Fans of Joe Pickett can now drink like the popular mystery-solving game warden created by Wyoming author C.J. Box.
Along with Box, Pine Bluffs Distilling is celebrating the release of a collaboration with Box to create a uniquely Wyoming whiskey inspired by Pickett.
The distillery is hosting a coming out party for its Joe Pickett “Bottled in Bond” Bourbon on Saturday, and it will be available at select retailers around the state Friday.
“We are going to have a food truck here and a band here and C.J. will be here autographing books and bottles from 5 p.m. until 7,” said Chad Brown, co-owner of Pine Bluff’s Distilling.
An allocation of the bourbon is already available as a presale item online through the distillery’s website, and Brown said the online sales represent a small portion of the 1,000 bottles made with the special blend. Pre-sale orders will take about three weeks for delivery.
The label design for the product includes the “Joe Pickett” name and an elk rack.
Brown said the final product is worthy of the game warden and down-to-earth hero who has appeared in more than 20 C.J. Box novels since the first one in 2001, “Open Season.”
The bourbon itself is pretty dang good, too, Brown said.
“It is very, very easy to drink and delicious,” he said.
Box agreed.
“Chad and Theresa (Brown) set it all up so we could taste different barrels and choose the best blend,” he said. “It turned out terrific.”
Jennie Gordon, Laurie Box, C.J. Box, Theresa Brown and Pine Bluff’s Distilling co-owner Chad Brown posed for a photo at the tasting event last year to determine the bourbon blend (Courtesy Pine Bluffs Distilling) 
The Joe Pickett bourbon is available for pre-sale at the Pine Bluffs Distilling website. (Courtesy Pine Bluffs Distilling)
Limit To One Bottle At Release Party
Those who go to the release party will be restricted to buying one bottle per person. Brown said the shipment allocated for retailers was sent out by the state Wednesday morning.
Box will be available autograph bottles bought at the distillery and bottles purchased at retailers may be brought to the release party for Box to sign.
The release of the bourbon this spring comes after February’s release of Box’s latest novel “Battle Mountain.” He will be signing books at the event as well.
The bourbon is listed for $65 on the Pine Bluffs Distilling website and is characterized as embodying the “values of Joe Pickett: integrity, resilience and quiet strengths that stands the test of a noisy world.”
Brown said that the distillery expects to sell out its allotment of the stock Saturday.
A portion of the proceeds from the whiskey sales will go to the Wyoming Hunger Initiative. Box’s wife serves on the charity’s board. The charity was created by Gov. Mark Gordon’s wife, Jennie.
The specially named bourbon is the result of Brown approaching Box with the idea of a whiskey to honor his bourbon-drinking protagonist.
Box said he learned a lot about the whiskey-making process through the collaboration.
Box told Cowboy State Daily in November when the plan for the bourbon was first announced that it was important for a Wyoming distillery to produce a Joe Pickett bourbon.
Box said knowing that Pine Bluffs uses locally sourced grains is “very important.”
He also said it was hard to remember back to the formation of the character and any decisions he initially made about whether Pickett would drink and what.
“I mean, it goes back a long way where at night he would have a bourbon and water, and for a while he and his friend Nate Romanowski would have Wyoming Whiskey,” he said.
This week, Box said there “possibly” could be another special brew in the future honoring another character in his novels.
Would Joe Pickett buy his own brand of bourbon?
“I would hope so,” Box said.
