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On the job at Limestone Trace (Photo courtesy of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association)
A five-story bottle keeps the “bourbon” flowing at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience in downtown Louisville, where guests may sample premium products made by Heaven Hill. (Photos courtesy of Heaven Hill)
Guests may sample premium products made by Heaven Hill. (Photos courtesy of Heaven Hill)
“I think some of that has to do with the millennial generation wanting authenticity and being entrepreneurs, but also the older business generation realizing how important it is to promote your differentiating points,” says Stacey Yates, vice president of marketing communications for the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Not to dis the chains, but most travelers want that authentic experience now.”
Yates has helped to burnish the reputation of what was long regarded as a rough-edged spirit by creating Louisville’s Urban Bourbon Trail, in which member restaurants not only feature at least 50 kinds of bourbon but also use it as an ingredient in fine cuisine and serious cocktails. Social media and mass media have also done their part to make bourbon cool again, she says. “You can’t underestimate the power of Don Draper drinking an old-fashioned on Mad Men. You just can’t. It did for Kentucky what Sideways did for wine country.”
The longstanding annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, the Bourbon Capital of the World, has been joined by other high-profile bourbon events, including the Bourbon Classic in Louisville, in which top mixologists and some of Kentucky’s finest chefs create classic pairings; and the Kentucky Distillers’ Association’s Bourbon Affair, a weeklong “fantasy camp” that offers enthusiasts exclusive opportunities such as the chance to fish with Jim Beam Master Distiller Fred Noe or shoot skeet at Wild Turkey with Master Distiller Jimmy Russell. Each year, the KDA offers 50 Golden Tickets that offer a combination of events and experiences. In 2014, the Affair’s inaugural year, the 50 tickets sold out in a week at $1,350 each. In 2016, at $1,595 apiece, they sold out in 15 minutes.
Additional proof of bourbon’s appeal could be found in the Fantasy Gifts section of the 2015 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, where “eye-popping, jaw-dropping dreams come true.” Nestled between a two-day California coast road trip on custom motorcycles with actor Keanu Reeves ($150,000) and an exploration of the edge of space in a capsule lifted by a high-altitude balloon to 100,000 feet ($90,000) was the Orphan Barrel Project gift, a trip for six to Stitzel-Weller in Louisville to sample rare bourbon finds and create two new blends to be bottled with custom labels. In all, the recipient was promised 24 bottles each of the two blends and the six other Orphan Barrel varieties; a bespoke whiskey cabinet crafted in Kentucky; barware; a leather-bound book about the whiskey; and three nights of luxury accommodations, meals, and first-class travel. The price? A cool $125,000.
The popularity of bourbon is further evident in the variety of businesses jumping on the bourbon bandwagon. There are bourbon chocolates, bourbon-scented soaps and lip balm, furniture made from bourbon barrels, and a new bottled water called Old Limestone that is being marketed as “the official companion of Kentucky Bourbon.” Kentucky grain farmers are even starting to talk about “terroir.”
We’ve come a long way from the time when former Four Roses Master Distiller Jim Rutledge (who was then working at Seagram) and an associate asked for bourbon at a restaurant outside Kentucky. “We both took a drink and almost spit it out,” he says. “We thought, ‘God, what’s wrong with this? Is it poisonous?’ And then we realized that it wasn’t poison—it was just Scotch.”
Jim Rutledge, former Master Distiller at Four Roses (Photo: Carla Carlton)
Scotch whisky (without the e) has dominated the world whiskey market for centuries. That began to change, Rutledge says, when the American bourbon industry started focusing on premium single-barrel and small-batch products. The pendulum has swung so far in the other direction, in fact, that now Scotch producers are highlighting their lighter, mellower whiskies. One Scotch distiller he encountered at trade events has begun aging his spirit in new oak barrels rather than in the used ones typical to Scotch.
“I’d ask some of these other distillers or blenders what they thought about it, and they’d say”—here, Rutledge puts on an expression of disgust—“ ‘It tastes like bourbon.’ They were really irritated. They didn’t like it at all. You’d see them turning red. They’d get mad. But that’s the biggest compliment of all, when Scotch starts to emulate what we’re doing.”
Can this bourbon boom continue? I’ll try to answer that question in the following pages. Along the way, I’ll take you on a short journey through the history of the amber spirit and introduce you to some of the industry’s biggest personalities. I’ll explain how bourbon is made and how it differs from other kinds of whiskey. I’ll teach you how to taste bourbon, and I’ll give you a vocabulary to describe what you’re tasting. If that sounds a lot like school, take heart: there won’t be a test, and the homework is delicious.
1
Straight Talk: A Shot of Bourbon History
“I have never in my life seen a Kentuckian who didn’t have a gun, a pack of cards, and a jug of whiskey.”
—US President Andrew Jackson
TRUE OR FALSE: Bourbon can be made only in Kentucky.
If you answered “true,” you’re not alone. You’re also wrong. But don’t feel bad; I’ve encountered plenty of people who firmly hold that conviction—including bartenders in Kentucky who should know better. The truth is, you can make bourbon in any state, as long as it’s one of the United States of America. The confusion is easy to understand, however, as Kentucky produces all but about 5% of the bourbon in the world.
Now let’s further test your knowledge of bourbon with a short multiple-choice quiz. Yes, you in the back with your hand up: how can I help you? The introduction said there wouldn’t be any tests? Well, no one really reads the introduction, do they? If you did, I’m sorry. I lied. Ahem.
The correct answer to all three: d. Don’t be offended, by the way—I don’t mean that you don’t know the answers to these questions; I mean that I don’t.
The truth is, despite what you may have read or heard elsewhere, nobody knows for sure who “invented” bourbon, or when or how it got its name. People were too busy just trying to survive back then to write much down. What we do know is that people have been making bourbon in Kentucky since before there even was a Kentucky, when the land that is now the Bluegrass State was part of Virginia.
What follows are some other things we know—or our best guesses. Much of this information was gleaned from bourbon historian Michael Veach’s excellent book, Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage; The Kentucky Encyclopedia, edited by John Kleber; the Kentucky Bourbon Timeline, commissioned by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association; and interviews with Brown-Forman Master Distiller Chris Morris, who conducts a Bourbon Academy several times per year at the Woodford Reserve Distillery.
The Birth of Bourbon
The