In 2007 I visited Bardstown, Kentucky as a guest of the Jim Beam family. While it's a family of bourbons,
and a business enterprise, it's also a real family and what I was struck by how much it felt that way. Certainly, Fred Noe, the seventh-generation head of the Beam company, made u feel like guests of a family, sitting at the head of a picnic table at a party at his house, telling some of us how Jim Beam and ginger ale was his drink of choice on a ht summer night, and that he was never happier when he was sitting on his back porch drinking one. It was also fantastic how these big guys in suspenders and non-ironic trucker hats were crafting some of the best spirits in the world with the same level of care and understanding of terroir and process as as a French winemaker. I grew up in rural Oregon in a town dominated by the logging industry so I was quite comfortable among these guys, but back in Molalla men that looked this cut down trees for a living, and here they made wondrous, sophisticated spirits. I took to referring to the distillers we met, and with no disrespect intended, as redneck artisans. It's hard to convey how completely bourbon suffuses Kentucky culture; there's a level of tradition and passion for spirits passed on from generation to generation that I've certainly never experienced anywhere else in America. The landscape feels steeped in bourbon--it's in the fields of corn, rye and barley and it's in the water.
At the Jim Beam ditillery the group of spirits writers were led on a tour that was much like going through Willy Wonka's Chcocolate Factory filled with all manner of magical surprises.
Like jazz, blues and hip-hop, this one of the true original American art forms.
For real.
Alberta Straub, a.k.a. Miss Flighty gazes happily upon barrels upon barrels of amber gold. More tomorrow from the Jim Beam distillery, Makers Mark and the Bourbon Fest Ball.
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