Bourbon Tales, an oral history project produced by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries and the KDA, for which I interviewed Four Roses’ Jim Rutledge and Al Young. For more information, visit nunncenter.org/bourbon.
The KDA also provided photographs for this book, as did a number of individual distilleries (as noted on page) and the Kentucky Department of Travel. (See the copyright page for additional credits.)
Thank you to Jerry Rogers, whose invitation to join the Bourbon Board of Directors at Party Mart has given me many wonderful bourbon-education opportunities.
Thanks also to Stacey Yates for making the introduction that led to this book, and to Tim W. Jackson, senior acquisitions editor at AdventureKEEN, for his patience, his kindness, and his skill in fending off the production team.
Thank you to all of the teachers who honed my use of language, including, but not limited to, Nancy Basham, Pauline Weis, Brenda “The Grammar Goddess” Martin, and James D. Ausenbaugh.
Thank you to my mother, Joyce J. Harris, who read to me every day when I was little, and to my father, Carl Harris, who demonstrated that anything worth doing is worth doing right. Their love and belief in me taught me to believe in myself. I wish my father had lived to see this book, but his delight that I was writing it is enough.
Finally, thank you to my two bright and beautiful children, Harper and Clay, who inspire me to be a better person (and who shot some of the photos in this book), and to my wonderfully supportive husband, Chad, who is a better person but puts up with me anyway. I love you all more than I can say. Cheers!
Interior of Brown-Forman’s office on Louisville’s Whiskey Row, circa 1890 (Photo courtesy of Brown-Forman)
INTRODUCTION
ALONG THE OHIO RIVER in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, bourbon’s future is rising from its past.
At the turn of the 20th century, Brown-Forman warehoused hundreds of barrels of Old Forester bourbon in a three-story brick building at 117 W. Main St., a bustling thoroughfare then known as “Whiskey Row” for the scores of spirits companies located there. As a strategic shipping hub, Louisville was once the center of the bourbon universe. But when Prohibition was enacted in 1920, most of the distilling companies were shuttered and Brown-Forman, which had been granted one of six licenses in the nation to sell bourbon for medicinal purposes, left downtown for a location several miles south, where it could store the thousands of barrels it acquired during consolidation of other distillers’ inventories.
In early 2016, the sounds of hammers and power saws echoed inside the building at 117 W. Main and its next-door neighbor at 119, both steadied from the outside by steel rods spread like poker hands. (You’d probably need a little propping up, too, if you were 159 years old.) Unfurled across their facades, a large banner proclaims, OLD FORESTER DISTILLERY: OPENING IN 2017.
More than 80 years after this river city’s Whiskey Row faded into obscurity, distillers and civic leaders are betting that the recent global thirst for bourbon will continue. Just a few blocks east of the Old Forester site, Angel’s Envy has opened its own distillery behind the facade of another 19th century–era building. As you travel farther west on Main, you’ll pass the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience, a microdistillery and tourist attraction, at 6th Street; the old Fort Nelson Building at 8th Street, which Michter’s is rehabbing into a boutique distillery; and, at 10th Street, Peerless Distilling a craft distillery that bears the same name and Distilled Spirits Plant number (50) as the distillery that owner Corky Taylor’s great-grandfather operated in the early 1900s in Henderson, Kentucky.
Angel’s Envy’s new Whiskey Row distillery, which opened in November 2016 on Louisville’s Main Street, incorporates the arched windows and vaulted ceilings of a century-old warehouse. (Photos: Kevin Curtis/Louisville Distilling Co.)
Angel’s Envy’s new Whiskey Row distillery, which opened in November 2016 on Louisville’s Main Street, incorporates the arched windows and vaulted ceilings of a century-old warehouse. (Photos: Kevin Curtis/Louisville Distilling Co.)
Angel’s Envy’s new Whiskey Row distillery, which opened in November 2016 on Louisville’s Main Street, incorporates the arched windows and vaulted ceilings of a century-old warehouse. (Photos: Kevin Curtis/Louisville Distilling Co.)
These projects represent just a fraction of the more than $400 million that distilling companies have invested in capital projects in Kentucky since 2008: new stills, bottling lines, and warehouses, and larger visitor centers. And another $630 million in projects is planned over the next five years.
A new wave of craft distilleries is rising not just in Kentucky but across the country. Kentucky actually ranks only 11th on the list of states’ total numbers of distillers nationwide. But its numbers include all of the industry giants—Brown-Forman, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, Buffalo Trace, Maker’s Mark, and Heaven Hill among them—and, as a result, Kentucky produces about 95% of the world’s supply of bourbon.
Since the year 2000, that production has increased by more than 315%, to 1.89 million barrels in 2015. And more than 6.6 million barrels are currently maturing in warehouses in the Bluegrass State.
People aren’t just drinking Kentucky bourbon; they’re coming to visit it. In 2016, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour recorded 1,065,961 visits, breaking the 1 million mark for the first time. That number is expected to grow as more distilleries join the tours.
MB Roland Kentucky bourbon. (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
The Old Pogue Distillery. (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
Still at Old Pogue. (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
Barrels at Copper & Kings American Brandy Co. (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
Boone County Distilling’s Tanner’s Curse. (Photo courtesy of Boone County Distilling Co.)
Corsair product samples. (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
Close-up of Wilderness Trail still. (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
New Riff Distillery (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)