earned its “Oven Buster Batch” nickname from a culinary mishap by Annis Wickham Noe, wife of Booker and mother of Fred.

She said: “I’ve always been fond of cooking with Bourbon. Years ago, as I was preparing a pork roast, I mistakenly reached for a bottle of my husband’s namesake Bourbon to pour over the roast. The oven sparked from the Bourbon’s high proof and the door flew open — that’s how the Oven Buster nickname was born!”