Kentucky Bourbon Trail

You can’t think Kentucky without thinking bourbon – at least I can’t. Apparently all the historic bourbon distilleries are located in the hilly country around Lexington and Louisville. It’s nice that we were able to combine horsed for the Woman and bourbon for me – sometimes things actually do work out well.

When we got to Lexington, one of the distilleries that was on the official State of Kentucky Bourbon Trail was right in town. Town Branch, as many of the distilleries, began distilling bourbon in the 1700’s, but through Prohibition and many other economic ups and downs, it has changed ownership many times over the decades, now being owned by a Scottish family that relocated to the region because it reminded them of home.

When we visited and I picked up a Passport for the Kentucky Bourbon Trail (yes, just like the National Park Service Passport that you can get stamped at every park), I thought I would pick it up just to keep as a souvenir, and that we would have one or two stamps in it. But it turned out our journey would put us in fairly close proximity to all of the distilleries on the Bourbon Trail, and we had more fun visiting than we expected. So it turned out that we now have a Kentucky Bourbon Trail Passport with stamps on each of the official distillery pages – bonus!

One of the fun parts of the visits was learning some very interesting facts about Bourbon and why it is here in Kentucky. First the basics, why is it here? Well, the same limestone that allowed all those stone fences to be built for the thoroughbred pastures also purified the ground water here. The limestone removed all the iron content in the ground water, and also increased the calcium content. Apparently both those are important to the water source for distilling good bourbon.

So, how does bourbon differ from whiskey? To be bourbon, you have to meet four criteria. #1 – it has to be distilled in America. #2 – it has to contain at least 51% corn as the base grain used in the distilling process. #3 – it has to be distilled at no more than 160 proof, entered the barrel for aging at no more than 125 proof, and bottled at no less than 80 proof. #4 – it must be aged in oak barrels made only from American oak, and charred on the inside, and each barrel can only be used once to age a batch of bourbon. If you meet all 4 criteria, you are legally allowed to call the end product bourbon.

Why charred oak barrels? Back in the 1700’s it was common for the whiskey makers to put their moonshine in barrels and put them on shipping barges on the Ohio River. By the time that the moonshine reached New Orleans, the moonshine had aged a bunch, and the moonshine had absorbed some of the colors and flavors of the oak barrels. The folk in New Orleans loved this aged shine, both tastier and smoother, so much more than the locally distilled, harsh shine that the demand for it exploded. The producers in Kentucky figured it out, and began barreling and aging all their whiskey.

Why charred oak barrels? Well, nothing ever got wasted in the 1700’s. When the “bourbon” reached New Orleans, the barrels would be emptied, and then enterprising New Orleans fishermen would fill them full of fish and send them back to Kentucky. The distillers in Kentucky soon learned that shine aged in a barrel that had been filled with fish did not produce the desired results. So they burned the inside of the oak barrels to remove the fish stank, and not only did it succeed in removing the fish smells, but it actually ended up further improving the flavors and smoothness created by the barrel aging process. Necessity the mother of invention?

Many of the bourbon makers just follow the 4 criteria, meeting the necessary quantities and proofs in order to be legally able to market as bourbon. Others have decided that messing with the basic criteria allows them to make claims about their product being “better quality” than other bourbons – the most common of which seems to be the percentage of corn in the final recipe. Several of the distillers have upped their percentage of corn used in the mash to 71%, claiming that gives a unique and preferred flavor and smoothness to their bourbon.

We saw warehouse upon warehouse at all the distilleries. At Wild Turkey, they told us that their warehouses generally held 20,000 to 30,000 barrels of bourbon – their most recently built warehouse holds 50,000 barrels. Wild Turkey alone has 27 warehouses of this size. According to the state of Kentucky regulators there are more barrels of bourbon aging in Kentucky than there are thoroughbred horses – or people – actually, there are more than both thoroughbreds and people combined!

Also, as we looked at all the warehouses, they all were really dirty and looked unkempt. Well, we learned that they weren’t dirty – they were covered with Torula mold. Torula is a mold that is attracted by the fermenting and aging alcohol, and grows all over the side of the warehouses. We learned that during Prohibition, the revenuers would keep a keen eye out for Torula growing on trees, because the meant for sure there was an illegal still nearby!

At the Makers Mark distillery, we saw that all there buildings were a deep dark brown color, as opposed to the light colors of all the other distilleries. At the others we learned they kept the warehouses light colored to keep the temperatures inside a bit cooler. But at Makers Mark, they didn’t like the dirty look the Torula left on the warehouse and production buildings. They still have Torula all over their buildings at Makers Mark, you just can’t see it because of the dark brown color.

We also learned that they pay attention to detail at Makers Mark. Not only do they go to great lengths to hand dip each and every bottle of bourbon cap in their distinctive red sealing wax to give it a personalized look, They even make sure that their window shutters on all of their buildings show the outline of their distinctive bourbon bottle. Nice touch!

Finally, we learned where the name Makers Mark came from.  A makers mark is the mark that artisans would put in the bottom of the pewter they created in old England. Since the founders of Makers Mark considered their bourbon to be a fine piece of craftsmanship, they decided to give it a Makers Mark. The circled S IV that is on every label on a Makers Mark bottle stands for the Samuels family who founded the distillery (the “S”), and the 4^th generation of bourbon makers involved (the “IV).

 

Talk to you soon!