Napa Valley may be known for great wines, but it is also home to one of the best steakhouses in North America: Cole’s Chop House is the best of the best and where locals go for meat. Ask anyone in the Valley, and they’ll tell you the same thing: run, don’t walk! As befits the nation’s oldest wine region, a trip to the restaurant allows a visual contrast between the world which produced the 1886 hand-hewn native stones of the walls and the Douglas fir used in the floors and the world of today which is capable of hanging an open-air mezzanine, arcing above the action at the antique, Honduran-mahogany bar. Designed by partners Chef Greg Cole and Elizabeth Fairbairn, the most recent incarnation of the historic Williams-Kyser building honors the late-nineteenth century, the time period which produced the original chop houses the restaurant conjures, while bringing it into today: modern Americana, to put it best.

Opened in 2000, today’s Cole’s Chop House has been declared the Zagat Best Bay Area steak house a half dozen times for the 21-day dry-aged prime steaks, formula-fed veal, New Zealand lamb, local seafood specials, and in a nod to the truly Old School, hash browns as one of the sides. Cole’s has been justly celebrated in the past, but what is new is the Cole’s Chop House Special Barrel Selection Bourbon, made for the restaurant’s loyal customers in the Valley who appreciate the affair between steaks and spirits. And as steak is the quintessential American food, bourbon is “America’s spirit,” says co-creator and Cole’s Chop House Manager Eric Keffer in discussing the restaurant’s first-but-probably-not-last bourbon release.

Eric and fellow bourbon lover and long-time Celadon employee, Many Yajeya, traveled to Kentucky and visited Woodford, one of the first distillers in America, to blend and then bottle Cole’s own special barrel of bourbon. There, starting with ten different barrels ranging in age from seven to fourteen years and with different proportions of rye and corn, they put together four different blends for tasting trials. With the help of an original Kentucky Master Distiller, Chris Morris, they produced the final barrel that was subsequently bottled as Cole’s exclusive bourbon. The resulting 180 bottles contain a mix of 10- and 12-year-old bourbons with a higher-than-usual 18% rye content, giving a spicier finish than other bourbons. Created to be served in specialty cocktails like Cole’s Manhattan, neat, or with the round, two-inch Brick ice cube in mind, the cinnamon, clove1 and dried apricot nose and body are nicely accented with toasty oak and a spicy kick from the rye. Though the label was designed by Greg Cole, also presenting the idea of modern Americana with its layout, it isn’t named for the restaurant at his request: since it was Eric and Many who did all the work, they deserved to have their names on it. And given how supportive locals are of Greg, it really doesn’t come as much of a surprise that he’d support his own team in the same way. Come on down to Main Street and enjoy for yourself!