Kentucky Bourbon:
Veteran distillers are turning out super-premium, single barrel Bourbons that offer a wide range of sophisticated and exotic flavors

by Mark Vaughan

appeared in Wine Spectator, January 31, 1994.
Reprinted by permission of Mark Vaughan

Late autumn in Kentucky. In the rolling hills and hidden glens of bluegrass country the leaves have turned to gold and reddish brown. The hay is in, the racing season over and the talk is now of other sports...turkey hunting, football. Wood smoke scents the evening air.

It's Bourbon time in Bardstown. Booker Noe, master distiller emeritus at the giant Jim Beam Distillery there, offers a visitor a taste of the Bourbon that bears his name. The whiskey has a rich bouquet of smoky spice, and the full, sweet flavor of burnt caramel and oaky vanilla. "It's a sipping whiskey," says Noe, "just right for the back porch in the late afternoon."

Booker's, as the whiskey is called, is one of a dozen or so small-batch and single barrel Bourbons to hit the market in recent years. Noted for their rich flavors and the overall craftsmanship that goes into their making, these whiskeys are bringing renewed attention to this uniquely American spirit.

"You'd be surprised at the number of people who come in because of our Bourbon selection," says Todd Illies, manager of the trendy Zip City Micro Brewery in New York, which offers eight different deluxe labels. Adds Rob Gough, beverage manager at Stars in San Francisco, "Bourbons are hot."

Behind the success of these new deluxe Bourbons are a handful of master distillers, such as Noe, who have spent their lives refining traditional techniques and raising the craft of whiskey making to an art form. "Tradition is an important concept in Kentucky, especially when it comes to making whiskey," insists Noe, who lives in the same Bardstown home where his grandfather, the legendary Jim Beam, lived at the turn of the century. "It takes time to get the feel for Bourbon making. And then once you've learned it, you can truly start to understand the process. That's what mastering anything is all about."

In fact, mastering Bourbon making can take 20 years or more. Take Elmer T. Lee, for example, master distiller emeritus for the Ancient Age distillery in Frankfort. Lee, who like Noe was born, raised and educated in Kentucky, went to work at Ancient Age as a young college graduate in 1949. His career there included 15 years as plant engineer and then several years as a supervisor and plant manager before he became master distiller in the late 1960s.

"I began my training under Col. Albert B. Blanton, the dean of Kentucky distillers," explains Lee, a soft-spoken Kentucky gentleman who is now 74. "The colonel started here as a young man in 1897, and stayed on for 55 straight years, working his way up from the bottom to become master distiller and then part-owner by the time he retired in 1952."

Under Lee's direction, Ancient Age was the first distillery to come out with a single barrel Bourbon when in 1984 it introduced its Blanton's label . The company now has four single barrel brands. "We wanted to get something special out into the market, something that would make people stand up and take notice," says Lee. "These Bourbons come from what I call our 'sugar barrels,' the cream of the crop."

Lee, who retired from Ancient Age in 1986 after nearly 40 years, still chooses and monitors the aging of the barrels to be bottled under Ancient Age's Blanton's and Elmer T. Lee labels. His successor as master distiller is Gary Gayheart, another soft-spoken Kentuckian who spent 20 years learning his craft under Lee's supervision. "Gary understands that you don't learn to make something as delicate and fine as a quality Bourbon overnight," says Lee. "You can't get it from a book."

On a breezy Kentucky morning, Jimmy Russell, master distiller at Wild Turkey, shows a visitor around one of the company's 23 Bourbon warehouses at its Lawrenceburg distillery. The buildings are large, rectangular structures eight or more stories high. Inside, the floors are divided by three tiers of ricks, each set of shelves holding a row of barrels, extending broadside from a narrow passage down the center of the building. The average warehouse will hold 20,000 or more barrels. With 23 such structures, Wild Turkey has an aging capacity of 460,000 barrels.

"Bourbon will age differently depending on where it is located in your warehouse," explains Russell. "The barrels up at the top and along the sides get hotter in summer and colder in winter, so you get a lot of temperature variation. Barrels at the bottom and in the middle tend to age slower and more evenly. We still rotate our barrels to get even aging, but we're one of a very few distilleries that does."

A 40-year veteran of Bourbon making, Russell started working at Wild Turkey in 1954. "At first I worked in quality control," he says, "and I probably would have stayed there if Bill Hughes and Ernie Ripy, two old master distillers who'd been with the company since before Prohibition, hadn't decided to groom me for a distiller's job. The funny thing is that I didn't know what was going on until I was well into the process. To this day, I don't know why they chose me as their apprentice."

Like Noe, Russell says his interest in Bourbon making started at an early age. "I pretty much knew all along I was going to end up working for a distiller. In Kentucky, whiskey making is a family affair. My father was in the Bourbon business, and it just seemed like the natural thing to do."

Bill Samuels, president of Maker's Mark, is another distiller with a natural affinity for Bourbon making. Maker's Mark retains much of the 19th century charm of the old Burke's Distillery, which Samuels' father, William Samuels Sr., bought in 1953. But the family's whiskey-making history can actually be traced back to a Robert Samuels Jr., who served as a captain under George Washington during the American Revolution and supervised whiskey making for the troops. It was Capt. Samuels who first moved to Kentucky, and his grandson, T.W. Samuels, who began large-scale commercial distilling in 1842. "Dad sold the old family distillery during Prohibition," recalls Samuels. "He really started Maker's Mark as a hobby so he would have something to do."

For much of the day-to-day whiskey-making decisions, Samuels relies on master distiller J. Bennie Miles, a Bardstown native who has been with the company since the early 1960s. Miles is on hand today to supervise a comparative tasting of deluxe Bourbons at the distillery.

"The best way to taste a bunch of Bourbons," he explains, "is to cut them all down to the same proof. Otherwise, you'll find that the higher proofs will be too hot compared to the lower ones, and your taste buds will get burned. What you do is take a little sip and let it hit the front of your lips, then back it around the tip of your tongue and roll it a little."

As do most distillers, Miles hesitates to criticize his neighbors' products too blatantly. Of one Bourbon he says, "it's a little pungy, you know, puckery, bitter." Another is "too heavy for my taste, too grainy." A third has a "nice caramel flavor, well-balanced. But the problem is it's inconsistent." Of Maker's Mark's own experimental 8-year-old, "too much wood, it's out of balance with the alcohol, caramel and all of that stuff."

What does Miles look for in a good Bourbon? "It should be clean, with a slight flavor of caramel, vanilla and charcoal, and a very light taste of wood."

One whiskey that meets these criteria is Elijah Craig, a highly respected 12-year-old deluxe Bourbon from Heaven Hill Distilleries. Heaven Hill, the last wholly family-owned distillery in Kentucky, was founded by the Shapira family in 1935 on the site of the old William Heavenhill Distillery near Bardstown . "We are the last of a great tradition," says executive vice president Max Shapira, the son of one of the company's founders. "Family distillers truly are a dying breed."

Since its founding, Heaven Hill has relied on another great Bardstown distilling family, the Beams, to supply its master distillers. Current master distiller Parker Beam took over from his father, Earl, whose brother, Carl, was master distiller at the Jim Beam Distillery for many years. Parker Beam is now training his son, Craig Beam, to take over at Heaven Hill.

"The Beam family has been influential throughout the whiskey industry," says Booker Noe. "Bourbon's been in our family for getting right around 200 years, straight from one generation to the other. I guess you could say that by now it's in our blood."

Asked what are the most important elements of a good Bourbon, Noe answers, "Your yeast culture is a very important part of it. We've got our own family yeast that we've had since Prohibition. We keep the culture under lock and key."

Adds Ancient Age's Lee, "It takes a good source of limestone sweet water, good new oak barrels, good clean grain and careful attention to all the details that go into making it."

"Water, grains, yeast, distilling and aging techniques...those are all extremely important elements," agrees Wild Turkey's Russell. "But I'd add dedication to that list. If you're going to make good Bourbon, you've got to love the work."

View the tasting the appeared with this article.