Kentucky Horse Park Campground, Lexington, Kentucky
A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish man despises his mother. ~ Proverbs 15:20
HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS TO THE MYRIAD OF NOVEMBER LOVED ONES!! Kelli, Barb, Zach, both our mothers (May and Joan), son Chris, grandson Cody, and Brad!!
Well, just as I mentioned previously, the tide certainly did turn! We dropped from 65-degrees to 30 within 24 hours! And as you know, it poured down the rain for two days, so things were not only cold this morning, but a bit icy as well, but surprisingly just on the car roofs. Guess the ground was still too warm.
We were initially planning a long bike ride today, but with the much cooler temperatures, and the fact that many of the places we wanted to visit turned out to be over an hour away, we ended up at a bourbon distillery for a tour and tasting. Not to worry though, we didn’t end up like our infamous neighbor. 😊
We needed something to do and it was free, and we thought it’d be interesting to see how they do it. Jim Beam (touted as the oldest and most recognized) was over an hour away, so we ended up at Buffalo Trace. There are others in our immediate area, but this one had a free tour, whereas the others charged. We like free, and we don’t normally drink, so we didn’t really care if the tasting was good or not.
As it turned out, unbeknownst to us, we ended up at the best bourbon distillery . . . . in the WORLD!
Lots of very slow, or not moving traffic. Eventually, we discovered why . . . .
What’s up with the blackened buildings??
It was a very interesting, 1-hour tour led by Andrew, who did an excellent job keeping us educated as well as entertained. The Buffalo Trace name has been in business since 1999, making it 20 years old this year. But the actual distillery has been in constant use for over 200 years, making it the oldest continuous use bourbon distillery in America. At least that’s what they tell us. However, just to let you know, on-line sources say 1775, but when I started searching for the date (because I couldn’t remember it), Buffalo Trace’s history timeline never mentions when the whiskey making actually began. And certainly, several of the current buildings were built in 1857, and the earliest aging warehouse was built in 1881. And the place is currently undergoing a $1.6 Billion dollar expansion, currently adding 5 more warehouses, with an additional 23 more planned.
Be that as it may, we’ll definitely concede that they’ve been distilling alcohol for a very long time and in 2013, were named as a National Historic Landmark. And they’ve won numerous awards (more than 500 to date), more than any other distillery in the world; including an unmatched seven ‘Distillery of the Year’ titles.
In 2018, there were 2,469 entries in an 18-year-old competition held in San Francisco, in which there were 48 experts who judged them in a blind taste test. Buffalo Trace’s entries won 5 Double Gold Medals – an award which requires all 48 judges to agree on a Gold medal winner. They came away with 21 total medals.
Their name comes from the fact that actual buffalo used to migrate through this portion of Kentucky on their way West, leaving a wide path known as a ‘trace’. And this ‘trace’ was used by explorers such as Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame).
So what did we learned about bourbon? Nothing that will enhance our lives, but still some pretty interesting stuff.
1. To be called ‘bourbon’ (as opposed to just whiskey), it must meet 3 criteria. It must contain nothing artificial – grains and water only. By law, it must contain a minimum of 51% corn. It must be aged in new and charred barrels. Not all whiskey is bourbon, but all bourbon is whiskey.
2. This distillery was one of only four in the nation to stay in business during Prohibition. Why? Because the man in charge at the time secured a license from the government to produce whiskey for ‘medicinal purposes’. If something ailed you, you could go to your doctor and receive a prescription for ‘medicinal whiskey’ (sounds like marijuana today, doesn’t it??). And that prescription could be renewed, giving you a month’s supply of whiskey – one pint every ten days, with three refills. 😊
3. They recently produced their 7th million barrel since Prohibition, and will soon have the 8th. Every millionth barrel is donated to a charity for fundraising purposes. They take applications, but I don’t know how they make the decision as to who gets it.
4. This company uses over 500,000 pounds of 100% non-gmo corn every day! And their recipe contains roughly 70% corn (They aren’t allowed to reveal exactly how much. Recipes are extremely well-guarded.). The corn comes from farms in Kentucky and Indiana and every truckload is carefully inspected to meet their criteria. Their recipe also contains rye, wheat and malted barley. And the yeast they use began its life in the 1930s.
5. The company filled 12,000 barrels in 1995. In 2018, they filled 200,000, and there’s still a shortage. What that means is, people are drinking more bourbon.
6. Bourbon is a slow process. The original product (what they call White Dog) is straight 125-proof whiskey aka moonshine. Some of that is bottled and sold, but most is put into those new, charred barrels. Even their cheapest brand of bourbon takes 4 years to age. The best? 18-20. That means, most of the profit is tied up for at least 4 years. In addition, there’s evaporation to contend with. 53 gallons of product in a barrel evaporates to about 33 gallons in 4 years. And for the ‘good’ stuff? The 18-20-year stuff? It evaporates leaving just 12 gallons. By the way, they have to pay tax on the original 53 gallons. And somehow or other, they also produce Vodka from this stuff.
I think you can read the number of years.
7. So what about those barrels? If you read the previous information, you may have noticed that in order to be called bourbon, the whiskey has to come from new, charred barrels. That means, the barrels cannot be re-used. So what do they do with all those emptied barrels? They’re sold to scotch, rum and winery distilleries. And the char? The inside of the barrel is flash-burned for about 55-seconds.
8. The barrels are stored in a specific way, in a specific order. The warehouses are not heated much, nor air-conditioned. In the summer, the top floors reach upwards of 140-degrees, which evaporates the whiskey faster, so the 4-year batches are stored on the top floors. The 18-20-year stuff is on the bottom. And to help things along in the winter, there’s steam heat running through the buildings.
9. They have people who’s sole job is to ‘clock’ the barrels. They take the newly filled barrel and turn it just right so that when it is rolled into its resting spot, it will end up with the plug facing up. Buffalo Trace’s Clockers won a national competition last year. (It sounded much more impressive when Andrew explained it. 😊)
10. If you notice in the pictures, the bricks of the buildings look black. This is actually a fungus that grows from the evaporation process. Every distillery around the globe has this. Sometimes it’s referred to as “angels’ share”. As distilled spirits are aged, the barrels are not completely air-tight, and some is lost to evaporation as previously mentioned. “Angels share” is a name used world-wide for the loss. This particular fungus is unique in that it can grab the ethanol that’s released and feed on it. We were told that many distilleries paint their buildings black to hide the fungus that naturally grows on them, but Buffalo Trace chooses not to.
11. A few years ago, a tornado tore off the roof of one of the warehouses. Somehow, that exposure caused a new and unique flavor in the bourbon stored there. They’re currently experimenting to try to replicate it.
Last but not least, and probably the most eye-opening information shared . . . . the state of Kentucky makes 95% of the world’s bourbon!
If you’re interested in reading about the process, I grabbed this from a website I found that transcribed Buffalo Trace’s video.
It all starts with the finest natural ingredients. Hand-selected corn from local Kentucky and Indiana farms, along with other grains such as rye, wheat, and malted barley. Together, these grains make up our many unique mash bills, proprietary recipes known only to our master distiller.
The grains are carefully inspected, measured and tested in the distillery laboratory to ensure they meet our rigid standards for quality, moisture and composition. To prepare the newly-received grains for the mashing process, they must first be carefully milled to our exact specifications.
Our number-10 screen only allows milled grains as large as 10/64 of an inch in diameter to pass through. This screen ensures the grains are the right size to cook properly without compromising the integrity of the grain itself.
The next larger screen would allow whole kernels through, and a smaller screen would create too fine a grain, causing the mash to become too thick. Kentucky limestone mashing water, fresh and rich with minerals, is then heated in a steam-generated pressure cooker.
Once the water reaches the proper temperature, the corn is cooked for about one hour, until it’s time for the other grains to be added. This allows the active enzymes to turn the starch into a soluble sugar. This new mixture is now a sweet mash.
After the mash has cooled, yeast is added, with a small amount of previously fermented and distilled mash, also known as sour mash. The sugar present in the mash feeds the yeast to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The uniquely rich nutrients of the pure Kentucky limestone water used in this process also enrich the yeast. All our Whiskeys undergo this natural fermentation, lasting up to five days.
Afterwards, the fully fermented mixture, or beer, complete with solids, enters the top of our column still and descends naturally, while steam from the bottom of the still rises and creates an alcohol-rich vapor.
This vapor is then recondensed and passed through a second still, known as a doubler. This process creates a crystal-clear liquid that we call “white dog.” But before this newly-made Whiskey goes into barrels, we inspect them thoroughly.
Our barrels are made of naturally aged, center-cut wood from white oak trees, typically 70 to 80 years old. The wood is air-dried for six months and each barrel is charred for 55 seconds from an open flame. This draws the natural sugars in the oak to the surface and enables the Whiskey to penetrate deeply, and draw flavor from the wood.
The saw joints must be tight and the wood flawless. These standards are the highest in the industry, but they help us create the finest Whiskeys produced anywhere in the world. Every step in our Whiskey-making process is important and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to barrel-aging.
Our aging warehouses date back to as early as 1881 and the variety of warehouses here is unmatched. Each warehouse has unique aging properties that allow our Whiskeys to age differently and create an unparalleled array of flavors.
From brick to metal, wooden ricks to concrete structures big and small, each barrel at Buffalo Trace ages gracefully over the years, unique to itself, garnering a rich amber color and distinct flavor all its own. Furthermore, during the cold winters, steam is pumped through the warehouses.
This heat allows our Whiskey additional time to mellow in the oak barrels, time otherwise lost to dormancy during the cold months. After years of quietly aging in our century-old warehouses, each Whiskey must pass the final test: the taste test.
Samples are drawn from barrels, as our seasoned panel of experts taste each Whiskey. No barrel is bottled until we say it’s ready. Only then is each Whiskey bottled with the utmost care. Many bottles are still filled, corked and labeled by hand today.
By honoring tradition and embracing change in the timeless craft of Whiskey making, Buffalo Trace Distillery has earned its place of leadership among the legendary Whiskey makers of the world.
And so our tour came to an end. We’d seen (as much as we were allowed for free) and heard all about the place, and were allowed to walk through a very small area where about a dozen people were working to bottle their single-barrel bourbon. We never really figured out what that term means, but I found this on-line: A single barrel bottling is made from one barrel and bottled without mingling the bourbon with any other barrels. Single-barrel bottlings can be different from barrel to barrel, as each barrel offers different flavors depending on where it was stored in the warehouse and a variety of other characteristics, such as age and natural differences in the wood. Introduced to the world in 1984, Blanton’s (a Buffalo Trace product) was the first single-barrel bourbon on the market.
And then it was time for the tasting. We were expecting a tiny sip of their least-expensive product. After all, there were hundreds of people on these tours, just today. But no. They set us up with five different tastings – – vodka, White Dog, two brands of bourbon and bourbon cream! Yikes! That’s a lot for people who don’t usually drink anything stronger than Coke!
Before each sample, Andrew regaled us with information about each product. We shot the vodka, took tiny sips of White Dog (because we were told, “Don’t shoot the dog!” because it’s so strong), and partook of tiny sips of each of the two bourbons.
We didn’t really care for anything except the Bourbon Cream, and that was pretty terrific.
And then, Andrew brought out the pièce de résistance! A box of dark chocolate creams! Blaine and I each had two, they were soooooo delicious! We went into the gift shop to consider buying a box, but they weren’t priced, so we skipped it. Probably for the best. They may have been gone by the time we got home.
Stick with dessert! It’s the bomb!
While we were out, we took some exercise. Blaine found this Park right down the street.
And we took a scenic route home. The trees were gorgeous!
