Bourbon Country Four

December 11, 2017

Saturday was a whirlwind. Sunday, I began with a couple miles of walking in Rob and Wynee's neighborhood. It's a series of cul-de-sacs and... oh wait. Google Timeline to the rescue! The light blue shows my walking path. Well, to the accuracy allowed.. I walked on the streets, not through the yards:

That prepared me for a hearty breakfast, delicious, served up by Wynee!

Then, it was time to head for our last distillery stop. Have to say, that save-the-best-for-last phrase sure permeated the visit!

Rob and Wynee have a great, great, neighbor who happens to work at Buffalo Trace and offered to give us his personal, private tour. What? Spend your time on a Sunday at work???

Yeah, well, he's that kind of guy. Amazingly knowledgeable, witty, and giving. It was truly a gift. So, here we go!!

Side note: they have one superlative web site... a must-see if you plan to go there. Heck, even if you don't, a web site visit will certainly not be a waste of time. Said the guy who spends his life on the web.

First stop on the tour: It seems the original distillery had a lightning-strike fire in 1882 which destroyed the distillery. Two warehouses were spared. Colonel Taylor had purchased the distillery in 1870, and sold it to George T. Stagg in 1878 (but Taylor continued to oversee operations). After the fire, he bulldozed the site and built a new distillery.

Fast-forward to 2016 or so, when a decision is made to raze one of the old buildings to construct a new conference center. The workers digging to set the foundation for the new construction kept running into pretty solid resistance. Turns out, they were trying to bore into the old, original distillery!

As an example of the corporate responsibility we've come to understand as Buffalo Trace's, they quit work and moved to preserve the historic site, and build above it. This is now part of one of the tours. Here's the mash pits:

A second shot, this labeled:

"O.F.C." is Colonel Taylor's catchphrase, for using old-fashioned copper distillers. Here's another shot of another foundation section, this of a later incarnation:

It is understood that part of the mysterious high-quality production of bourbon has much to do with the river water - and the need, back in the day, to situate near a shipping opportunity. The reason they decided in 2016 to convert this building to the new use also was partly founded on one fact: it's right on the river.

We were privileged to step out and overlook the river, and the water intake for the distillery, below:

Of course, one has to keep track of the water intake. I believe this is the panel for that function:

There's a great story about an artist who specialized in trompe l'oeil and worked around the distillery. I don't think I'm at liberty to comment on specifics as I'm not sure the statute of limitations has expired. But, I'm pretty sure this is his handiwork:

Imagine coming around the corner in the distillery and seeing that! Above is pretty much natural lighting in terms of lux. Below I brightened it up:

The "wet" look is produced by my flash, I have no doubt, and I lack the editing skills to remove it. Glossy paint and harsh lighting...

A theme of our tour was "from start to finish", hence the look at the water intake. Another part of the process is that grain has to be brought in. A lot of it. Here's one of the truck bays:

Once the grain (corn, wheat, barley, or rye) is off-loaded one must of course measure. Why not have a traveling hopper that is a scale? Yes we need 280 bushels, please:

Btw, the mash bill is the deal. Has to be at least 51% corn; for bourbon, and the rest, well, there's the art of it, right? I did find a nice resource on mash bills... all the secrets that aren't, and a few that still are...

The kuh-razy best explanation of the process is on the Buffalo Trace website in the form of a YouTube. A mere six minutes out of your day.

So, farther into the process, there's the fermenting: