JEFFERSON’S BOURBON
Whiskey World’s Weatherbeaten Wonder
MONTANA’S John Long Mountains aren’t an ideal place for aging a barrel of premium whiskey—at least by traditional measures. The bare peaks spend much of the year caked in snow, and the summer sun beats on the hillsides like a cosmic broiler. Yet here I am, anxiously awaiting Trey Zoeller, the founder of Jefferson’s Bourbon, to tap into a weathered, 53-gallon oak barrel that’s been resting atop a rolling foothill for the last 18 months. The cracked wood is discolored and the steel rings are covered in rust. It’s a miracle the whiskey hasn’t leaked out onto the wildflower-covered slopes below.
“Well, let’s see if the juice is any good!” Zoeller says as he taps into the barrel with a cordless drill. The barrel is sitting on the 6,600-acre Ranch at Rock Creek, a big-buckle dude ranch 90 minutes southeast of Missoula. The reason for placing it up here in these extreme conditions, as Zoeller readily admits, is that the Ranch at Rock Creek is a damn nice place to visit, complete with horseback riding, fly-fishing, and broad Rocky Mountain vistas. But Zoeller also has a mad scientist’s curiosity for experimenting with barrel-aging to see how the different local conditions affect the whiskey’s maturation process.
“There’s no real terroir in whiskey,” Zoeller says. “The process of distilling grains burns off most of the flavor, so the only way you can dramatically change the profile is by changing the aging process.” Among other places, Zoeller has barrels “resting” in a duck blind in Louisiana, a winery in California, and an upland bird-hunting plantation in Georgia. What begins as the same clear whiskey ends as a dramatically different aged spirit in each location.
“You honestly never know what you’re going to get,” Zoeller tells me as we hike up to the Montana barrel. Zoeller, who lives in Louisville, Kentucky, grew Jefferson’s Bourbon into an industry darling through exactly this type of experimentation. One of the company’s best-selling products is Jefferson’s Ocean, a bourbon that’s aged at sea for 18 months. Zoeller got the idea when he was hanging out
with his friend Chris Fischer, a shark biologist and founder of Ocearch, an organization that tags great whites. The Ocearch team regularly heads out on tagging expeditions and Zoeller wondered what might happen to the whiskey if it was sloshing around in the tropical heat for a few months. So he convinced Fischer to let him strap three barrels on the deck of Ocearch’s 124-foot ship.
What came back was a young whiskey, in terms of its actual age, but one that tasted far older and more complex, full of caramel notes and a briny sweetness like aged rum. It was delicious. Zoeller soon figured out a way to commercialize the process by putting dozens of barrels on cargo ships with routes that cross the equator during their months-long journeys. Today, Jefferson’s has 13 products in its lineup, including a bourbon rested in French oak barrels that previously held cabernet wine and a barrel-aged Manhattan cocktail. Jefferson’s Ocean, however, is still the company’s most popular whiskey.
“When you have a story to tell about why it tastes the way it does, drinkers get it,” Zoeller says. “It just gives more meaning to it.” Creating a story through whiskey is the allure that drew the Ranch at Rock Creek to Jefferson’s Bourbon. Zoeller had some informal connections to the resort and after a visit he found himself shipping two full whiskey barrels to the property (there’s another tucked into a stagecoach used for tours). After Zoeller taps the hilltop barrel, whiskey starts pouring out in a tiny stream, dark and viscous. When we sample it, Zoeller seems surprised. “It did exactly the opposite of what I thought it would do,” he says. “Because it was stationary and cold for so long, I didn’t think it would do much.” There’s a spiciness to it, but it’s not harsh. Zoeller attributes the accelerated maturation to the sometimes ferocious winds on the ridgeline. The gales may have hit the platform with enough consistent force to create a vibration that caused the whiskey inside to slowly turn over and react with charred insides of the barrel.
The ranch has plans to grow its own rye this year, and create a sort of estate-grown whiskey. But this barrel will stay up here another year at least, until it reaches its peak, so to speak. The other barrels that Zoeller has stashed around the country will never hit store shelves, but the lessons he draws from them will help him craft new whiskeys with unique flavors.
“Ninety-eight percent of whiskey is maturation,” he says, “And maturation is not really a science, it’s an art, and that’s what’s fun for me.
“That’s also why bourbon drinkers are so promiscuous, like wine drinkers. They don’t have one bottle, they have 10 or 20, and they want to be able to share the story behind them when they drink.”
The wind blows. The barrel vibrates. Zoeller takes another sip of the rare mountaintop whiskey and then offers his final verdict: “And this is a good story.”
“WHEN YOU HAVE A STORY TO TELL ABOUT WHY IT TASTES THE WAY IT DOES, DRINKERS GET IT. IT JUST GIVES MORE MEANING TO IT.”