There's something happening in Chattanooga that most whiskey drinkers haven't caught onto yet. While big-name bottles gather dust on back bars across the country, one chef has been quietly building something different – a collection of spirits that can't be found anywhere else, each one carrying a story from the road.
Erik Niel runs three restaurants in Chattanooga: Easy Bistro & Bar, Main Street Meats, and Little Coyote. Between Easy Bistro and Main Street Meats alone, there are more than 400 whiskey bottles on the shelves. Little Coyote takes a different path, focusing on agave spirits with over 200 bottles of tequila and mezcal. The MICHELIN Guide recently noticed what Niel has been building, including all three spots in their inaugural American South Selection and giving Little Coyote a Bib Gourmand award.
But the real story isn't in the awards or the bottle counts. It's in what Niel started doing back in 2020, when he noticed something shifting at the bar.
When Familiar Gets Tired
By 2020, Niel could sense his guests getting restless. The same whiskey labels kept appearing, the same bottles making the rounds. It wasn't just about variety for variety's sake. Major distilleries can only send so much product to each restaurant, and when you're trying to keep a serious whiskey program stocked, those allocations run thin fast.
Niel's solution was straightforward but ambitious: travel to small distilleries around the country and hand-pick individual barrels for Easy Bistro. Not just order from a distributor. Not just take what's allocated. Actually go there, taste what's in the barrel, and bring back something distinctive that supports the smaller producers he believed in.
It worked. What started at Easy Bistro has now spread across all three of his concepts, creating a hand-picked barrel program that includes bourbon and rye whiskies from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas distilleries, plus tequila and mezcal sourced directly from Mexico.
The Selection Process
This isn't done over the phone or through a catalog. Niel personally selects each barrel in person at the distillery. The range covers established names like Old Forester and Willett, but also smaller operations – places like Garrison Brothers out in Texas and New Riff in Newport, Kentucky.
For tequila and mezcal, the travel gets more involved. Niel makes trips to Jalisco and Oaxaca, walking through distilleries including Paladar, Herradura, and Cinco Sentidos. Each barrel gets picked, then bottled at the distillery and shipped directly to the restaurants.
Once a barrel arrives in Chattanooga, Niel and his team name it based on two things: the origin story of the distillery visit and the flavor personality of what's inside. Every bottle gets its own distinct identity, something the servers can actually talk about when a guest asks what makes this pour different from what they'd get down the street.
Notes From the Road
The barrel pick notes Niel has shared from 2024 and 2025 don't read like typical product descriptions. They're closer to journal entries – capturing the setting of each distillery visit, detailed impressions of what he tasted, and the thought process behind naming each barrel.
These aren't academic tasting notes with numerical scores. They're observations from someone spending time in the places where these spirits are made, paying attention to what makes each one worth bringing home. The details matter because context matters – understanding where something comes from changes how it tastes.
Many of these selections represent the first time these particular barrels have made their way to Chattanooga. They're exclusive not as a marketing angle but as a natural result of the process – when you're picking single barrels in person, there's only one of each.
Beyond the Big Names
The hand-picked barrel program addresses a practical problem in the restaurant business. Relying on major distillery allocations means competing with every other bar and restaurant for the same limited bottles. It means your inventory depends on decisions made in corporate offices far from your dining room.
By working directly with smaller distilleries and personally selecting barrels, Niel created a different kind of supply chain – one built on relationships and direct access rather than allocation lists. It means his bars can offer something genuinely different while supporting producers who might not have the distribution muscle of the major brands.
For distilleries, especially smaller operations, restaurant barrel picks provide steady business and direct feedback from someone who understands both spirits and hospitality. For guests, it means sitting down to a pour that hasn't been marketed to death, that carries a specific story from a specific place.
The Agave Connection
While the whiskey program spans multiple states and distilleries, Little Coyote's focus on agave spirits required a different approach. Tequila and mezcal production is deeply tied to specific regions in Mexico, to particular families and generations of knowledge about working with agave plants.
Niel's trips to Jalisco and Oaxaca mean tasting at the source, understanding the production methods, and building relationships with distilleries that might not have much presence in the American market. The result is a collection of over 200 bottles that tells a more complete story about agave spirits than most bars even attempt.
What It Actually Means
Strip away the romance of distillery visits and barrel selection, and what remains is a different business model for how restaurants approach their beverage programs. Instead of being at the mercy of distributors and allocations, there's direct access to producers. Instead of competing for the same bottles as every other account, there's exclusive inventory that can't be found elsewhere.
For someone walking into Easy Bistro or Main Street Meats or Little Coyote, it means asking "what do you have that's interesting?" actually leads somewhere. The servers aren't reciting from the same script heard at ten other bars. They're talking about a barrel Niel picked in Kentucky last fall, or a mezcal sourced from a family operation in Oaxaca.
The hand-picked barrel program also sidesteps the usual whiskey fatigue. When everyone's chasing the same allocated bottles, the conversation gets stale. When the selection is built around what's actually interesting to taste rather than what's hyped, the focus shifts back to what's in the glass.
Building Something Different
What started as a solution to inventory challenges and guest fatigue in 2020 has evolved into something more substantial. The hand-picked barrel program isn't a side project anymore – it's central to the identity of all three restaurants.
The MICHELIN recognition suggests the industry is noticing, but the real measure is simpler: people keep coming back to see what Niel brought in this time. The program works because it delivers on a basic promise – something you can't get anywhere else, selected by someone who spent time understanding where it came from.
In an industry often driven by trends and hype, there's something refreshing about a chef loading up his truck and driving to distilleries, tasting through barrels, and bringing back the ones that actually impressed him. No intermediaries, no marketing spin, just direct access to distinctive spirits that support the producers making them.
The journal-like notes from distillery visits capture something important: these aren't transactions, they're relationships built over time with producers Niel genuinely believes in. That shows up in the final pour, in the stories the servers can tell, and in a bar program that feels like it has a point of view rather than just following allocation lists.
For anyone tired of seeing the same bottles everywhere, Niel's approach offers a different path forward. It requires more work, more travel, more time spent tasting and building relationships. But the result is a spirits program that actually stands out, that gives guests a reason to pay attention, and that supports distilleries doing interesting work outside the mainstream spotlight.
