Friday, January 1st, 2010
PROOF POSITIVE
BY JACQUI DETWILER
ROLL CALL A distiller rotates barrels of
Maker’s Mark bourbon whiskey in one of the
manufacturer’s bonded warehouses.
PHOTOGRAPH: BOB KRIST/CORBIS
UNTIL FAIRLY RECENTLY, I WORKED PART TIME AS A WAITRESS AT A highly regarded cocktail bar in New York. Known for elaborate pre-Prohibition concoctions and an extensive liquor list, the place attracted some of the city’s most nightlife-savvy patrons. The women in particular were quintessential New York City balancing acts: perfectly manicured and coiffed, teetering from day job to bar in Louboutin heels, with—one assumed—adorable, perfectly behaved children at home. Their lives seemed so pulled together it was as if they arrived in their seats gift-wrapped and topped with a bow. But the minute I approached their tables, the careful packaging would begin to unravel. “What can I get for you tonight?” I would ask. And after a minute of brow furrowing and panicked menu-scanning would come the response:
“Um, a vodka tonic?”
Or worse:
“I’ll have what he’s having.”
But every now and again, we had the bourbon women, the ones who possessed an innate self-assuredness. There was an extra twinkle in their eyes, the learned
scanning of the rack behind the bar. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with ordering a cool vodka tonic under the right circumstances. But with just a few words, these women made it absolutely clear that they would never be caught in a bar unprepared.
“That one’s having a Booker’s … neat,” the bar staff would whisper in the back, exchanging impressed glances. Even during my own nights out on the town, I found myself envious of these women’s ability to define themselves by their favorite whiskey, especially since I was never really sure of my own.
I decided that the best way to learn about bourbon was from the masters who have been distilling it for generations. With help, I could learn to be like the bourbon women, and to do it, I would go to the birthplace of their spirit of choice: Kentucky.
LONG BEFORE BOURBON WAS distilled in Kentucky, people on the other side of the Atlantic were making whiskey. Distilled from a fermented mash of grains, the spirit was created sometime between the sixth and seventh centuries. For most of its existence, it was a clear, harsh, relatively flavorless liquid that worked its magic more in the far reaches of the brain than on the taste buds.
But though whiskey was around for hundreds of years, and made in America since the colonial days, it was in Kentucky where the spirit became, for many, the best thing that ever happened to corn.
After the Whiskey Rebellion (a response to the government’s taxation of whiskey to pay off the national debt), some distillers fled to Kentucky, and in 1779, the Corn Patch and Cabin Rights Rights Law went into effect, granting pioneers 400 acres of land in Kentucky so long as they used it to grow corn and built a house on it.
“These settlers came from whiskey-producing societies,” says Morris. “They were Scottish, Irish and English, and that was just part of their culture.”
Because there was a market—and because corn by itself was a bulky crop to transport—the farmers soon discovered that, according to Morris, “whiskey-making could be quite a lucrative business.”
It’s early morning, and Morris and I are standing in Woodford Reserve’s chilly fermentation room. Here, history hangs like a fog over the cypress tubs of corn beer. This is the very location where Oscar Pepper and James Crowe, two of Kentucky’s early distillers, crafted the first small batches of “modern” bourbon. Evidence of their innovations are everywhere, from the thermometers used to test the temperature of the corn
mix to the precise blend of grains Morris is sifting through his fingers. The air smells like a combination of cornflakes and Belgian beer.
“What made [Kentucky’s] whiskey so good was the lime-enriched water, the annual hot-cold weather cycles and the abundance of white oak. It all just worked together,” Morris says, adding that every whiskey derives its flavor from the same sources: the grain recipe, water, fermentation and distillation processes, and aging period in the charred oak barrels. This was all fairly apparent to the Kentucky whiskey makers—except for the charred barrels, the exact origins of which are still debated.
Aggie, a tour guide at the Maker’s Mark Distillery, shares a commonly held theory: “Back in those days, everything was shipped in barrels,” she says. “Used barrels were cheaper than new ones, so recycling was a popular practice. The insides were charred in order to sterilize them, and that’s what allowed the spirit to pick up caramel flavors from the oak.”
Some people claim that Elijah Craig, one of the earliest bourbon distillers (after whom Heaven Hill’s lush, oaky 18-year-aged variety is named), was actually the first to char the insides of barrels to make bourbon. But no matter how it came about, aging the mixture was the final gust in Kentucky’s perfect storm. “People used to just drink the ‘white dog’—which was what they called unoaked whiskey—off the tap,” Aggie says. “But then once barrels started coming down the river stamped with ‘Bourbon County’ on the top, people started saying, ‘I want that bourbon.’ And that was that.”
Today, the results of these fortuitous events have been formalized into an official category. The term “bourbon” is a designation for only those whiskeys made in the U.S., aged in new charred oak barrels, fermented from at least 51 percent corn, and distilled, barreled and bottled at specific proofs. And the word “proof,” incidentally, comes from an antiquated method of determining the amount of pure alcohol in bourbon: A distiller would mix a small amount of gunpowder in with his final product and attempt to light it. If it burned blue, it was “proof” that the spirit contained the right amount of ethanol.
AS I HEAD SIX MILES SOUTH TO the Buffalo Trace Distillery, a mist hangs over brooks rushing with Kentucky’s legendary limestone-filtered water, noted and loved for its resistance to iron (which, upon coming into contact with whiskey, will ruin an entire barrel). Oak trees tower over glittering ponds and fields of placid cows.
At Buffalo Trace, my guide is Angela Traver, a decorated whiskey woman who serves on the distillery’s tasting board. She leads me through the maze of the whiskey-making operation to one of the sturdy rickhouses where the bourbon barrels are stored while they age. As we walk, Traver tells me about the distillery’s modern-day leak hunters, who wear miners’ helmets and search for cracks in the 550-pound barrels that fill the 600-year-old floors of the warehouse. They also have to keep track of 36 varieties of bourbon—including the Eagle Rare, George T. Stagg and the especially delicious Pappy Van Winkle varieties—throughout the distilling and aging processes. “It’s amazing what the warehouse guys have to do,” she says. “Not only do you have bourbons that range from four to 22 years that have to be removed at different times for bottling, but the barrels are heavy. To keep the racks from toppling over, you have to load and unload evenly from both sides.”
Deep inside the rickhouse, we stop to breathe in the delicious scent of wet wood and bourbon. “What you’re smelling is the “angels’ share,” Traver says as she leads me down a narrow, dimly lit path. “That’s the bourbon that evaporates before the tax men or the bottlers can get it.”
“Which one’s your favorite?” I ask, anxious to find a go-to brand. Her reply is of little help.
“I’m very much a mood drinker,” she says. “When I want something sweet, I’ll drink the Buffalo Trace. Spicy, I’ll drink Eagle Rare. If I’m in the mood for something light, I love the Wellers 7. It’s not that one’s right or wrong, they’re just very different whiskeys.”
As we exit the warehouse, I’m beginning to get nervous. Finding my favorite bourbon is shaping up to be harder than I thought. That is, until I get to Heaven Hill’s Bourbon Heritage Center, where I finally learn how to taste the stuff.
“Stick your nose in the glass, but don’t breathe in unless you want to fry your sense of smell for an hour,” says Joan, my tasting guide, as I take a whiff of 18-year-old Elijah Craig, which has a flavor that opens up with just a drop of water. It’s rich and woody, with traces of heady vanilla. I make a note to myself:“old bourbon=good bourbon.”
“Keep in mind, though, that age doesn’t always make it better,” Joan says. I remember Traver’s “right bourbon for every occasion” philosophy, and recognize that younger flavors have something to offer that age can’t always imitate.
Warning notwithstanding, I take a sip and instantly taste the age—and it’s delicious. Vanilla has always been a flavor I could get behind, and as a veteran cocktail waitress—a position with a rate of turnover that seems to be directly related to the arrival of the local universities’ fall semester—anything that gets better as it gets older sounds good to me. This one ranked up there with the best of the bourbons I had tasted over the weekend.
I SPEND TWO MORE DAYS ON the trail, learning about artisan yeasts at Four Roses Distillery and even dipping my own Maker’s Mark bottle in red wax. But entirely too soon, I have to go back home. I had really hoped to be a bourbon expert by the time I returned, but I still hadn’t found my drink of choice. Sure, I had learned that I prefer older bourbons to more sprightly ones, and I’m even reasonably certain that, given a modern-day Prohibition, I could make a crude batch of white dog in my bathtub. But as I watch the farms and forests of Kentucky fade into a country quilt from the airplane window, I wonder if I will ever find the right brand for me.
About a week later, I end a long night in one of my favorite Manhattan neighborhoods with a visit to a bartender friend of mine, a woman I’ve always admired for her audacity and quick wit. She is without question the kind of person who would have a favorite whiskey.
“What can I get you?” she asks.
I look over the row of bottles behind her, picturing the horse country around Woodford, the home on the Maker’s Mark property and the feisty women in the Buffalo Trace bottling room.
“A Pappy Van Winkle 23,” I say confidently. “Neat.”
She gives me a knowing smile. “I’m a Jim Beam girl, myself.”
Follow the trail
In addition to historic distilleries, the KENTUCKY BOURBON TRAIL passes museums, fantastic restaurants, B&Bs-even a vineyard. If you have three days, try this itinerary:
DAY 1
Start at Woodford Reserve (www.woodfordreserve.com). A tour includes a taste of the high-rye bourbon and Ruth Hunt’s bourbon-flavored chocolate truffles.
Picturesque thoroughbred farm Three Chimneys (www.threechimneys.com) is home to two Kentucky Derby winners, Smarty Jones and Big Brown.
A white clapboard deli on Old Frankfort Pike, Wallace Station (859-846-5161; www.wallacestation.com) serves a hearty Kentucky classic: the inside-out hot brown sandwich, with roasted turkey, ham and white Cheddar sauce.
While visiting Buffalo Trace Distillery (www.buffalotrace.com), consider that, during Prohibition, the whiskey made here was available by prescription.
Once you reach Frankfort, check into The Meeting House Bed & Breakfast (502-226-3226; www.themeetinghousebandb.com). The 1840s home was once used to hide a racehorse from the Confederate Army.
Take a break from bourbon with a glass of wine at Lovers Leap Vineyards and Winery (www.loversleapwine.com), situated on a bluff overlooking the Kentucky River.
The staff at the restaurant Serafini (502-875-5599) knows more about whiskey than many connoisseurs. Pick up some of their tips over pasta and a glass of one of the 70 available bourbons.
DAY 2
Take a tour of the Spanish Estate-style Four Roses Distillery (www.fourroses.us). But pay attention—with their five yeast strains and two mash combinations, lessons on production techniques can get complicated.
Amid the stone-walled brooks and rustling oak trees at the Maker’s Mark Distillery (www.makersmark.com), a National Historic Landmark, you will get to dip your own bottle in red wax and taste zesty bourbon barbecue at the Toll Gate Café.
At Heaven Hill Distilleries’ Bourbon Heritage Center (www.bourbonheritagecenter.com), bone up on your whiskey history before you taste the Elijah Craig and Evan Williams blends. The interactive exhibits include a miniature rickhouse (barrel storage room) and a smell center.
Dig into a plate of bourbon barrel-smoked pork on the My Old Kentucky Dinner Train (502-348-7300; www.kydinnertrain.com) and check out the view when you cross the Jackson Hollow trestle.
The original big house (in operation from 1874-1987) in the back of Jailer’s Inn Bed & Breakfast (502- 348-5551; www.jailersinn.com) is still intact. While some say that this B&B is haunted, it’s a still a luxurious place to “do time.”
DAY 3
Even if you can’t stay for the night, stop by the 21c Museum Hotel (502-217-6300; 21cmuseumhotel.com), voted best hotel in the U.S. by the readers of Condé Nast Traveler. All of the art was created by living contemporary artists.
The expanded tour at the Jim Beam Distillery (www.jimbeam.com) won’t be up and running until later this year, but the hulking old-South warehouses standing on the hill are worth a look from the road.
Another Kentucky original, the Louisville Slugger, was created just a few blocks from the Urban Bourbon Trail. See bats made to your favorite sports stars’ specifications at the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory (www.slugger. museum.org).
CITY OF FLIGHTS
Take bigger sips on the Urban Bourbon Trail in Louisville, sans car.
Half-shot tastes of Kentucky’s liquid gold will only sustain you for so long. Luckily, the nine bars on Louisville’s Urban Bourbon Trail (www.justaddbourbon.com) stock more than 50 varieties apiece. Compare bourbons from various distilleries with a themed flight (high rye, low rye, wheated or single barrel) at Maker’s Mark Bourbon House & Lounge (502-568-9009; www.makerslounge.com). If you’d rather have a fancy dinner, visit Proof on Main (502-217-6360; www.proofonmain.com) and pair your selection with a grilled beef rib steak with double-smoked ham and sunchoke hash.
