Lucky Seven’s New Yorker Inside the Blending House with Master Blender Ashleigh Barnes

We visit the Blending House in Kentucky and sit down with Ashleigh Barnes, the master blender behind Lucky Seven and Curley. Ashleigh brings us the New Yorker, an Amburana finished bourbon that tastes like hummingbird cake, oatmeal cream pies and dessert in a glass. She explains how she manages such a powerful finishing wood by tasting at day five, pulling liquid at the exact moment it peaks, and reusing the same barrels to create deeper and more controlled layers.

Ashleigh also walks us through the new blending and bottling facility, the innovative rick houses and the approach to scaling without losing craft. She tells stories about the teams she works with, the people she blends for, and the festival moments that make the bourbon world feel like family.

 

Chapters:

00:13 The perfect pop
00:49 Meeting Ashleigh at the Blending House
01:23 What Amburana really does
02:23 Dessert notes and childhood memories
04:47 Building the blending facility
06:11 Rick houses and innovation
07:42 Blending and meeting drinkers
09:10 Bourbon, stories and family
10:35 Ashleigh’s path through Buffalo Trace and Four Roses
11:30 The Elmer T. Lee project
12:17 Keeping memories in every bottle

We talk through her background at Buffalo Trace and Four Roses, the skills she learned from legendary mentors, and the moment she helped blend the commemorative Elmer T. Lee release. It is a conversation filled with flavour, memory and joy, and the perfect look at what it means to shape a bourbon from idea to bottle.