Distilleries, Master Distillers....

[Barrel_Proof]

Jim Beam now describes Fred Noe in these terms on its website: "7th Generation Distiller & Bourbon Ambassador." Those are Beam's capital letters, not mine. (The Family Distiller description is apparently a fiction created by AP.) It's marketing sleight of hand, of course, because as everyone on the inside knows he can't step into Jerry Dalton's shoes.

http://www.jimbeam.com/beam/v5/heritage/seven_gen.aspx?id=7

"Fred" Noe, the seventh generation of Beams to enter the family business, is an 7th Generation Distiller & Bourbon Ambassador at the Jim Beam Distillery in Clermont, Kentucky. As "Bourbon Ambassador" for Jim Beam Brands, he introduces consumers around the world to The Small Batch Bourbon Collection, his family's award-winning lineup of ultra-premium, hand-crafted bourbons. Fred grew up in Bardstown, Kentucky, in the same home Jim Beam lived in, on what was once called Distiller's Row because a master distiller lived in almost every house. He still lives in Bardstown, in a house built beside the Beam family home, with his wife, Sandy, and their 16-year-old son, Frederick Booker Noe IV.

"I had such a feeling of pride and tradition the first time I came to the distillery with my father," Fred says. "Decades later, I still feel the same way. This is much more than a job, it's my life, and I love every minute of what I do."

[bobbyc]

Was Jerry Dalton the Master Distiller at Barton before going to Beam?

At the time of Chucks Video Made and Bottled in Kentucky The Jerry Dalton segment was him during his tenure as Master Distiller at Barton.

[bobbyc]

Wow it appears now that Jeremiah Beam was a Master Distiller beginning in 1947. That and probably the fact he never lived in the house at Clermont that bears his name would no doubt surprise him the most.

Why do they have to do this?

[boone]

Actually, T. Jeremiah wrote a letter to Carl Beam asking him to take young Booker under his wing and teach him the trade...

This letter was entered into a contest on one of their anniversary celebrations...

[cowdery]

Maybe Jere wrote a letter too, but the one I've seen was from Booker's mother to Carl Beam, asking him to teach Booker how to be a distiller. I also can't say if Jere Beam ever lived in what is now called the T. Jeremiah Beam house, but I know that Baker and David Beam grew up in that house with their father, Carl, as it was built to be the distiller's house, so the distiller could be on-call 24-hours a day.

I have been talking to Beam executives about this for months but so far those efforts have had little effect. The fact is, Park Beam (Jim's brother) and his descendants (Carl, Earl, Baker and David) made every drop of Beam whiskey for about 100 years, but the company has consigned their heritage to the dust bin. Why? To create the pretty fiction of an unbroken line from Jacob to Fred.

Jim Beam and his only son, Jere, were the business side of the operation. Park and his sons and grandsons made the whiskey. Both roles are important and that's nothing against Jim or Jere. I've never heard a bad word about either man. Jim Beam undoubtedly had to skills of a distiller and perhaps Jere (spelled that way but pronounced "jerry") did too, but they didn't work in that capacity. That was always Park's job. He and Jim were always partners from the time they entered the business (in those early days, their sister's husband was a partner too), with Jim handling the money and Park making the whiskey, and the whiskey-making stayed entirely on Park's side of the family until Booker came along.

As I keep saying, some producers (especially the non-distiller producers) have to invent history because they don't have any real history. Beam's real history is great. They don't need to make shit up. And, yet, they do.

As for titles, the title "master" distiller is of fairly recent creation. The person who made the whiskey was known as the distiller, period. Baker Beam, David Beam and Booker Noe were, simultaneously, the distillers at Jim Beam's two plants. Baker worked the day shift at Clermont and David worked the night shift. Booker worked at Boston. Booker was never Baker and David's boss. On the contrary, considering the relative status of the two plants among the production folks at Beam, the heirarchy would probably have been Baker, David, Booker.

Where Booker was superior was as a personality, a role he only began to play after he retired as an active distiller. Fred has followed him in that role. Fred Noe probably knows more about making bourbon than all of the rest of us put together, but he has never run a distillery. As much as anything, this reflects the changing role of the person bearing the title "Master Distiller," with the ambassador role assuming equal if not greater importance.

Today, the role most so-called "Master Distllers" play in the whiskey-making process is more as a quality control officer. This isn't just true at Beam or even just in the USA, but is often the case in Scotland as well.