Well, here we are, finally starting up one of these blog-things. I ain’t gonna lie to you…we’re mainly doing this to drive more of y’all to our website so you can pick up some of our award-winning BBQ products. But if you follow along with us, you’ll get to hear some fun stories from our years spent out on the road as a competitive rib-slingin’ team. We’ll also be posting some great recipes and cooking videos from our experience as caterers and restaurateurs. And if we do convince y’all to click over to our website (www.BourbonQ.com, by the way) and you decide to buy our stuff, you’ll occasionally find some great special offers here on the blog that will only be available to you, our loyal fans.So you’re probably asking yourself by now, “Who are these damn hillbillies, and why should I care what they have to say?” First of all, it’s rude to call people names. Stop that. If you must know, we’re a small, family-owned barbecue sauce company that started out doing deli sandwiches, side dishes, and the occasional pig roast out of the Prospect General Store in Prospect, Kentucky back in 1984. While there, the New York Times recognized our little country store as having the Best Country Hams available for mail order. We were certainly blown away by this honor, but still longed for the riches and glamorous lifestyle of the traveling barbecue circuit…read that with a healthy serving of sarcasm….
Anyway, we decided to buy one of those “big grills” – a 6-foot tow-behind that seemed huge to us at the time – and try our hand at slingin’ ribs. One of the first contests we cut our teeth on was the World Invitational Rib Championship in Richmond, Virginia. Eight small-town hillbillies (we can use that word, you can’t) packed up their goodies on pickup trucks and puttered down the road, Clampett-style, to the big city. After a grueling weekend stacked up against 20 of the best competitive teams in the world, we kicked more than a little ass and returned home as World Invitational Rib Champions!
And so began more than a decade of supremacy on the regional and national rib circuit. You can read about all of the awards we racked up over on our website, www.BourbonQ.com, in case you forgot. All the while, we were constantly tasting new flavors and tinkering with our recipes to find a sauce we could really hang our hat on. When we won the internationally-renowned Scovie Award with Pappy’s
XXX White Lightnin’, we knew we were on to something. Before long, we realized we were making more dough selling sauces than we were working the competitive rib circuit. Bodies weary from years of back-breaking work out on the road, it didn’t take long for us to make the call to change careers and become full-time sauce producers and marketers. We haven’t looked back, and our barbecue sauce, spice, and t-shirt catalogs now boast over two dozen products.
What do y’all think? Did we make the right call? Let us know what you think on that Facebook or Twitter machine. Thanks for checking us out, and we hope you’ll come back and listen to more of our ramblings again real soon!