Can Tennessee beat Kentucky at bourbon? Peyton Manning thinks so and he isn’t alone.
In the 1990s, Peyton Manning’s Tennessee Volunteers usually whipped the Kentucky Wildcats in football. Now he’s taking on an icon of the commonwealth: Bourbon.
Manning is part owner of Sweetens Cove Tennessee Bourbon, which launched last year in a very limited release. The bourbon is now available in Kentucky.
But the star player on this whiskey team is one that bourbon fans know well: Marianne Eaves, a former protege of Brown-Forman master distiller Chris Morris who helped relaunch the Castle & Key Distillery in Versailles.
Eaves, who left Castle & Key in 2019, is now on a peripatetic voyage of spirit discovery, accompanying a traveling circus with her partner, a toddler and another baby on the way.
And she’s the palate behind Sweetens Cove Bourbon, tasting 260-plus barrels to arrive at a blend that she told the Dallas Morning News could become “Tennessee’s Pappy Van Winkle.”
Eaves knows what it means to compare her product to one of the most sought-after bourbons.
“People really covet Pappy and I think this could become like that,” Eaves told the Herald-Leader.
Looking to buy? Well, with a suggested price of $200 a bottle, you could say it already is a bit like Pappy, which also retails for hundreds of dollars if you can ever find it in the store. In Lexington, Justins’ House of Bourbon is among the retailers slated to carry and sell the Sweetens Cove Bourbon.
“If you’re going to be involved in bourbon and spirits, two things are important,” Manning told the Dallas paper. “A, you’ve gotta have a story. We feel like we have a good story with this golf course: It’s small, it’s hidden, hard to get to. It’s this hidden treasure. And that’s kind of what the bourbon is, as well.
“The second thing is, it has to taste good. And Sweetens Cove Bourbon does taste very good because of Marianne and her expertise.”
What’s the story? The bourbon is named for the Sweetens Cove Golf Club, a public course near Chattanooga. Manning and more than three dozen other investors, including his brother Eli, tennis pro Andy Roddick, sports broadcaster Jim Nantz and real estate developer Mark Rivers partnered to revive the course, which was falling into disrepair, then hit upon the idea of creating their own bourbon for “tee shots.”
They brought in Eaves, who was Kentucky’s first female master distiller, to custom blend their bourbon.
“What differentiates Sweetens Cove is the thoughtful, handcrafted process. Everything flows through me, my palate, my process,” she said. “I think people will really enjoy it.”
This is the second release from Sweetens Cove, which launched last year in Tennessee and Georgia with five distinct batches blended by Eaves. This year’s version was blended from five lots bourbon from the same distillery, with the oldest barrels aged 16 years.
It’s reportedly George Dickel whiskey but they would not confirm the distillery.
The result, she said, is dark and rich, full for fruity notes, honey and vanilla, as well as a warm and creamy finish.
Eaves said that she is confident Sweetens Cove Bourbon can compete with Kentucky’s finest and it is important that fans realize they are overlooking treasures.
And possibly get beyond the name associated with Tennessee the world over: Jack Daniel’s.
“I think for a long time bourbon outside of Kentucky, in Tennessee in particular, has been seen as a distant cousin,” she said. “This has the opportunity to elevate Tennessee to where it truly deserves to be. The history of distilling is just are rich in Tennessee as in Kentucky.”
Mark Rivers, co-founder of Sweetens Cove Bourbon, agreed, even though he was a bourbon novice before all of this.
He was drawn to the ritual of the golfers taking a shot before playing at the course for the first time, leaving bottles for the next players to find.
“That romantic story was the catalyst to create a Tennessee-born bourbon product that lives up to that,” he said. “I think we might be the premium Tennessee offering. It’s pretty special juice.”
Rivers said he’d been touring Kentucky, sampling with retailers and reviewers. “Despite the biases, the negativity, the snobbery, with they get it to their lips, the reaction’s been one of pleasant surprise,” he said.
The brand is clearly meant to be more than a celebrity vanity project and Rivers said they may look at introducing more moderately priced products.
“We’re clearly poised for growth,” he said. “We’ll always pay respect to Kentucky’s role in the bourbon industry. Our objective is just to be sure Tennessee gets its due credit as well.
“We’ll see if there can be bourbon detente in our time.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
