June 14 is National Bourbon Day and Pensacola is home to one of the best bourbon bars in the United States. Today we celebrate Katie Garrett, Owner and Operator of Old Hickory Whiskey Bar, her crew and one of the best-loved alcoholic spirits in American history — bourbon.
Old Hickory Whiskey Bar is Pensacola’s SPOT to enjoy over 750 whiskeys in a trendy, cozy atmosphere. Think John Dutton’s living room from Yellowstone, but replace the windows with a wall of whiskey. I wouldn’t be surprised if Beth Dutton and Rip strolled through for a pour, it’s right up their alley.
All that being said, it’s no wonder that OHWB is consistently name dropped on The Bourbon Review, Whisky Advocate Magazine and Southern Living. In fact, OHWB has been named one of The Bourbon Review’s “80 Best Bourbon Bars in the US” consecutively since 2015. Now that’s impressive.
“In 2014, just a few months after opening, Old Hickory received it’s first national recognition as one of the best bourbon bars in America by The Bourbon Review, a renowned source for all things bourbon,” said Garrett. “Since then we have been on their list every single year. The Whiskey Advocate, a global source on whisky, has named us one of the top whiskey bars in America three times over the decade.”
In 2013, with no experience in the service industry and degrees in history and historic preservation, signed a contract to lease a building with the vision to transform it into a whiskey bar. The building, dating back to 1881, is right in the heart of downtown Pensacola and the Palafox Historic District.
Katie and her team got straight to work and arrived at 123 S. Palafox St. to start renovating the space. They carefully took the building apart, making sure to keep as much history of the building as they could — including tarnished tin panels entombed in the walls that were repurposed and grace the walls of the bar today.
Old Hickory is named after the 7th U.S. President, Andrew Jackson, also the first Territorial Governor of Florida. Nicknamed “Old Hickory” for his toughness in battle, Jackson was imperative to Florida becoming part of the United States in 1821, when he hoisted the American flag over Florida Territory for the first time in Plaza Ferdinand. Jackson’s personal residence in Pensacola was actually located just across the street from Old Hickory Whiskey Bar, on the corner of Intendencia Street and Palafox Place.
I know two things to be true. Pensacolians love their history and they love their whiskey. Katie Garrett took both of these things, married them together and adopted us all into her world of whiskey. And for that, we couldn’t be more grateful.
“Bringing a national spotlight to Pensacola, my hometown, has become of the most inspiring parts of my journey in entrepreneurship and whiskey. I’m deeply grateful for our city loving us back just as much as we love them,” said Garrett.
Happy National Bourbon Day, Pensacola!
A little bit of bourbon history…
In the mid-1700s, Scots-Irish settlers in the area that is now Virginia and Kentucky began distilling corn — the only grain native to the area, but one which made for excellent whiskey owing to its sweetness. Another geographical factor was also beneficial to the birth of bourbon. The Limestone Shelf region, where all major American whiskeys are still made today, imbued the local water with calcium while filtering out iron. Turns out that high-calcium, low-iron water is excellent when it comes to makin’ moonshine.
We have a clergyman named Elijah Craig to thank for the third major piece of the bourbon puzzle. In the late 1780s, Craig was using old fish barrels to store his spirits. Not surprisingly, fish-flavored wood did not enhance the whiskey’s taste, so Craig started purifying the white-oak barrels by charring the inside.
Then he stamped the barrels with their county of origin (Bourbon County, in his case) and sent them on a 90-day trip down to New Orleans. The charred oak and three-month travel time combined to mellow the whiskey and give it a smooth, smoky, oaky flavor. When New Orleanians requested more of “that whiskey from Bourbon,” the name and the spirit were born.
Fun Fact: Bourbon is indigenous not just to America but, specifically, to the American South, with some 95% of it hailing from Kentucky.
