Kentucky Bourbon Trail: Willett Distillery tour

Willett Distillery was a bit of a wild card for me. I'd been to or researched every other tour on our trip. All I knew about Willett is that when we first called to see if they were doing tours during the Bourbon Fest, they thought it would be a good idea. They sounded small. I like small places as much as I like big places. The tours are often more personal, more private. 

So that's my way of saying that when we pulled up the steep gravel drive we weren't quite sure what to expect. At the top of the driveway we turned a corner and saw a building with a parking lot on one side and an old aging warehouse on the other. Off in the distance there looked to be some more industrial buildings. We stopped in the parking lot, there were chairs on the porch. Peaked my head in a couple doors and decided that this couldn't be where we were supposed to be. So we hopped back into the car and drove down toward those industrial looking buildings. As we got closer, saw a small sign that said gift shop and we spotted a parking lot behind it. 

An aging aging warehouse (not a typo)

This time we were pretty sure we were where we wanted to be. As we parked and looked around, we were struck by how pretty this place was. We went into the gift shop and paid for our tour. $7 for tour and tasting. 

First stop on the tour was to watch a truck unload some grain. It was interesting, but I was distracted by the very interesting arched gold door in front of us. It had very large medieval looking hinges and a handle shaped like a pot still. After the tour guide finishes discussing the history of the property and of the business, we go inside. As we make our way up the black metal and wood stairs, our guide fills us in on a some more background on who the company is and what's going on around us.

The rough hewn stone, wood ceiling and exposed beams make this one of the most authentically beautiful distilleries I've seen.

Once we get upstairs we are shown the fermentation tanks. There are some filled and some empty. What I am really struck by is the rough hewn stone that is being installed around us. Off in the corner the workmen are still installing some of it. It is beautiful. This is already one heck of place and is just getting more so. After a side trip to see the column still—the little column still which is running a batch as we watch it—we head down stairs to see the pot still. 

Viewing window on the column still.

We are told by our tour guide as we look at the still that we will never see anything like it. She tells us it is patented. Unfortunately she didn't say why and now I'm curious. I tried doing a google patent search but all I found for these guys was a design patent on the pot still shaped bottle they have. Oh well. I'll ask next time.

Willet Pot Still

In between the still house and the closest aging warehouse we make a stop at the barrel filling room. Then it's over to the aging warehouse. This one isn't quite as picturesque on the outside, but the inside is full of aging barrels of whiskey and that's even better. Then its back into the gift shop for the tasting. 

Tasty whiskey peacefully aging

I like this tasting. First whiskey we try is the Willett Pot Still Reserve. I found this to be a tasty whiskey. Enough so that I  plan to purchase one in the future so that I can spend some more time with it.  Then it got really interesting. They gave us the opportunity to taste anything they had. That included the 23 year old rye or some really old bourbon that I can't remember due to being distracted by the rye. I did not try the old rye or the old bourbon. I have no self control, if I tried it, I would have liked it. Then I would have had to fight with myself to not buy it. And it was out of my budget. So instead I tried the five year old rye and ended up buying it with no regrets about what I could have tasted.

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I like this tour. It's a beautiful facility, the tour was informative and the tasting was great. I do think they need better signage at the top of the hill to tell you where to go and I wonder at the $7 tour fee but I had fun and want to do it again next time I am in Kentucky.

This is how I felt during and after my tour: happy.

Bourbon Trail Background: Independent Stave Company's, Kentucky Cooperage tour

Independent Stave Company. If you are a Bourbon geek like I am, you've probably heard of this company. They are one of only a handful of companies across the country that make the barrels that all that tasty bourbon ages in. In fact, almost every major producer of bourbon along the Bourbon trail uses the barrels from this one company. I learned about them on my first pass along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. And once I saw that they offered tours, I knew I needed to get myself on one the next time I was in Kentucky.

It's about 9:00 when we roll into Lebanon, KY home of Independent Stave Company. Tour starts at 9:30 sharp. We are early. To pass the time until our tour starts, we drive around the small town for a bit. Pretty town, but there is a strange dust floating on the wind. It's not until we get back to the visitor parking lot that we realize that it's sawdust. 

We walk up to the building and enter what looks to be the break room. There is another couple already sitting in the little roped off area near the door. No one else is there so we take our seats there too. At just about 9:30 a gentleman walks over and tells us we are going to watch a video and plays it for us. 

As you might have guessed, this is our tour guide. 

After the video, he hands us safety glasses and hearing protection if we want them and leads us into the plant. Inside the work area, there is a set of risers behind a metal railing. We all step up onto that to...watch another video. This time due to the noise, there is no sound. It sounds bad, but for safety issues, there is no way we are going to be allowed to get close to the folks working. I actually like it, it has captions that tell what all the precesses you can see from there are called. After the video we get a demonstration of a barrel raising. Barrel raising is an art. A lot of decisions need to be made for every barrel in order to make sure it stays water tight when it is finished. You need to meet a minimum number of staves, but not go over a maximum number. And when you are finished, you need to meet a very tight tolerance for the circumference or it might leak. Yeah, these guys are good.

The next stop is the one that everyone who's even thought of the tour is waiting for. This is where we get to see the fire. In between where we watched the barrel raising and where we were standing, the barrels had been steamed, formed and had a temporary band placed on them. As we pretended to watch the video, we all watched the charring. This is where the barrel rides a conveyor to a barrel-end sized nozzle and then a natural gas fire is shot and sucked through the barrel for 40 or 55 seconds. 

It is so cool! Oh and we were informed that no matter what the distillery tour say, they all use either 40 or 55 seconds (number 3 or 4 char). I found that very interesting.

The final stop on tour is one that I found very surprising. It's where they repair the barrels they just made. They tell us that roughly 20% of the newly made barrels will need to be repaired. A cooper quickly takes the barrel apart and pulls out the bad stave, matches it with a stack of staves that are piled nearby, puts the new one back in and puts it back together, sealing the seams with cat tails (the marsh plant not the kitty's hind end). Nature's silicone he called it. 

Then it was done. We gave back our safety glasses, shook hands and walked out. That's it. It's a short tour, but very interesting. I liked this tour a lot. I wish it was longer and that you had a little more time to watch what was happening. The videos were on a large screen that obscured much of the process. You only saw certain parts of it. But the parts you saw were the parts most people would want to see. If you love bourbon or are planning to visit Maker's Mark, plan to stop in to Independent Stave's Kentucky Cooperage. Tours are at 9:30 am and 1 pm sharp, Monday through Friday except on holidays.

Two Empties and reviews of them.

People who know me well know that I am a geek. Not just with bourbon. No, not just with whiskey. No, not just in the computer sense. No...

Will you let me finish? Goodness. 

Ahem. Thank you.

I am a geek because I love knowing how things work. I have this immense curiosity that leads me to want to explore variables. It's one of the reasons I was good at that whole sciencey thing when I was studying astrophysics at the University of Minnesota. You know, before I got even more curious and dropped out to explore a bit more of life.

For the longest time, as a geek, I could use up all my curiosity in the pursuit of technology. Computers, the internet, learning to build web sites, learning to build computers, following the evolution of communities and socialization. But after a while I realized that I wasn't curious about that stuff anymore. I had followed it from toddler stages all the way to young adulthood and I had a pretty good idea of the person it was going to be. I was still it's friend, I liked it's company, but I just wasn't curious anymore.

I've baked practically since I was old enough to read the recipes. I loved the way that you could put all these pieces together, pop it into the oven and have something so different come out. Once I became interested in sprits, I found that while cooking was interesting, it was flavor that I was really curious about.

Flavor is amazing. Flavor curiosity is the reason I have 34-odd flavor infused vodkas in a small dark refrigerator in my office. Curiosity is the only reason that anyone would infuse vodka with black pepper. (Which, by the way, starts out sweet...then a nuclear bomb goes off in your mouth.)

Curiosity about flavor variables is also one of the reasons I love whiskey. From relatively minuscule number of ingredients an almost infinite number of flavor combinations are made. But, while the actual food-style ingredients are important, the process-ingredients are just as much so. The container, the temperature and the time. These are all things that cooks have known for a long time. A dark pan in an oven that runs hot burns baked goods, sometimes before they can even finish baking. The flavor is much different than that of a baked good in a glass pan baked at an even temperature for given time frame. In whiskey speak: a new barrel in a hot warehouse provides a much different flavor profile than a used barrel in a cool one. (That's not an exact analogy, but it's the best I can come up with right now.)

Variables. There are so may variables in whiskey. But the problem with most whiskies is that you get to taste all the different variable at once. Maybe you'll get one or two that have the same "recipe" but they were stored in different places for different times in. To top it off the people choosing the barrels were looking for different flavor profiles when they chose the barrels to go into the whiskies. Too many variables. 

Which is why this particular set of empties was so cool. It was the same juice. Aged for supposedly the same time. One batch in a new barrel, one in a used barrel. You really got to taste exactly what the effect of each variable was. This experiment was expensive. It ran about $100. But if there is one thing that I will consistently spend money on, it's my curiosity.

Now, since I said there would be a review, here are some tasting notes:

Woodford Reserve Master's Collection New Cask Rye:

Color: dark amber to golden brown

Nose: Initially I found Apple Jolly Ranchers, but after a little while it began to take on more of a earthy caramel scent

Taste: A sweet woodiness mixed with the grassy flavors of rye

Finish: Not much burn, a grainy funk that lasts a decent amount of time.

Woodford Reserve Master's Collection Aged Cask Rye:

Color: a light straw color

Nose: Honey, apples, sweet clover

Taste: Grassy and sweet, very grain forward

Finish: Short and sweet, low burn

And just because I was curious, for a while I took to mixing them 50-50: strong spearmint on the nose. Not generic mint, wintergreen or peppermint. Spearmint. Grassy grain on the tongue. Long warm finish with more grassy notes.

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Overall I liked this whiskey. I didn't care for the price. $100 is a lot for this, but the experience and the satiated curiosity were worth it, even if the whiskey was not. Based on this, if Woodford released a permanent rye in the price range of their original bourbon, I'd give it the occasional look.

Review: Bourbon—The Evolution of Kentucky Whiskey

Friday's post on the Chuck Cowdery blog featuring Sam Cecil reminded me of something: I've been meaning to post another book review here. In honor of that timely reminder, let's choose one by the late Mr. Cecil: Bourbon—The Evolution of Kentucky Whiskey. 

I bought this book as part of a book devouring frenzy that I had just after bourbon entered my consciousness as a substance worth reading about. I got it from Amazon.com. It cost about $15 at the time (Sept 2011). It's a little less than that as I type this. It's 292 pages long.

The first seven chapters are a nice history of bourbon. They cover topics from the early years of whiskey distilling in America, through Prohibition and beyond, The Whiskey Trust, Master Distillers, the KDA and coopering and warehousing. They are seven well researched and very informative chapters. Of course, it didn't hurt that Cecil spent over 40 years in the whiskey business from 1937-1980 working with T.W. Samuels, Heaven Hill, J.W. Dant and Maker's Mark. He knows his stuff, and it shows. 

Now the eighth chapter, well, that is where your opinion of this book will either be substantially raised or where you will leave off entirely. For me it was the former. You see, the eighth chapter is a 203 page county-by-county breakdown of every registered distillery in Kentucky, that there were records for, from the early 1800s onward. As I was unfamiliar with the layout of Kentucky's counties, I read this with a map in hand. I loved every minute of it.

I can see where someone without my unique love of history, geography, geology and bourbon might find this chapter a bit tedious. If you find that you are of that sort, the first 88 pages or so are still a wonderfully entertaining read. But even if you are that type, I'd skim over the last chapter. There are some very cool stories buried in there. 

I like this book a lot. I found the writing entertaining. I found the history fascinating. I loved the old ads and old photos. The amount of research that was done to bring this book to us is astounding. (The author admits right off the bat that he has stood on the shoulders of giants who did a lot of the research, but the organization and presentation of the information do not suffer in the least for that.) I learned a lot from this book and highly recommend it.

Another Empty? Old Grand-Dad, Bonded

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Another Empty? Yes. I needed to make room on my shelf. I have a few bottles that have been around too long (too long = becoming the oldest bottle on the shelf with the least in it). The Rip Van Winkle was the first. This time around I emptied my bottle of Old Grand Dad, Bottled in Bond. I have a unique opportunity here to do something that I haven't seen done before. I wrote a review of this when I first got it. I'm going to post that here. Then I will add my current feelings about this bourbon, which have changed drastically.

It was last September. Yes. I've had this bottle a long time. 

Old Grand Dad Bottled in Bond 100 Proof has an oily, thick mouthfeel with a sweet almost sugery taste that clings with you almost until the next drink. The finish is nice and long. It’s spicy turning sweet as it goes. 

This is better with an above average splash of water than it is with just the few ice cubes I normally put in a drink as the high proof almost feels like it burns your mouth. Odd since I’ve had higher proof ones that doesn’t act this way.

Overall, I will finish the bottle. As of now, it was an interesting experiment, but I probably won’t buy again I can find a lot more that I like better for the same price. Of course, that opinion might change after a few more drinks. I’ll update if it does.

So now an update from today. My opinion of this has changed. I didn't like it originally. I tried to find any way to use this that didn't involve drinking it. I cooked with it when I knew it wasn't going to be a main flavor component. I used it in experiments. Anything to not drink it. But then something odd happened. Sometime in the last 3-4 months this bourbon grew on me.

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I like it. I will buy it again, though I'm thinking next time I do, it will be the 114 proof version instead. I still add a bit more water than usual to this in order to tame and soften the rough edges on it. But as far as I'm concerned this is one to come back to. The only downside? This bottle is butt-ugly (orange, gold and green) and really draws attention to itself on the shelf. Just not in a good way.

An empty and a short review: Old Rip Van Winkle 10 year

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This is my first empty since posting the stash online. Kind of momentous in a way.

I tend to get all nostalgic when a bottle is emptied. When I have something in my possession for long enough, I become sentimental about it. I once had a pen for 4 years. Nothing special, just a bic clicker with the University of Minnesota logo screen printed on it. I almost cried when I lost it. Ok, not really. But I did feel this momentary pang of loss. Whiskey is much the same way. Though I've never had one last a year much less, the four of that lovely, lovely pen...sigh...ahem. Err. Sorry.

I try not to have multiple bottles of the same thing on the shelf. So when something is gone, there is a very real chance that it is gone for the foreseeable future. Add to that, the fact that this whiskey was just a bit special to me and you have something else that I felt just a bit of a pang over. At least until I drank it and realized I'd kept it just a bit too long. (You can do that, in case you didn't know, so drink up.) 

So why was this whiskey special? Not because it was particularly good. It is good, very good, but will never be a go-to-gotta-have-it-on-the-shelf sort of bottle. I liked it, I just never really found myself going to it all that often. It was special because I found this the on my first trip to one of my favorite liquor stores. While that probably doesn't mean much to folks who just make a stop off for a case of beer, it is a special occasion in the life of a whiskey drinker. It means you found a place where people don't stop and give you funny looks for standing next to the "hard-likker" or even funnier looks when they see you holding one that has a price tag above $25. A good liquor store is a place where you can get recommendations and even some conversation in while you are there. So I found this bottle when I found that place. And that made me think kindly of it.

But now it's gone. Things have been shuffled around so you would have never known it was there. It only lives now in my memory and in these tasting notes from very shortly after I opened it...due to that whole keeping it too long thing. So forgive their brevity, I'd assumed I'd go back and fluff them out some more later.

Buckwheat honey and brown sugar on the nose. Later a hint of fruitiness appears. Mouth is sweet with a hint of mintiness, very low burn. The finish lasts a decent length of time.

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I like this whiskey, I don't love it. I thought I loved it at first, but found myself consistently choosing others over it. And that's not how you define love. Still, it's very good and I suggest you try it if you run across it and haven't yet.