My Old Kentucky Home

Cheers, Nov, 2000 by Jack Robertiello

Annual Bourbon Festival Celebrates America's Authentic Spirit

In the bourbon business, everybody knows everyone else. At least, that's the way it seems to first-timers or casual observers visiting during the industry's annual celebration, the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, a combination county fair, homecoming and family reunion. It's an event where the relatively few companies still making sour-mash corn whiskey gather to strut their stuff, roll out some barrels and taste each other's wares in and around the streets of Bardstown, bourbon's contemporary epicenter.

The annual event is just the sort of thing to expect from an industry where, according to Wild Turkey's master distiller Jimmy Russell, one doesn't refer to other bourbon makers as competitors. While there's an unmistakable upsurge in attention being paid to the ultra-premium, hand-crafted bourbons, overall, things could be better in the bourbon business. Sure, international interest is growing in general, but as American consumers continue their romance with vodkas and tequilas, America's native whiskey is hard-pressed to keep pace.

(While most folks at the fair found browsing among the sweatshirts and other branded merchandise spoke with an Appalachian twang, visitors were as likely to speak with a Celtic burr or Japanese-accented English. International attendance was up both for press and regular folk.)

The jury's still out on whether the newer, more expensive variations in limited production can create a compelling impression with consumers, but among spirit writers and professionals, bourbon's reputation is rock-solid. Heaven Hill has based its current Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon advertising campaign on the influential Spirit Journal's Paul Pacult's judgment that it was whisky of the year in 1999. And we can probably expect to hear more about Brown-Forman's Labrot & Graham Woodford Reserve after a panel of spirit writers, consultants and beverage professionals named it best bourbon at the first San Francisco World Spirits Competition. (Ironically, the first batch of Woodford Reserve actually produced at Labrot & Graham has yet to reach release age, and what emerges eventually from the meticulously-restored old distillery will be closely scrutinized.)

New Grass

Whatever the current instability in the brown spirits business, confidence seems high in the Bluegrass. Maker's Mark is set to start soon on a $7.5 million expansion that the company hopes will eventually double production without changing the small-batch quality of the product. Wild Turkey is poised to add another version to their nest, called Wild Turkey Russell's Reserve, named for longtime master distiller Jimmy Russell. Raves for various Van Winkle whiskies and for the initial offering from Buffalo Trace (formerly the Ancient Age Distillery) are good signs for the folks who live where whiffs of fermenting sourmash are still commonplace. (The remaining Kentucky distilleries are all within about 40 miles of one another, no doubt because of the subterranean limestone shelf and its effect on the local water.)

Distilleries old and young are still filled with a certain charm, and the modern impression that spirits are produced much like widgets or sausage, completely dependent on marketing campaigns, are laid to rest there. At the Wild Turkey distillery, Russell and son and heir apparent Eddie speak proudly of the whiskey-making subtleties that they favor at Wild Turkey. (Like local horsebreeders and the French dynasty from which the whiskey takes its name the Bluegrass Bourbons are much given to blood lines; for instance, Booker Noe is the sixth generation Jim Beam master distiller, and there are plenty other examples of families toiling in the sourmash for multiple generations.)

The subtle variations among distilleries--the particular mix of corn, rye and barley and sometimes wheat that is used, the quality of the house yeast, the proof at distillation, whether the mash is fermented in traditional cypress tanks or new-fangled stainless steel, not to mention pot versus continuous stills--are what make the bourbon experience so compelling, especially for international visitors. Master distillers like Russell talk about knowing that an initial fermentation has gone wrong simply by observing how the tumbling tank of yellow mash behaves, or when an unfamiliar aroma disrupts the air around the distillery already pungent with fermentation. "On a regular day out here, we don't smell anything," says Russell. "You walk around here and smell lots of things, but not us. We only smell something when things go wrong."

Old Things

One of the highlights of the bourbon festival for newcomers is the opportunity to visit the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History, where a collection of artifacts from Barton Brands founder Getz has given birth to a continually growing collection of bourbon memorabilia. Historical documents, like Abraham Lincoln's liquor license for a tavern in Illinois, share space with a collection of copper stills, pro- and anti-Prohibition flyers and newspapers, rare jugs and casks, and a replica liquor store where old bottles and advertising collectibles evoke a wistful reminder of how the bourbon business has shrunk over the years. (Curiosities included in the collection are some circa 1850 bottles made by Pennsylvania spirit seller E. G. Booz, who joins the likes of General Hooker and Thomas Crapper in a dubious sort of name fame.)