Old Forester President's Choice is one of the most storied bottlings in modern bourbon. Introduced in the 1960s by then-president Brown-Forman boss Owsley Brown, the bottling was a single-barrel selection personally chosen by the company's president and offered only to friends, business associates and favoured retailers. It was never a standard commercial release — bottles were given as gifts or sold in tiny quantities — and it is now one of the most coveted labels in bourbon collecting.
Each bottle came from a single hand-selected barrel, bottled at 100 proof, with the fill level and barrel number written by hand on the label. Because the program ran on and off for decades and drew from a wide range of barrels, no two bottles are truly alike. What they shared was the imprimatur of the man whose name was on the company letterhead, and an expectation of quality to match it.
The examples I have been fortunate enough to taste share a distinct character — dense toffee, dark cherry, polished mahogany and old tobacco leaf on the nose, then a thick oily palate of brown sugar, dried fig, black walnut and worn leather. The finish is extraordinarily long, drying on dark oak, clove and a whisper of smoke. It drinks like bourbon from an older, slower era.
President's Choice is now essentially a ghost — a bottle you are more likely to encounter in an auction catalogue than on a shelf. But it sits at the heart of Old Forester's heritage, and it explains why the distillery's modern limited releases are taken so seriously.
