Water of life’s source in US hills

THE bartender says “it’s crazy”, as he puts the garnishing on the Manhattan he has just made for me. “These days, Instagram always gets the first taste.” I chuckle, adjusting my iPhone to get the perfect balance of light to hit the cocktail sitting in front of me, ready to make its debut on social media before I’ve even had a sip.

While the words of my mixologist (who goes by @hammerfizz on Instagram) ring true, there is still one thing social media cannot do. I travelled to some of the biggest and smallest whiskey distilleries in the US, to see — and taste — first hand, what goes into making a key ingredient in the craft cocktail boom that’s sweeping drink culture: good ol’ fashioned American whiskey.

Whiskey became my drink of choice after moving from laid-back Cape Town to fastpaced Joburg, when I took up my first job after graduating from the University of Cape Town. Whether it was the stress of the city or the responsibilities that go with working for a TV news show, I found whiskey to be the perfect accompaniment to nights out on the town — surprising friends when I’d return to Cape Town on holiday by ordering a double Jack on the rocks, and not a ginger ale, which had previously been my tipple of choice.

My taste changed over the years — Jack and I had one too many falling-outs along the way — and sometimes I’d dabble in whisky without the “e”. But visiting the distillery where the largest brand of American whiskey is made remained on my bucket list — as did seeing many of the other storied spots where the “the water of life” is created.

So, together with the Distilleries Council of the US, iPhone in hand of course, I trekked across three states, to Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, where the US’s oldest registered distillery is found.

Visiting the spot where Jack Daniel’s is made in Lynchburg, 112km outside of Nashville, Tennessee, is like going to the “Disneyland of distilleries”. It is a historic landmark and, of the eight distilleries I visited, the one most geared towards tourists, with signage outside its warehouses written in the same font and lettering as that which adorns every bottle of No7 and stills looking like the kind you would find above rides at a theme park.

There is a statue of the five-foot-two Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel, so you can pose with the man — who became a master distiller at the age of 13 — “on the rocks” at the statue’s feet. There is a gift shop filled with souvenirs such as a braai tong set and a JD desk lamp.

Novelties aside, it is through taking the walking tour here that I saw what makes the specific differences between bourbon and whiskey. As the saying goes, all bourbons are whiskeys but not all whiskeys are bourbon, and at the distillery you see the process that earned young Jack his success in whiskey making. You see the rickyards with 10-foot-high blocks of sugar maple wood, used for that final step in whiskey making that bourbon does not go through: charcoal mellowing. While other distillers abandoned the process for cheaper methods of making whiskey after the Civil War, Jack kept it up — earning the special designation of “Tennessee Whiskey” from the government. Friends of “Uncle Jack”, from Dolly Parton to the Zac Brown Band, have left their scribbled names in chalk on the walls of the grinding room.

Just as at all of the other distilleries, the tour takes us through the fermenters, where that strong smell of porridge and beer mixed with carbon dioxide permeates the space. It becomes more familiar as we travel to each distillery, and it makes me wish my Instagram was scratch-andsniff so friends back home could smell it too.

From there we are shown how the mash is distilled into alcohol, and how it is then stored in barrels of wood. There is nothing quite like the sight — or oaky smell — of hundreds of barrels of whiskey ageing in front of you to tempt the senses.

The 80 barrelhouses at Jack’s, holding more than 20,000 barrels of whiskey, are a far cry from the George Dickel distillery, where far fewer barrels are housed in the spectacular foothills of Cascade Hollow. It is an even further cry away from George Washington’s Mount Vernon Distillery in Virginia, where whiskey is made only twice a year. Both may be smaller operations, but like Jack Daniel’s, they are situated in the heart of beautiful surroundings.

“It’s all about the source,” master distiller Fred Noe tells us, over at the Jim Beam distillery in Kentucky. Daniel’s relies on a limestone cave spring, Dickel a river stream called Cascade Creek, which runs out in front of the distillery, and Beam on a limestone shelf that makes Central Kentucky a perfectly sweet spot to produce bourbon.

The iron-free, calcium-rich water, Noe explains, is perfect for making bourbon, which is why 98% of all bourbon distilleries are here. His full name is Frederick Booker Noe III and, like many master distillers, he has followed in his great-grandfather’s footsteps. With a gruff voice, and wearing black pants and a Jim Beam shirt proudly, he says “hell” a lot and calls me “ma’m” as he takes us through a taste-testing that is the best on the trip. Ask him the proper way to drink whiskey and he’ll reply, “any damn way you want!”

Fred’s dad Booker reintroduced the way whiskey was made before Prohibition, when it was hand-crafted in small batches. Corn was the main ingredient in bourbon (according to law it must make up 51% of the recipe), and Beam runs two distilleries.

Fred still keeps a bit of the original jug yeast from the family recipe, which he takes home once a month just in case anything were to happen to the distillery.

“We inoculate the new yeast with some of the old. It’s like a friendship ring,” he says. “It’s a little bit of my great Granddad in there; the old with the new.”

When you are in Bourbon County in Kentucky, it is only right to visit Maker’s Mark and Woodford Reserve. The drive to the quaint setting where Maker’s is made is lined with houses that have little Virgin Mary statues in their gardens, and you pass through an area called BardsTown, known as the bourbon capital. Jim Beam’s godson, Bill Samuels Jr, a seventhgeneration distiller with a knack for a good story, takes us through the history of Maker’s. “My dad bought this place as a hobby,” he says. “He worked here right up until he went to that great distillery in the sky.”

For most of this trip I have learnt about the men involved in the whiskey business, so it is a great surprise to hear Samuels talk about his mother’s role in it. Margie Samuels forced her father, Bill Sr, to do the wax experiments that led to Maker’s unique red wax seal finishing, setting it apart from all the others. She was the first industry woman to be inducted into the Whiskey Hall of Fame — and her portrait watches over the bottling area of the distillery, where you can also wax your very own bottle to take home.

At Woodford, Chris Morris takes us through the giant cypress wood fermenters, a key part of their bourbon production. He reminds me a little of Ned Flanders and takes story-telling just as seriously as the The Simpsons character does. Woodford has the most impressive stills we have seen on the tour — huge, beautiful, copper ones, three of them. It is the three-time distillation that sets Woodford apart, as Morris shows us.

But to meet “the Master Distiller’s Master Distiller”, you have to head over to Wild Turkey, where Jimmy Russell has been at it for 60 years. Jimmy broke new ground in 1976 with the first honeyed bourbon, which is today known as American Honey. He will tell you he thinks it has helped make a lot more women appreciate whiskey.

For this woman, ending the trek at Stitzel-Weller Distillery, home of Bulleit Bourbon, having experienced the making of whiskey in all its stages, is a point for introspection. As @hammerfizz serves me the Old-Fashioned for which he’s known, I stop for a moment to have the first taste, before pressing the click on my iPhone.

Jack Daniel’s relies on a limestone cave spring, Jim Beam on a limestone shelf that makes Central Kentucky a perfectly sweet spot

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