To Celebrate, These Boys Want To Fry You Some Chicken
Next month Garrison Brothers Distillery will achieve a major milestone; we will fill our 10,000th bourbon barrel with the most delicious, delightful, sinfully good brown liquor ever made. For us that’s a pretty big deal. So, we’re going to put on a little hootenanny.
The 56th Annual Peach Jamboree, Parade and Rodeo is Friday, June 16 and Saturday, June 17. There’s a rodeo and dance each night. Mark Chesnutt is performing at the dance. The Peach Parade meanders through town Saturday morning at 10. And the boys round here know how to dress up a tractor. Garrison Brothers will have a float in the parade and we’re sponsoring the bull riding at the rodeo.
Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner is going down on Saturday, June 17 from noon to 4 at Garrison Brothers Distillery in gorgeous Hye, Texas. For the uninitiated, Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner is our annual celebration of everything Hye along with our sister city, Stonewall. Immediately after the Peach Parade, at noon, everybody is invited back to Garrison Brothers Distillery for a fried chicken lunch in our barrel barn. Come early though because we WILL run out of chicken and lunch is first come, first-served.
If this all sounds hokey as hell to you, well, it is. This is the seventh year in a row that we have held Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner immediately after the Stonewall Peach Parade to raise money for the Hye Preservation Society. This will be the best and biggest chicken dinner yet and we are expecting more than 500 guests. We’re going to have two parties underway simultaneously.
The Barrel Barn Hoedown will feature the live whiskey and wine barrel auction. Six of the prettiest painted bourbon barrels you’ve ever seen will be auctioned off. The barrels were bought at the auction last year and have been painted by local artists. We’ll also offer an Afternoon in Hye gift package, which is a tour of the area aboard a Cellar Rat Wine Tours shuttle, featuring lunch at Hye Market, a wine tasting at William Chris Vineyards, a tour and tasting at Garrison Brothers Distillery, and an afternoon of cold beer and burgers with friends at The Albert Ice House and The Pig Pen.
The second event is for more respectable types like my wife. It’s our Garrison Garden Party out on the great lawn in front of our gift shop. Underneath the live oak trees, and an enormous, well-ventilated tent, we’ll have a washer pitching tournament, acoustic music from our friend Scooter Pearce and the 10,000th barrel on display for everyone to sign.
At both parties, you can eat all the chicken, potato salad, cole slaw and biscuits and gravy that you want. The parties are BYOB though we’ll have some beer there. We’ll also be drinking wines from William Chris Vineyards, lemonade, iced tea, peach-bourbon tea, and of course, plenty good bourbon.
Guests attending Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner can choose to have their lunch served at the Garden Party or in the Barrel Barn. If you choose an All Access Pass, you can eat at either location. But whichever wristband you choose, you are still welcome to move between the parties throughout the day. We’ll have our Polaris Ranger, a couple of golf carts, and the Hayless Hay Ride ferrying guests up and down the hill. We’ll also have ponies on hand for the more ambitious who want to ride up and down the hill on horseback.
As always, it will be hotter than hades, so the dress code is casual/half-naked.
To make a reservation for Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner, click here.
You can learn more about everything going on in Stonewall and buy event tickets at http://www.stonewalltexas.com/
We hope to see ya’ll there.
