[Roguish Lawyer]

[continued]

If Bourbon is the appellation wine of American whiskeys, then single-barrel and small-batch Bourbons are the grand crus of Bourbons. These superpremium, high-cost spirits should not be confused with single-malt Scotch, which simply denotes a Scotch from a single distillery that has not been blended with neutral spirits or whiskeys from other distilleries. Since no Bourbon is blended, it would all qualify under Scottish law as single malt.

As the name implies, a single-barrel Bourbon, of which there are precious few, is a whiskey actually taken and bottled from one barrel. Small-batch Bourbons are whiskeys from a "batch" of barrels that have been mixed or mingled, as the distillers say, prior to bottling. For a common brand, the mingling batch could be as many as 200 barrels or more. In contrast, a mingle for a small batch might be 20 barrels or fewer.

"What you want to do with a small batch," says Jimmy Russell, master distiller at Wild Turkey and a 40-year veteran of Bourbon-making, "is take your very best barrels, the cream of the crop, and mingle them to match the standard you're trying to achieve. It takes a lot of time and patience to produce a good Bourbon."

On a tour of the Wild Turkey distillery in Lawrenceburg, Russell carefully explains the various Bourbon-making steps: "All Bourbon whiskey, I don't care if it's single-barrel, small-batch, or whatever, is distilled from a fermented mash of corn, barley and one other grain, usually rye. Your fermentation will take three to four days, depending on the temperature you keep the mash at. Here at Wild Turkey, we still use the old-fashioned, cypress fermenting tanks for most of our production; some are more than 100 years old. I guess you'd say we're kind of traditional in our approach.

"Once it's been fermented, it's ready to be distilled," continues Russell. "We use a double-distilling process in our whiskey-making, which is pretty much the industry standard now. The first time through the still, your whiskey is a little raw and harsh tasting. The second time through, it comes out more refined, with a taste of grain and sweetness, but clean on your palate. After that second distilling, you're ready to barrel. The whole process, from grinding the grains to barreling, takes about five days."

It is the variations in each step of the production process, handed down from master distiller to apprentice--often for generations--that give the different Bourbons their distinct flavors. Take the grain mix, for instance. One distiller uses 80 percent corn and 10 percent each of rye and barley malt, while another cuts the corn to 78 percent, increases the barley malt to 12 percent, and uses 10 percent rye. At Maker's Mark, the only distillery in Kentucky to vary from the traditional formula, wheat replaces rye altogether in the grain recipe.

"It was Dad's idea," explains Samuels. "He had a certain taste in mind from day one. So he fiddled around in the kitchen making bread to test the grain recipe until he got what he was looking for. He must have baked hundreds of loaves; we all thought he was crazy. But he finally found what he wanted, which meant taking out the rye and adding wheat to the mash."

The yeast culture used in the fermentation process is another important variable. Distillers are protective of their yeast; many use strains dating back a century or more that have been carefully nurtured. The Maker's Mark culture dates back to the original T.W. Samuels distillery founded in 1842. "We kept it in storage at a local bakery during the 13 years of Prohibition," says Samuels. At Brown-Forman's Early Times distillery, where two yeast cultures are used, one for Early Times and the other for Old Forester, the cultures "probably date back to some of the original strains," says Quality Control Specialist Brian M. Gregory. Adds Noe, "I keep my yeast formula under lock and key."

Asked whether there are any other elements that make Kentucky Bourbon different or better than other kinds of whiskeys, Noe doesn't hesitate. "The water," he says. "We've got limestone water here, and it's pretty much iron-free. That's why our horses are special, too. The limestone gets right up into their bones and makes good runners out of 'em."

The warehouses, however, serve as the final stage where the most distinctive characteristics are added to the whiskey. Bourbon takes its color and much of its flavor from the oak barrels in which it is aged. The process of charring barrels originated with Elijah Craig, an eighteenth-century minister and distiller from Georgetown, Kentucky. Craig "discovered" charring when several barrels he was preparing for transportation to market caught fire. The fire may have been set on purpose, in which case it is likely that Craig was trying to find a way to recycle barrels that had been used to ship dried fish. If the conflagration was an accident, it was probably caused by a fire in Craig's own cooperage.

"Either way," says Samuels, "being a good Scotsman, he didn't want to throw any barrels away. So he filled them with white lightning, and by the time he got it all downriver to market in New Orleans, with all the sloshing and such, the whiskey had this nice amber color and it had started to round out and soften a bit. And the people loved it."

Today, Bourbon barrels are charred to different degrees, ranked from one to four, depending on the depth of the bum. Single-barrel and small-batch Bourbons are usually aged in a three or four char barrel (moderate to heavy). The charring not only darkens the wood but also caramelizes some of the natural sugars in the oak.

During the aging process, the whiskey is said to "breathe" in the barrel, expanding into the wood over the hotter months and contracting out of it in the winter. Since color and flavor are transferred to the Bourbon while it is in the wood, summer is the most important time in the warehouse. Distillers often refer to it as the "aging" season. Naturally, the longer a Bourbon is aged, the more flavor it takes from the wood.

Gary Gayheart, master distiller at Ancient Age in Frankfort, explains it this way: "The barrels are totally filled with water-white whiskey when they come off the line, and after two years, you develop some color and you lose some volume [to evaporation]; six years, you've got a lot more color and you've lost about a third in volume. After ten years, you're getting really dark color, and about half the volume is gone."

"Down here," adds Russell, "we call the third you loose to evaporation 'the angels' third.' The old-timers say if the angels didn't take their share, the whiskey wouldn't be worth drinking."

[continued next post]