Lil Ol’ Morley St Botolph, Norfolk, England

Great whisky memories are made by people, not places. And if I had to describe what I do, I’d say it’s not tasting – Murray and Broom do that better than I ever will – it’s bringing whisky alive by introducing the people I meet in the industry back home to a whisky tasting group.

When the places are as pretty as George Dickel, Woodford Reserve and Maker’s Mark, though, the job just got all that much easier.

A few years back at the Tom Moore distillery on the edge of Bardstown, Kentucky, I met a guy named Greg Davis, a young, happy and enthusiastic new master distiller with a  product due on the market soon called Ridgemont Reserve 1792.

It was hot and Greg showed myself and Gordon Dundas, then sales manager at Whisky Magazine but now a brand ambassador for Bowmore, a tour of the site. American warehouses can be seven stories high, are made of metal, and if you want to understand bourbon you need to visit one in summer. At the bottom the temperature is about 30 degrees in summer, but at the top, it can hit 50. So we ran up the stairs, drank cask strength Barton bourbon straight from the barrel then came back down, tripping from the heat and the alcohol, and we lay on the grass in the warmth of the sun, laughing until we were choking. Greg and I have been friends ever since and one of my proudest possessions is a signed bottle with the words “you were here before the brand was even the market place and you are always welcome in my distillery.”

So meeting up with Greg on my last day was always a hope. He’s now master distiller at Maker’s Mark, anither pretty distillery only this time at Loretto, Kentucky, a Catholic community where statues of Our Lady decorate the gardens and picket fences keep the thoroughbred horses penned. And where the statues often sits in bath tubs – though my fellow journalists are cynical about my explanation why.

But it’s true because Maker’s figurehead Bill Samuels told me and he would never make stuff up or exaggerate.

The sun is shining – as it must here – and sure enough, Greg joins our party. For me, that’s job done and the trip’s complete – and time’s running out anyway.

Just time for a quick visit to Beam and a chance to say hello to Fred Noe. With several new products on the way and the distillery being expanded significantly to accommodate a full visitor experience, nowhere epitomises what’s happening in Kentucky more than this site. Much as I love visiting the State, until a couple of years back little changed here and pickings for a journalist were slim.

Not any more – with the world of whisky opening up new territories by the week the distillers here are on the move and Kentucky is as vibrant and dynamic as anywhere else. It’s a building site and it’s producing great new whiskeys, though the downside is we’re not going to see them in Europe any time soon.

I have to leave mid tour, along with my four new Israeli friends, and the one downer on the trip that they don’t make it airside to share one last beer. Turns out their Newark flight is too delayed for them to leave Louisville so they return to the trip. I love going home but sitting in a soulless airport in Louisville or on Islay when I don’t know when I’ll be back is always a tough gig for me. Hard leaving a part of your heart anywhere.

Great group, great whiskey, great times.

I’m outta here…

Coming next: No more smoke and mirrors! So much for the sentimental stuff, now read my problem with American whiskey and the people who try to define it. I guess I ought to do something objective!!

Read it here this afternoon…

Sunday Kentucky

I admit that before yesterday Tennessee was, for me, no more than a curtain  raiser for the real business up in Kentucky. But wow, what a first day!

Tennessee is stunning. Forestry imposes itself on you like no other place I know, the tall trees lining the roads with an intensity that is almost overwhelming, every hill and valley packed tight with foliage. Rivers cut through the landscape, their banks lined with fishermen,  the waters flowing in to lakes so that you feel you are lost in the heart of Southern America. Everywhere you look nature is in control, and man exists in its grasp, little wooden shacks hugging nature so that even the pick up trucks are dwarfed by the enormity of the woodland. It’s breath taking.

And in the middle of it all is the George Dickel distillery, arguably whisky’s best kept secret. In fact it’s criminal that Diageo hasn’t done more with this brand.

It’s a small distillery – or relatively anyway – and it makes Tennessee whiskey, which is distinct to bourbon, the difference being that the new spirit is dribbled through ten feet of maplewood charcoal, taking seven days to pass though before being collected. And it’s every bit as pretty here as Maker’s or Woodford Reserve is in Kentucky.

Our lunch is superb – deep fried chicken, corn on the cob, green beans. Traditional Southern food served in an ideal Tennessee setting while wild turkeys strut around the estate.

The whole distillery tour’s a treat but the highlight comes when we discuss security of the maturation warehouses high up on the hill.

“We have 24 hour security but anyway you wouldn’t want to go up there off the path once it gets warm,” explains master distiller John Lunn.  “We have a real issue with rattlesnakes.”

Priceless.

I’ve been to Jack Daniel’s three times now but this is the first time I’ve been when it’s producing and it’s the first time I’ve had the delightfully named Chambliss Fewell as a guide. Mr Jack would have been proud. Chambliss and the distillery puts on a metaphorical firestorm for us, and the afternoon and evening turn out to be up there with my best American whiskey experiences.

The tour starts conventionally enough but Chambliss turns out to be in playful mood and boy does he deliver a tour. At Jack they spray the maplewood they burn to make the charcoal for filtering with 140 proof new make Jack ‘white dog’ – so Chambliss takes the cylinder containing the spirit and sprays it on our hands so we can taste it. We’re in money can’t buy territory.

More than 250 bags of charcoal fill each 10 feet deep container and the new spirit is dribbled drop by drop on to it. It’s an incredibly slow drip process and while there may be more than 70 containers doing the job, it defies belief that 100 million litres pass through charcoal this way each year.

And if you want statistics here’s one for you – Jack can produce 120 gallons of spirit a minute. That’s 540 litres. More than 30,000 litres an hour. Which means that in three hours – the time of an average American Football match – Jack produces more than Edradour does in a year.

If that appals you then it shouldn’t. American whiskey has even more exacting standards than Scotland does, and Jack is produced to the exact standards that everyone else in Tennessee and Kentucky does. The fact that they manage to produce, cask and mature 100 million litres a year of spirit should be admired and respected.

Chambliss is as good a tour guide as you’ll find anywhere, but master distiller Jeff Arnett raises the game again with a superb dissection of his distillery’s whiskeys. Single Barrel Jack is great whiskey, by anyone’s standards. The surprise of the night, though, is the new Jack honey liqueur – not my cup of tea at all, but a beautifully crafted product bursting with honey, pecan and hazelnut and not over-cloying at all.

Our evening ends with a meal of catfish and pulled pork and music by the excellent Kacey Smith. Years ago I used to watch acts in Northern working men’s clubs and was constantly astounded by the standard there, often unrecognised. Kacey Smith reminded me of those places.  I don’t know how she fits in to the Nashville country picture but she sings like an angel, has her own CD and, accompanied by just one very talented musician who plays guitar and mandolin, performed with aplomb in the most difficult of circumstances. Listening to her while drinking Single Barrel after a totally satisfying day is as good as it gets. Check out her website or her Android app.

Great, great day. Next stop, Kentucky. Yee, and verily ha!

Nashville Tennessee, Saturdsay April 21 8am

The first time I came to Nashville I was with a group of your bartenders  most of whom had never been to America before and were very excited.

So imagine how they felt when they arrived in the Nashville arrivals hall and the first person they saw was the legendary Ron Jeremy.

If at this point you’re saying ‘Ron who?’ then may I suggest that you are female, gay, or a liar.

Ron Jeremy is the stocky and hairy porn star who has appeared in more hardcore sex films than just about anyone else in the world, becoming a superstar more because of,  rather than despite, the fact he is nothing special to look at. The reason? Because through his actions millions of men – and it will be millions – got the idea that if he could pull a stunning leonine Amazon goddess with a figure to die for, there was nothing to stop them doing the same.

Anyway, I digress. Nashville is disappointingly quiet compared to that visit, but still a welcome relief after the soulless three hours I’ve just spent in the airport in Minneapolis St Paul’s. Big, dull and depressing, it’s the epitome of the modern international American airport. In fact it is one of life’s greatest ironies that American airports are lifeless impersonal places where you have to walk half a mile to grab a beer and the only food on offer is a burger or chicken wings with some chill sauce chucked in, or if you’re lucky an Asian bland out, and yet you can go to airports in Arabic and Muslim countries and they have amazing duty free shops, a great choice of restaurants and some kick-ass bars.

Although admittedly, no Ron Jeremy.

I’m here to write about American whiskey and to film the master distillers who make it for a series of short films to run on the The W Club site.

We’re in a very wet Nashville right now, six hours behind the United Kingdom, so it’s breakfast in the next hour and then we’re off to George Dickel and Jack Daniel’s in Tennessee today.

Over  the next few days I’ll be visiting eight distilleries, a cooperage and the Oscar Getz Museum, where the history of bourbon is on display. I’ll be tweeting regularly and blogging here, hopefully on a daily basis, depending on internet connection.

And of course I’ll be reporting back on everything news worthy that happens. Although I’m not expecting any more porn stars.

Sorry.

What I liked this week

The next issue of Whiskeria

We’ve been working hard on a new issue of Whiskeria and it’ll be hitting the stores some time around mid May – and it’s shaping up to be a cracker.

There’s a feature on our trip to Islay with international photographer Colin Prior, an interview with the whisky-loving lead singer of Swedish heavy metal band In Flames, fatherly advice and whisky picks for Father’s Day and what to do in  Britain if you’re not interested in The Olympics. There’s also a review of Ken Loach’s whisky-basd film The Angel’s Share.

The Angel’s Share

I was invited to a press screening of Ken Loach’s new film and attended with national journalists from the likes of Heat, Empire, The Telegraph. Reviews are embargoed at this point – it comes out in June – but suffice to say it will do the whisky industry no harm and it’s a delight seeing a whisky colleague in action – in this case Charlie MacLean. A review will appear here once a date is green-lighted.

New Glenkeir Treasures

One of the great aspects of The Whisky Shop offering is the opportunity to taste exclusive whiskies in store before purchasing and then buy samples in 10cl, 20cl or 50cl bottles, making quite rare whisky accessible to even the modest pocket.

The whiskies are specially selected for us and are filled in to casks in the shop, and they are uniformly excellent. The arrival of a new Treasure is always a special event and doesn’t happen that often.

The latest additions are an Isle of Jura 19 year old and a Highland Park 17 year old. The former is an oddball whisky,a subtle mix of rapier fresh and clean citrus flavours and a surprisingly subtle and sophisticated taste. The Highland Park is a treat but takes there malt in to new territory, dispensing with the balanced all rounder characteristics normally associated with the whisky  and focusing on a gritty Highland taste with grape and gooseberry in the mix.

BenRiach samples

BenRiach continues to delight and amaze and the latest batch of samples are a mix of sherry casks offerings from the mid 70s and light bourbon fresh ones from the 80s. There are a couple of peaty ones there and one or two of the very oldest have a delicious rich menthol flavour …stunning.

And finally…

I’m off to Tennessee and Kentucky for six days to interview the master distillers about American whiskey for a new video W Club series starting in May. The idea is to ask the people who make it to talk about one aspect of Tennessee whiskey and bourbon. I’ll be visiting Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve, and Maker’s Mark, seeing the new facilities at Beam and the new distillery at Wild Turkey, visiting George Dickel for the first time, and going to what is described as the Bulleit Distillery even though there isn’t one.

All will no doubt be revealed. I am flying on the day the great Southern musician Levon Helm of The Band has died. I was a big fan and his death will throw a dark cloud over the visit.

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