RIVER NORTH — Gina Caruso’s love of bourbon dates to her very first taste … when she was in grade school.
At the University Club Downtown during her cousin’s high school graduation party, a waiter rolled out the after-dinner drink cart. He served her uncle a fancy bourbon, and for some reason, asked Caruso to pick her poison.
“I said, ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’ ” Caruso said.
And the waiter served the fourth-grader a glass of Kentucky’s finest.
“That first little nip of bourbon was an interesting experience as a 9-year-old,” she said. “It was like, ‘Whoa, what’s this — fire water?’ And it was actually kind of good.”
Don’t fret. Caruso, now the deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Small Business Center, didn’t turn into a junior high school boozer.
But 37 years later, she’s still got a taste for the good stuff.
And Caruso’s rounded up a collection of local women who share her penchant for bourbon to open a Chicago chapter of the Louisville, Ky.-based Bourbon Women Association.
It launches Saturday night with a boozy celebration of American whiskey sisterhood at John Barleycorn (149 W. Kinzie St.) in River North.
The new bourbon-sipping society here — already a collection of 100 aficionados — is evidence of the increasing number of women drinkers in a spirit market that’s historically targeted men.
Heavenly Hill, a Kentucky distillery, released the results of a poll that shows about 30 percent of bourbon drinkers are women — and the number of female bourbon drinkers increased about 50 percent between 2011 and 2014.
Like craft beer geek stereotypes — you know, those passionate chubby guys with fluffy beards — Caruso says “bourbon women” have their own archetype.
“A bourbon woman is someone who is sassy, smart and curious about food and spirit culture,” she said. “Someone of independent means and serious about learning about the spirit culture.”
Caruso says she’s always had an artisanal and entrepreneurial spirit about her. After college she ran a business specializing in making “belly bowls” formed by wrapping clay around pregnant women’s bellies. She managed art fairs in Lakeview and ran the Lake View East chamber of commerce from 1994 to 1998.
“I remember when Doug and Emily from Intelligentsia walked in our office and said we’re going to open a little coffee roaster place down the street … and now it’s an empire,” Caruso said.
“I’ve always been a visual artist and had a territorial approach to helping entrepreneurs make their businesses dynamic. I like to eat and drink local. And for bourbon, that extends to the U.S. I like the foodie epicurean thing … I’m endlessly fascinated with the process. And it spills over into my personal life.”
Caruso’s interest in bourbon blossomed into boosterism about a year ago after reading a story about the Bourbon Women Association. It inspired a trek to Louisville to meet other female bourbon enthusiasts at the group’s annual “Sip-osium” conference.
That’s where she met women from Chicago who shared her love for the American brown liquor that experts say is best when Iowa corn and grains get distilled in Kentucky limestone-filtered water and age to perfection for at least three years in virgin oak barrels.
“I saw all the passion and just an opportunity to come together, and [I] got a fire in the belly for starting a Chicago committee that hosted events and blossomed into the second official branch of Bourbon Women,” Caruso said. “To be a member is a badge of honor for women interested in exploring bourbon culture.”
With the help of fellow bourbon drinkers — women like her who like their spirits served straight — Caruso rounded up 11 distilleries serving samples and a collection of spirit experts with the inside dope on the latest bourbon trends to make the Chicago club’s kickoff special.
Get there early, Caruso says, and you might score a pretty cool “swag bag” aimed to motivate women to better appreciate an American spirit that is overcoming its chauvinistic reputation for being men-only.
But that doesn’t mean Saturday night is a women-only event.
“There’s no need for guys to wear a dress and sneak in,” Caruso said. “We welcome bourbon brothers.”
For more information about the Chicago chapter of the Bourbon Women Association’s kickoff party, click here.
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