The aroma of baking cornbread wafted through the air, awakening fond memories of my grandma’s kitchen. The sumptuous odor actually arose from a giant wooden vat filled with bubbling, fermenting corn mash. Deep in bluegrass country surrounded by horse farms, Woodford Reserve crafts fine Kentucky bourbon in a 250-year old distillery. As I strolled through the old stone buildings on a distillery tour, I savored the fragrance as a promise of the extraordinary taste to come.
Bourbon is America’s whiskey. Born in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky from native corn, a crop indigenous only to the new world, bourbon dates from the 18th century Scottish and Irish immigrants who settled the region. Legend credits Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, as the “inventor” of bourbon who in 1789 first aged raw corn whiskey in the charred oak barrels that make bourbon distinct from all other whiskeys.
As a Kentucky native, I consider fine bourbon as my birthright. While on vacation in Louisville, the heart of bourbon country, I participated in several distillery tours and sampled my fair share of the really good stuff. Woodford Reserve, however, remains my favorite — smoky, smooth, and perfumed with cornbread, vanilla, and spices. An hour outside the city in Versailles (pronounced Ver Sales), Kentucky, Woodford Reserve makes its home in an 1812 distillery. Though first introduced to the market in 1996, Woodford Reserve prides itself on employing many of the traditional techniques for craft bourbon long perfected in its historic home.
The distillery credits five sources for its bourbon’s flavor profile: Grains, Water, Fermentation, Distillation, and Maturation.
Grains
By law, bourbon must contain at least 51 percent corn and be distilled in the United States to be labelled bourbon. Every bourbon distillery creates its own recipe. At Woodford, the ingredients are 72 percent corn, 18 percent rye, and 10 percent malted barley. The malt gives the bourbon a nutty taste, while rye adds balance and a slight pepperiness.
Water
Kentucky has been blessed with a thick limestone layer that naturally filters spring and well water. The result is iron-free water that perfectly breaks down the grains’ starch into sugar during the cooking process.
Fermentation
After the grain mixture has been cooked into a mash, the Woodford distiller pours it into 100-year-old cypress vats for cooling and fermenting. Woodford, like other distilleries, owns a proprietary strain of yeast that’s patented, well-guarded, and reproduced as needed. After the mash cools, the distiller dumps a large quantity of yeast into the vat. The yeast feasts upon the sugar in the mash, bubbling happily for about three days, turning sugar into alcohol. Fermentation produces a “beer” of nine to ten percent alcohol.
Distillation
Distillation sets Woodford Reserve apart from its competitors. While other distillers use tall column stills, Woodford’s bourbon cooks in big-bellied copper pots just like those used 250 years ago in the original distillery. Copper creates a continuous catalytic conversion that improves the taste. Essentially, distillation heats the beer to a high enough temperature to vaporize it into a gaseous state. The gas rises to the top and out a tube and into a holding tank.
Once it cools and returns to liquid, the pure spirit (called “high wine” or “white dog”) is 158 proof alcohol. Pure water dilutes the white dog to a drinkable level, in the case of Woodford Reserve 90.4 proof.
Maturation
All distillers age their bourbon in American white oak barrels toasted and charred on the inside over an open flame. Toasting releases the sugar in the wood, adding a unique carmelized taste to bourbon. Woodford Reserve’s parent company, Brown-Forman, owns Bluegrass Cooperage, which makes all of its barrels. The cooperage employs time-honored techniques to steam, bend, and bind oak staves into new barrels. Bourbon distilleries use a barrel only once, selling old barrels to scotch distilleries, garden centers, and even hot sauce producers.
After filling, a wooden plug called a “bung” seals the barrel. Distilleries with off-site rickhouses truck their goods to storage. Woodford sends its barrels from the distillery to the rickhouse along a 500-foot gravity-led track. Stacked inside the rickhouse on shelves, the bourbon ages for five to seven years. Traditionally, distillers moved barrels around the rickhouse to ensure even maturation. (Higher, warmer parts of a building create a stronger flavor than cooler, lower areas.) Instead of this time-consuming and back-breaking process, most distilleries now blend barrels from different parts of the rickhouse to get the flavor profile they want. Woodford uses a different technique, controlling the temperature inside the entire rickhouse to improve consistency and ensure that every drop of bourbon seeps deeply into the flavor-enhancing oak.
During aging, approximately four to five percent of the alcohol evaporates from the porous oak barrels. Distillers call this “the angels’ share.”
Bottling
Bottling is the final step in the distillery’s process. The distiller opens the barrels and pours the bourbon through a filter to remove sediment, and then into a holding tank. They fill the bottles directly from the tank. Woodford runs a small bottling operation onsite 24 hours a day, which gives a clue to its growing popularity.
Tasting
The Woodford tour saved the best for last. Our tour guide brought the group into a quiet, attractive room with a long table. Three glasses and a chocolate treat awaited us at each place setting. The guide led us through the tasting step by step. First step, take up the first glass of Woodford Reserve bourbon and breathe in the aroma. The group identified a broad variety of scents, including clove, cinnamon, tobacco, and citrus. Then, he directed us to take a small sip and roll it slowly around the mouth to accustom the tongue to the initial peppery tingle. Next, a full taste and a big burst of flavor — caramel, vanilla, toffee, spices. Finally, he told us to savor the warm smooth finish that lingers on the palette.
We sampled three Woodford Reserve products: their classic bourbon, a new line of malted whiskey, and a bourbon aged in two charred barrels to deepen the flavor. The little piece of chocolate worked quite well with both bourbons, bringing out the toffee flavors.
Named the Official Bourbon of the Kentucky Derby in 1999, Woodford Reserve deserves its reputation as one of Kentucky’s finest craft bourbons. In fact, I can’t seem to cook without a glass of Woodford on ice in hand while Willie Nelson plays over my speakers. My favorite remains the classic bourbon, but the double-barreled bourbon deserves a second chance sometime very soon.
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To learn more about Woodford Reserve and their distilling process, visit their website: https://www.woodfordreserve.com/. Better yet, visit the distillery in person in Versaille, Kentucky.
Wow
What a process
Who knew
I didn’t
As always, an interesting and informative piece of journalism.