WHERE BOURBON AND Angels MEET
ACCORDING TO THE KENTUCKY Distillers Association, more than 620,000 visitors explore the Kentucky Bourbon Trail annually, visit the distilleries, and taste the elixir widely considered to be America’s National Drink. At the centre of Bourbon land is Bardstown, Bourbon Capital of the World and, according to a 2012 Rand McNally and USA Today competition, the most beautiful small town in America. Bardstown is also the location of the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival — a weeklong, funfilled, delicious, bourbon-centric event, oozing with Southern hospitality.
In September, I headed to Kentucky, to take in the Festival and immerse myself in bourbon culture. Whiskey, or whisky, depending on where it’s produced, is fiendishly difficult to perfect, but is a thing of beauty when crafted with knowledge, care and creativity. Ninety-five percent of all bourbon is made in Kentucky, where five million barrels are maturing. Regulations dictate that, for bourbon (a type of whiskey), at least 51 percent of the mash bill must be corn, the rest usually comprised of rye or wheat and some malted barley. Maturation must be in new, freshly charred oak barrels. These contribute to the rich colour, aromas and flavours and, coincidentally, ensure a plentiful supply of used barrels with a smidgen of bourbon residue. This makes them perfect for maturing other whisky, including Scotch.
While bourbon is delicious on its own, it is an exquisite element of countless cocktails and a key ingredient in Southern cooking. The Festival week offered up a myriad of cocktail tasting opportunities, including the challenge between acclaimed restaurant and distillery mixologists to select the official 2015 Kentucky Bourbon Festival drink. The winning concoction, by mixologist Jason Stark, involved bourbon, rum punch bitters, ginger, pomegranate, orange, apple, champagne, and a flaming orange peel garnish!
A fabulous Bourbon cooking school evening showcased Chef John Varanese from Louisville, who whipped up a fourcourse meal, featuring various Jim Beam bourbons, while instructing, telling anecdotes, flambéing, mixing and cooking in front of about 300 guests. An entourage in the kitchen recreated the same meal for everyone, along with another collection of tasty cocktails.
The Kentucky Bourbon All Star Sampler offered up food, music, an opportunity to chat with Master Distillers, and a wide array of whiskeys from the big distilleries, as well as head-turning products like quinoa and barley whiskey from Corsair. This event, as well as ‘Bourbon, Cigars and Jazz’ and ‘Boots and Bourbon’ are hot sellers at the festival.
There’s no shortage of outdoor and free events — concerts, 550-pound barrel rolling competitions, arts, crafts, food stalls, distillery booths, barrel making demonstrations, hot air balloons, contests and a whole town decorated in ‘bourbonalia.’ Add some great September weather and safe ride programs and it’s very difficult not to get in the spirit!
A glamorous closing gala kicked off with two hours of mingling, cocktails, bourbons and hors d’oeuvres, followed by a tasty bourbon-laced meal, live music, a bottle of bourbon on every table, and bourbon bars around the perimeter. About 600 people attended the event and, as far as I could see, there wasn’t a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in the building. Now that’s a bourbon festival!
Outside of festival events, I spent two days with some other Kentucky Bourbon Trailblazers, touring eight distilleries, where it wasn’t all about bourbon. Pecan-topped, cream-filled, bourbon-laced chocolates appeared on a regular basis!
At Maker’s Mark distillery, an expansion project to duplicate capacity and meet increasing demand is underway. The mash bill here uses wheat rather than rye; labels are printed by a hand-operated press; and bottles are hand dipped in 360°C red wax, at rates up to 30 bottles a minute.
Warehouses or rick houses are similar at most Kentucky distilleries and can store about 20,000 barrels. Our tour guide at Barton’s described how temperature variations on the different floors create completely different maturation conditions. On the top floors, summer heat, expansion and contraction, and pressure build-up can result in alcohol increase — a reverse ‘Angel’s Share.’
At Heaven Hill, a large family-owned distillery, over one million barrels are aging in warehouses. Eighty-eight different whiskeys are produced and 1200 different spirits are bottled and distributed worldwide.
Jim Beam is the largest distillery in the area, and produces a wide range of well respected bourbons, most of which can be tasted in the enoteca-style tasting room. Another set of dizzying statistics include rack house capacity of more than 650,000 barrels, and 90 million bottles of spirits bottled and shipped annually to 100 countries.
At Four Roses the emphasis is on distillery recipes, yeast strains and mash bills, offering many possibilities for different expressions. As well, this is the only major distillery in the area to use single-storey warehouses, with different maturation results.
…Ninety-five percent of all bourbon is made in Kentucky…
My visit to Woodford Distillery, with its impressive old buildings, brand new visitor centre and tripledistillation copper pot still production, was superbly timed to absorb lovely aromas from a batch of barrels being opened and poured over charcoal for filtering.
Buffalo Trace is the home of Sazerac Rye, Pappy Van Winkle, Blantons, and other fine whiskeys. Also produced here is a liqueur called Bourbon Cream, surprisingly delicious over ice, with copious amounts of root beer.
Wild Turkey has a funky and fabulous new visitor centre and a Master Distiller, Jimmy Russell, who still goes to work every day after 60 years in the business!
On my last day in Bardstown, I wandered around my new favourite American small town, smiling and waving at now familiar faces, and chatting to newfound friends. There’s something about whisk(e)y that encourages camaraderie and friendship, and that’s not a bad thing. If the 2015 Kentucky Bourbon Festival is calling you, best to book accommodation soon. Bardstown is a small town, and over 50,000 visitors attend the Festival.
Cheers!