The Spirits of Kentucky:
Small-Batch and Single-Barrel Bourbons Revive the Good Old Days of Whiskey

by Mark Vaughan

Appeared in Cigar Aficionado, Autumn 1993.
Reprinted by permission of Mark Vaughan

On an afternoon in late spring, Booker Noe stands in the dimly lit passageway on the fourth story of a 20,000-barrel warehouse at the huge Jim Beam distillery in Clermont, Kentucky. Though rain from a sudden storm pounds down outside, inside the warehouse it is monastically quiet, the air heavy with the scent of musty wood and the caramel-and-alcohol aroma of aging Bourbon. "This is the part of the warehouse where Bourbon ages the best," says Noe, a grandson of the legendary Bourbon-maker Jim Beam, as he selects a barrel for drawing a sample. "I call the whiskey we draw from these barrels the center cut. It's like the heart of a watermelon, strong and flavorful."

Noe, a giant of a man with a slow, deliberate down-home style, takes a large mallet in one beefy hand and rests the other against the side of the nearest barrel. With three sharp whacks on the barrel's staves, Noe skillfully removes the two-inch-thick softwood plug, called a bung, that protrudes from the barrel. With a pop, the bung almost flies out. "There's pressure builds up in a whiskey barrel this time of year," explains Noe, who is a retired master distiller and a self-appointed "ambassador of Bourbon." "In winter, it's just the opposite, and you've got to get hold of the damn thing with something and give it a good pull."