Hot on the bourbon trail

In Kentucky, a few men distill 200 years of history 

By Guy Gugliotta

THE WASHINGTON POST

LOUISVILLE, June 12 — At first blush, a multi-course “bourbon dinner” presents a daunting prospect: five whiskeys (or was it six?) during a single meal, each one a gastronomic enhancement, each one bringing the diner nearer to oblivion. But, as the waiter was careful to point out with each new round, this was the good stuff: Think billiards, not pool; verandas, not juke joints; Clark Gable, not Clint Eastwood; Kentucky Derby, not NASCAR. We’re not talking shots of booze here.

Good bourbon nestles in the stomach like a warm blanket, giving each course a weight and substance beyond anything observed in nature.

         “DON’T CALL IT that,” said Jim Beam master distiller Jerry Dalton, as he gargled a taste of the clear, eye-watering, 135-proof “white dog” that will emerge rust-colored from an oak barrel as bourbon several years from now. “I’m the first member of my family to make legal whiskey, and this ain’t moonshine.”

       He got that right. Dinner at Louisville’s venerable Seelbach Hotel opened with a Manhattan (up), which was summarily swept away 15 minutes later, to be replaced by a different bourbon on the rocks in a stubby glass with ice. This accompanied the appetizer, a serving of smoked spoonfish (Kentucky’s answer to sturgeon), with caviar and sour cream.

       Soup came with bourbon neat in a snifter (the brand names were becoming hard to remember), and salad featured bourbon on the rocks in a short old-fashioned glass. For entrees, cowards could pick chicken or salmon, but aficionados chose the enormous pork chop, served on a bed of rice with plantains and bourbon (cut-glass tumbler? — shapes began to blur).

       By dessert (bourbon biscuits with mushy sweet stuff, accompanied by bourbon in a glass), the meal had come together in a soothing fog of bonhomie. Good bourbon nestles in the stomach like a warm blanket, giving each course a weight and substance beyond anything observed in nature. It’s not girl food.

DINNER AS MARKETING TOOL

       “Bourbon dinners are basically a marketing tool, and I’m not really fond of them,” notes bourbon historian and spirits expert Gary Regan, who soldiered valiantly to the end. “On the other hand, when you get a great dinner and you’re drinking whiskey, what could go wrong?”  

        Not a thing. The Seelbach was the first stop on a recent tour of Kentucky’s “bourbon trail,” an excursion through distilleries, landmarks and rolling green countryside convened by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States — the trade group that represents almost every distilled alcoholic drink sold in the country except cough medicine.

       Last year, distillers sold nearly 13.1 million nine-liter cases of bourbon nationwide, worth more than $3 billion. In a domestic spirits market dominated by vodka, bourbon holds a respectable 9 percent share, with recent growth almost entirely due to robust sales of premium and limited-edition bourbons like those encountered on the “trail.”

 SLOW-MATURING INDUSTRY

       The art and science of distilling the only ardent spirit native to the United States is a bit more than 200 years old. The existence of bourbon whiskey, as distinguished from Scotch, Irish or Canadian, is the product of a simple, post-Colonial reality — corn was easier to grow than anything else, and the cattle and chickens couldn’t eat it all.

       Historical accident also played a role: Scots-Irish and German immigrants, of which Kentucky had a bundle, knew how to make whiskey. And the local water was filtered through limestone, an encouraging environment for yeast.

       Despite these promising beginnings, bourbon’s earliest days were not particularly distinguished: You could drink it, but it hurt. The industry took hold in the waning days of the 18th century, when Pennsylvania farmers, disgruntled over the excise tax President Washington imposed on their homemade product, joined the Kentuckians and reopened for business.

       They shipped up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Louisville, but didn’t get the idea that their drink had a real future until consumers in New Orleans and St. Louis reported that the taste improved if the whiskey had aged in the wood long enough to acquire a little color.

       People started calling it bourbon, after the Kentucky county where most of it was made, and the early distillers became the patriarchs of families who have dominated the business since it began: Jacob Beam, Robert Samuels (Maker’s Mark), Basil Hayden (Old Grand-Dad) and William Brown (Old Forester).

       Bourbon-making, however, was still a risky business (drink at your own risk) until the 1820s, when immigrant Scot James Crow, a chemist of sorts, began studying whether he might actually control how the whiskey tasted. He invented the sour mash process, using residue from one batch of bourbon to make the next. For this innovation, Crow (of Old Crow, and you thought it was named for a bird) is said to be the inventor of bourbon.

GRACIOUS LIVING AND HELL-RAISING, TOO

       As the 19th century wore on, bourbon found a cultural identity that endured for well over 100 years. It was both the drink of gracious living (the antebellum South) and of drunken hell-raising (Dodge City). It was both a symbol of sophistication (Mark Twain) and an enabler of disgrace (U.S. Grant).

       “People liked their whiskey mean,” says retired master distiller Sam Cecil, summing up the early image. But while bourbon still rules the shot-and-beer crowd, it has also moved on.

       Today’s industry showcases the high-end “single batch” and limited-edition bourbons. Manufacturing has gone high-tech, and computerized sensors monitor every step of the process.

       The business has been globalized. Maker’s Mark is owned by Allied Domecq, the London company that also owns Beefeater gin and Dunkin’ Donuts. France’s Pernod-Ricard owns Wild Turkey. Jim Beam is a subsidiary of the Illinois-based Fortune Brands, which sells everything from plumbing fixtures to golf balls.

       And bourbon-making is gradually becoming gentrified. Jim Beam, in Clermont, Ky., a bit south of Louisville, and Wild Turkey, in Lawrenceburg, near Frankfort, are still ugly, basic distilleries — multi-story cylinders (like gigantic water heaters) tucked inside a corrugated metal frame.

       But Maker’s Mark has painted its corrugated metal black with red trim and converted its grounds, in Loretto, into an official arboretum dedicated to Kentucky flora. “This is Mecca,” says David Pickerell, Maker’s Mark’s vice president of production, perhaps choosing the wrong image. “People want to come here to see where their whiskey is made.”

       And in Versailles, a subsidiary of Brown-Forman is making Woodford Reserve specialty whiskey at a national historic site surrounded by horse farms. Everything is buffed, bright and beautiful. You can buy one of the wooden chairs at the coffee shop for $75.

THE MIXERS

       Despite all of this, distilling remains a skill defined by intuition, tradition and a Hippocratic commitment to “do no harm” to the genius of the deceased: Bill Samuels, a descendant of Robert, “got the formula right 50 years ago,” says Pickerell. “My job is just not to screw it up.”

       The custodians of this heritage are the master distillers from the nation’s 10 bourbon distilleries. They are a swaggering, gregarious crowd, comfortably 21st century even as they pay homage to history.

       Beam’s Dalton is a big-bellied raconteur who also turns out to be a PhD physical chemist. He regularly tweaks the chemistry of his whiskey whenever he spots a “drifting parameter” on his computer, but he also acknowledges “a mystical element. . . . I can feel 200 years of Jim Beam whiskey-making whenever I walk in here.”

       Pickerell is a bluff, self-proclaimed “production geek,” a former Army officer who once taught chemistry at West Point. He sponsors periodic get-togethers for about 30 competitor-colleagues, each of whom must bring a bottle of the best, “but you can’t drink your own.” The geeks, he says, get along well. “We have very few secrets from one another,” and most have worked in each other’s companies at one time or another.

       This all turns out to be sort of true. While nobody directly disses anybody else’s whiskey, every master distiller knows what the competition brags about, and has a ready response.

       Brown-Forman’s Lincoln Henderson, a dapper grandfather with an elegant white beard, is developing a new high-end whiskey at the company’s Woodford Reserve distillery, and uses rye in his recipe “for spice.”

       He is well aware that Maker’s Mark pooh-poohs rye in favor of wheat, which gives bourbon a smoother, front-of-the-mouth “finish,” according to Maker’s Mark. “It’s all BS,” Henderson says with an affable grin. “Whether you use rye has nothing to do with the finished product.”

       Over at Jim Beam, Dalton defends Beam’s hammer mill, which “does not impart burns or scorching” to cornmeal during the grinding, even as Pickerell extols the virtues of Maker’s Mark’s rolling mill. With hammer mills, Pickerell observes gently, “some grain gets scorched. . . . It’s inevitable.”

       The truth or falsity of these assertions lies in the palate of the partaker, and when it comes to palates, the experts tend to rely on their own. Why be shy?

       “When I was a kid, it was all bourbon distilleries around here,” says Wild Turkey master distiller Jimmy Russell, 67, a bear-like balding guru who, to hear him tell it, still makes whiskey mostly by feel.

       “My dad worked here, and my grandfather before him,” Russell says. “Making bourbon is mostly on-the-job training. If you try to prove it chemistry-wise, you can’t.”

       By federal law, straight bourbon whiskey must be made from a grain “mash” composed of not less than 51 percent corn, distilled to a maximum of 160 proof (80 percent alcohol), aged for at least two years in new charred oak barrels at a maximum of 125 proof and bottled at no less than 80 proof. Straight bourbon may not contain flavor or color additives.

       Within these strictures, some basics are taken for granted. The recipes, known as “mash bills,” use around 70 percent corn, with the rest devoted to rye, wheat and barley that is “malted,” or sprouted, producing an enzyme that coverts the starch in the grain to sugar.

       Henderson said Woodford Reserve’s mash bill is 72 percent corn, 18 percent rye and 10 percent barley. Maker’s Mark, according to Pickerell, uses 70 percent corn, 16 percent soft red winter wheat and 14 percent barley.

       Dalton refuses to say anything at all: “If I told you that, you’d be the master distiller, and I’d be the floor sweeper.”

       Once the mash is boiled in water, it is ready for fermentation in an open stainless steel or wood vat holding several thousand gallons. The mix is a repulsive brownish-yellow, feels like papier-mache before it sets and smells like a taco stall in Chula Vista.

       To it is added some of the used mash from the previous fermenting, known as “backset” or simply “slop.” This is the essence of Crow’s sour mash process, and is a key in maintaining batch-to-batch flavor continuity and acidity.

       The final ingredient is yeast, about which outsiders are told nothing. The yeast strains used in bourbon apparently were found sometime shortly after Daniel Boone crossed the Cumberland Gap, and remained clutched in the hot little hands (if yeast can be clutched) of the patriarchs — doled out and recultured year after year.

DISTILLERIES ON THE ROCKS

       In all, there are fewer than 15 mash bills in existence today, and an unknown number of bourbon yeast strains. Most existing mash bills and yeasts are hardy survivors of Prohibition, an extinction event that lasted from Jan 17, 1920, to Dec. 5, 1933, and did for bourbon what the asteroid did for dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

       Before Prohibition there were 17 bourbon distilleries operating in Kentucky. During Prohibition a few were allowed to sell limited amounts of “medicinal whiskey,” but most just had to sweat it out.

       When the smoke cleared in 1933, there were seven distilleries left. The good news was that drinking on the sly had made people forget wine and beer in favor of liquor’s greater bang per ounce. The bad news was that gin — cheap and easy to make — had become the drink of choice.

       The original Jim Beam and his son Jeremiah reformed their family business in 1933. Other distillers started new companies as well, but it was no cakewalk for any of them. Maker’s Mark, established in 1953, didn’t break even for a decade.

       Soon after the mash gets to the vat, the yeast starts eating it, converting the sugar to alcohol and giving off bubbles of carbon dioxide. In the early hours, when the yeasts are feasting, the mash looks like it’s boiling. As the process advances (for about three or four days) the gurgling slows and the grain sinks to the bottom, leaving a disgusting, omelet-like crust floating on top.

       This “beer” is then remixed to the consistency of oatmeal and mercifully departs, pumped into a still where steam heats it until the alcohol flashes off in a vapor. The vapor is the part that’s saved. The mash residue is given to local farmers as animal feed, usually for free.

       The vaporized alcohol and water are condensed into what distillers call a “low wine,” which is not wine at all, but the first level of distilled spirit. This is what’s inside Snuffy Smith’s jug.

       The low wine is pumped into a second still and vaporized again. The end product is raw bourbon, called “high wine” or, more affectionately, “white dog,” because “it’s water-white, and it’ll bite you,” Dalton says.

       Beam’s white dog finishes at 135 proof. Maker’s Mark closes at 130 proof. Woodford Reserve distills three times and finishes close to the legal limit at 158 proof. At Wild Turkey, it’s none of your business.

       Once past the beer stage, everything associated with bourbon-making becomes a spectacular scientific innovation, a proprietary secret or an intuitive stroke of genius. It is not always clear which is which.

       At Woodford Reserve, Henderson eschews the conventional chimney-like “column still” in favor of “pot stills” imported from Scotland. “Everybody used them until after Prohibition, when column stills were seen as more efficient,” Henderson says. “We wanted to go back to how whiskey was made in the early days. Pot stills are less efficient, but it’s easier to adjust the flavors.”

       Translation: If you want true, old-fashioned “small batch” whiskey, stick to Woodford Reserve, which refuses to compromise quality in the name of modern-day, corner-cutting “efficiency.”

       But others have made different choices. Without mentioning Henderson’s high-proof white dog, Jimmy Russell notes that at Wild Turkey “we’re still distilling [in column stills] at lower proofs, because you get less flavor at higher proofs. It’s like eating steaks. Rare steaks are more flavorful, even though lower proof means you have to have more barrels to store the whiskey, and that’s not cheap.”

       Translation: Wild Turkey gives the discerning palate more flavor options by keeping its product at a low proof instead of jacking up the in-barrel alcohol content to save money.

       Once out of the still, the raw bourbon is pumped into oak barrels, which have been charred on the inside by lighting them on fire. Nobody knows who first thought of torching the barrels, but it happened at least 150 years ago. The experts today disagree completely over what level of “char” makes the best whiskey.

       But the idea is to get what Pickerell describes as the “wood goody,” in which the bourbon migrates to the interior of the charred wood until it reaches a caramelized “red layer” between the charcoal and the undamaged staves. Here is where bourbon picks up its distinctive red color and where the hard edges of white dog are mellowed and enriched.

       The barrels, each containing about 53 gallons of whiskey and weighing some 500 pounds, are stacked on their sides in tiers. The maturing process takes four to 10 years. Any longer risks having the oak flavor eclipse the grain, imparting an irreversible woody taste to the whiskey.

 BEAUTY BEFORE AGE

       Thus, in bourbon, beauty always comes before age.

       Another article of truth in the aging of bourbon is that unless the warehouse is air-conditioned, barrels on top tiers will be warmer than those on the bottom and will also contract and expand more radically due to daily temperature changes.

       With more action, top-tier whiskey matures faster than bottom-tier whiskey, while middle-tier, or “center cut,” whiskey is said by some to mature more evenly, and thus to be more desirable.

       “It depends on the building and the floors,” says Booker Noe, Jim Beam’s master distiller emeritus and a legend in the bourbon business. “If it stays up in the center cut for seven or eight years you know what you’re going to get.” Beam’s specialty bourbon, Booker’s, is bottled out of center-cut barrels selected by Noe.

       Distillers taste their barrels constantly to make sure everything is going well, and mark or memorize the location and details of any barrel whose contents are particularly attractive. Companies put whiskeys on the high or low end of their portfolios largely on the master distiller’s say-so.

       Jim Beam, Woodford Reserve and Wild Turkey all cherry-pick their best barrels for special bottlings. But Maker’s Mark makes only one product, so Pickerell’s job is more complicated because he has to make every bottle come out the same.

       To this end he rotates barrels in every warehouse — moving Tier One to Tier Nine, Tier Eight to Tier Two, and so on — and constantly tests the whiskey’s chemical composition: “Sooner or later I’ll have an algorithm that can predict optimum maturity — instead of looking at the calendar you look at the data,” he says.

       Success is not imminent. Pickerell acknowledges that even after the data are in, he relies on an expert tasting panel for the final word on whether a barrel is ready. Beam’s Dalton says he is “more data driven” than ever, “but I still stick my finger in and taste it.”