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JR's notes:

Following my summer visit to Kentucky in the summer of 1999 I was asked by the OFF-LICENCE NEWS for a piece focussing on the off-trade aspects of Bourbon Whiskey. This was published in November, 1999. OFF-LICENCE NEWS is published by William Reed, of Crawley, Sussex, whose website is at www.williamreed.co.uk/foodand drink

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Bourbon - The American Spirit

Why is Bourbon Whiskey so called? And where does it fit into the modern retail 'mix'? JOHN RADFORD has been to Kentucky to find out.

The origins of Bourbon are impeccably Celtic, with early Scots and Irish settlers in the US (particularly Virginia) distilling the mash of surplus grain - especially the native 'Indian Corn' (maize) - and marketing the resulting spirit even before the American Revolution.

The legend has it that one Elijah Gray, a firebrand preacher who had moved to Kentucky to get away from the religious persecution of uptight Virginia, took to distilling whiskey in order to fund his church, social and educational projects in the new territory. The whiskey was shipped to his out-of-state customers by riverboat, and the nearest port on the Ohio river was in the town of Limestone, in Bourbon County (now Maysville, in Mason County, after boundary changes). People would ask for 'the whiskey from Bourbon' although Bourbon county has never made whiskey and, today is 'dry' anyway: all alcohol is prohibited.

Well, so much for the history. Where does Bourbon fit into modern off-licence retailing? Let's start with the taste: it owes its style to the richness of the corn (which makes up a minimum 51% of the recipe) in the first instance, and the natural caramelised sugars of toasted new white-oak barrels, in the second. The end result is rich - though not sweet - pungent, with overtones of ripe, autumnal aromas, powerful, and lingering on the palate. Most Celtic whisk(e)y makes a splendid apéritif, but Bourbon's style offers more to the post-prandial market. Consider the very modest quality of bottom-of-the-range 'three-star' Cognac and compare it with mature Bourbon at a similar price. The contrast becomes clear.

How can we make this work for us in the off-trade? Developments over the last ten years or so in Kentucky have paved the way for a Bourbon revival after the decline of the sector in the 1970s and 1980s. The revolution started in the 1950s, when giant distilleries were turning out hundreds of barrels a day of high-strength 'hard liquor' for the stevedores and teamsters who were rebuilding the American economy after the second world war - indeed, about six hundred barrels a day is still the industry norm in 1999. In 1953 a distiller called Bill Samuels bought a run-down, long-closed plant in Loretto, Marion County, Kentucky. He wanted to make a whisky (they use the Scotch, rather than the Irish spelling) that was different from the 'industrial-strength firewater' which was dominating the market. He experimented with various different grain and malt recipes over a large number of years and eventually came up with a formula which pleased him, in which the rye was replaced by wheat. He also distilled and barrelled at a lower strength, and matured for longer. The resulting spirit wasn't cheap, and he could only turn out a fraction of the quantity of the big firms, but he persevered and eventually people started to notice that the whisky branded with the 'Maker's Mark' really was a cut above the competition in terms of quality. Today the distillery is a national monument and it's still run by Bill Samuels' son, Bill Jr, although the company now belongs to Allied-Domecq. However, the most important factor is the level of production: Maker's Mark still only turns out 38 barrels a day.

This low level, hands-on production allows for considerable quality-control, and attracted the attention of bigger fish in the Bourbon barrel. In 1984, the Ancient Age distillery launched Blanton's, named after Colonel Blanton, one of the group's founding fathers. Most of the old family distilleries had a 'family reserve' whiskey, often distilled to special family recipe, and the Blantons used to seek out the odd exceptional barrel for themselves and their friends, and bottle it without blending. Blanton's was the first 'single barrel' Bourbon on the market and its instant success was remarkable. Plainly, there was a new and growing interest in individualistic, niche-market whiskey.

One of the biggest distilleries, Jim Beam in Clermont, is still largely in family hands, and it, too produced a series of individual small-batch whiskeys for family, friends and as gifts for good customers. The increasing interest in Bourbon led them, in 1992, to launch the small-batch Bourbon collection on to the market, dominated by a single-barrel, unfiltered, uncracked (126° American proof - 63% abv) whiskey called Booker's, named after the present head of the family, Booker Noe. The others are Knob Creek (named after Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky); Basil Hayden's (Jim Beam's first master distiller in 1796); and Baker's (Booker Noe's cousin). The interest has been phenomenal and has spawned the Kentucky Bourbon Circle, an appreciation society with a newsletter, tastings and special offers as well as its own website (www.smallbatch.com).

If proof were needed that the industry at large was taking notice of this phenomenon, it came in 1992 with the news that Brown-Foreman, the giant corporation which owns - amongst others - Jack Daniels in Tennessee, had repurchased the Labrot & Graham distillery in Woodford county, which it had sold off as surplus to requirements in the downturn of the 1970s. The company spent a reputed $15m on refurbishing the distillery, including custom-built copper pot-stills and spirit safes designed in and exported from Scotland. The first whiskey was rolled out in 1996 and will be on sale some time in or after 2001. In the meantime, the rackhouses are stocked with a special whiskey distilled at another Brown- Foreman site - Early Times - to a recipe named after yet another Brown-Foreman brand, Old Forrester. It's already wining a reputation for being one of the most outstanding Bourbon whiskeys of the modern era - on a par with Maker's Mark and the Jim Beam Small Batch collection - and pr oduction is just four barrels a day.

And, even as you read this, somebody, somewhere, is about to launch something else... Bourbon is back with a vengeance, and the market is wide open. All the off-trade has to do is to jump on the bandwagon: this one will run and run.

Body Copy: 988 words