by Steven Doyle
Dan Garrison set out to make what he and many others would consider some of the finest bourbon available in the country, certainly within the Texas borders. Garrison Brothers started out making his whiskey back in 2005 and made many road trips back and forth to Kentucky to learn from the masters. Today what we experience from sipping his product is nothing short of ethereal.
“I’d go to Kentucky, I’d take the tours, I’d draw some sketches of what they had up there. These places are enormous refineries. They’re huge industrial complexes, so trying to dummy that down so a couple of rednecks from Texas could operate it was a real bitch. There is no distillery-to-go. If you want to open up a brewery or winery, you can go online and order all of the equipment you’ll need. But for a bourbon distillery nobody had every done it before outside of Kentucky or Tennessee, so it was a whole new animal,” said Garrison in a recent interview.
This Garrison moved on to make his product and it can be finally found in the North Texas area.
Today Garrison’s product is recognized as one of the top 50 small batch bourbons made. With a palate of leather, buttery maple and toffee, and a finish that is smooth, spicy and clean, Garrison Brothers scores high on our list of whiskeys.
Recently we were invited to taste Garrison’s product and meet the maker himself at a very special and extremely well attended dinner at Hibiscus on Henderson in Dallas. Not only were we eager to sample Garrison’s whiskey, but also to see how the new exec Jason Ferraro and wunderkind chef de cuisine Michael Ehlert were shaping up the kitchen at Hibiscus.
We are happy to report that the meal was amazing and made for an excellent pairing for Garrison. Let is share a few of the dishes.
At this all game dinner the first course was paired with the Fall 2011 batch. being the oldest bourbon we tasted that night it was the smoothest by far, but the others were certainly interesting. The pairing was ideal for this delicious venison carpaccio.
Sipping Spring of 2012 we enjoyed the chef’s BBQ spice rubbed Texas quail with pancetta spoonbread and slow braised greens.
To match up with Fall of 2012 we had a sampling of ‘all things pork’ with this mosit and tender boar chop, a terrine and crispy house-made chicarrones.
To finish off the meal we sampled the latest batch of whiskey to come off the line along with this Sweet Potato Molten cake with a house-made Pecan Ice Cream.
Hibiscus is rocking the house on Henderson.
