Washington Post Article

[bluesbassdad]

Some of you may find this <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34368-2002Jun11.html> article </A> of interest.

Can you believe they omitted the names of the bourbons that were served?

I'll bet that you long-time StraightBourbonites (StraightBourbonians?) will find numerous errors and omissions.

Yours truly,
Dave Morefield

Retiree, Musician, Dog-Lover, Whiskey-Drinker

[bourbonmed]

Dave, thanks for posting the WP link. Enjoyed it a great deal.

Worth noting:

-Last year, distillers sold nearly 13.1 million nine-liter cases of bourbon nationwide, worth more than $3 billion.

-Bourbon holds a 9 percent domestic market share, mostly due to sales of premium and limited edition bourbons.

-The globalization of bourbon and gentrification of distilleries.

-Lincoln Henderson's candid take on the rye vs. wheat debate.

-There are fewer than 15 mashbills in existance today, most hardy survivors of Prohibition. I would have guessed that number to be higher. What hapenned to the mashbills used by countless smaller distilleries before Prohibition?

Favorite comment: (regarding the Master Distillers) "They are a swaggering, gregarious crowd, comfortably 21st century even as they pay homage to history."

Favorite quotes:
"My job is just not to screw it up." -- David Pickerell
"The beverage business is a hell of a lot more fun than making gasoline." -- Lincoln Henderson
"But I still stick my finger in and taste it." -- Jerry Dalton

Cheers,
Omar

[bobbyc]

That's a pretty good article , I only take exception to one thing and that being that JIm Beam Is an Ugly Distillery . True it's not an architectural work of Frank Lloyd Wright , Or an art gallery . You should have seen the place 30 years ago at least now they have flowers planted all the way out to the state road. Distillery architecture is a thing unto itself I guess you could throw in a few feed mills and be on the same page. It looks a hell of a lot better to me than Ford Motor Company does. At 5:15 today when I rode passed it to come home it looked fine to me!

Bobby Cox

[cowdery]

Thanks, Dave. It was worth enduring the pop-up ads.

One error I noticed. There were a lot more than 17 distilleries operating in Kentucky (and elsewhere) prior to Prohibition. Booker at one time said there were about 30 in Nelson County alone.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://cowdery.home.netcom.com>--Chuck Cowdery</A>

[tdelling]

Thanks for the link! This is nice article.

What surprised me most was the "we're PhD chemists, and we're always
sticking things is the gas chromatograph" angle that you almost never get.
The acidity aspect of the sour mash process was in the article, too.

This was such a relief from the usual "we do it the same way we've done
it for 50 years... it's ready when the hound dog barks and the horseflies
land on the sawdust just right" mysticism.

Dr. Crow tried to be as scientific as he knew how... there's no shame
in doing things right.

Tim

[ratcheer]

I was pretty suspicious of that, too.

Tim