Soon there will be a way to enjoy Chambers Bay without suffering, so long as you keep the number of shots to a minimum, of course. Chambers Bay Distillery will soon introduce a bourbon that seems likely to be more palatable than the golf course.
“On that note, we’re making a wheated bourbon,” distillery co-founder Alan Davis said. “We use wheat as a secondary grain as opposed to rye. It makes it a little sweeter. It’s got more of a caramel note.”
Davis and his partner Jeff Robinette are University Place, Wash., natives, who play golf at Chambers Bay about once year and decided their distillery should co-opt the name of the course that hosted the U.S. Open recently. “We’re in University Place, a couple miles north of the golf course, and we just like the name,” Davis said. “Plus the fact there’s a world class golf course [by the same name] doesn’t hurt.”
That there is no bay called Chambers is beside the point, though there is a remote possibility that eventually there might be a city called Chambers Bay. There is a movement afoot to drop the name of the current name of the city in favor of the golf course that put University Place on the map. That wouldn’t hurt, either.
The name that references a body of water, moreover, fits the distillery, which features a maritime theme; it is aging its bourbon in barrels on a floating boathouse in a Tacoma marina. The idea is rooted in history, from transporting whiskey across the seas that the shifting tides and the waves agitate the bourbon, accelerating the aging process.
The first release will be in November, and the idea hasn’t escaped them that serving Chambers Bay at Chambers Bay would seem a natural fit. “It will be one of the first places we approach once we have the bourbon ready,” he said.