Getting It Right the First Time

Finished last night after I got home from the Marty Stuart concert in Skokie.

I have a running joke with another writer on the whiskey beat. When we contrast our experiences with producers, she inevitably quips, "yes, but you're Chuck Cowdery."

That I am Chuck Cowdery is undeniable and one of the few privileges of being Chuck Cowdery is that I receive a lot of whiskey, unsolicited. I get so much that boxes may sit, unopened, for months. 

I write very few reviews. I don't find them useful, for me to write or for anyone to read. I especially don't review limited editions because they're usually so limited, or so costly, most people who read the review will never get to try them. What's the point?

Which brings me to the bottle pictured above. I have a long history with the Western Kentucky distillery now known as Jackson Purchase. I'm going to go into some of that history in a minute, but let's get to that empty bottle pictured above.

Most times, when bottles I receive are opened, I drink a little and move on to something else. Many of the samples I receive are in 200 ml bottles, or smaller. Even a lot of those don't get emptied, or I use them in cocktails. 

The point is, I have to really like something to finish a 750ml bottle of it, and I really like this Jackson Purchase bourbon. What is exceptional about it is this. It's not exceptional. No exotic finishes, fancy blends, or unique mash bills. It is a standard, rye-recipe bourbon. The only unusual thing about this release is the proof, 117.8° (58.9% ABV).

But being unexceptional makes it exceptional because this is the distillery's first release. They got it right the first time. Craig Beam is the master distiller at Jackson Purchase. His former employer, Heaven Hill, puts out whiskey this good every day, but they've been doing it for nearly a century. For most new distilleries, their first release is a little rough, a bit too young, or too harsh, or simply rough around the edges. It might be perfectly good whiskey and, hopefully, worth the price, but it's not everything it could be and probably will be when the distillery has a few years under its belt. 

The "wow" here is that they got it right, right out of the box.

So, now, some of that history.

Fulton County is as far west as Kentucky goes. It hugs the Tennessee border on one side and the Mississippi River on the other. Hickman is the county seat. It hosts about 2,500 souls. Just outside of Hickman is the distillery. It gradually emerged from a corn field beginning in about 2006. The glass-fronted still house is illuminated at night. 

Back then it was called the Fulton County Distillery. It was built by W. Ray Jamieson, a successful Memphis attorney. When I first wrote about it in 2016, I noted that although Jamieson was not a young man, he seemed in no hurry to finish his distillery. At that time it was more or less complete. He had retained the services of two Wild Turkey retirees, Curtis Smart and Donnie Sims, to run the place.

He had a 24-inch Vendome column, a 7,500 gallon mash cooker, four 8,750 gallon fermenters (with space for four more), and a 350 horsepower boiler. He had two wells with year-round cold water.

For even longer than he had been building his distillery, Jamieson had been collecting stills. "I tell people I'm lawyer turned honest bootlegger," he joked. Most are contemporary moonshine stills taken out of service by law enforcement. A few are hundreds of years old.

Jamieson envisioned a complete visitor experience at the distillery, with dining, lodging, and a museum featuring his stills collection. He predicted, not entirely seriously, that Hickman would become “the next Lynchburg.” Much like Lynchburg, Tennessee, it is not on the way to anywhere. 

After Jamieson, the place went through several owners, each with a plan to open it up and start making whiskey. None did. When the current crew took over, led by Beam and Terry Ballard, another veteran distiller, they did some upgrades and then, finally, threw the switch.

I'm not sure how widely available it is, but Jackson Purchase Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey runs about $65 a bottle. 

America Should End Its Socialist Liquor System Now

 

Karl liked his brewski as much as the next guy.

According to etymologists, the word 'socialism' has its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. To many on the political right, 'socialism' is a word they use to scare people, conjuring up the worse abuses of Soviet Russia, Castro's Cuba, or 'Red' China.

In the supposedly free United States of America, we have one very socialistic system, the way the government regulates the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. The liquor business is struggling at present. That makes this the perfect time to free it from its socialist overlords, the 50 state liquor control boards and the distribution monopolies they enable.

The trouble began with the 21st Amendment, ratified in 1933, which ended National Prohibition. It is short and simple. The first section repeals the 18th Amendment. The third section gives states seven years to ratify (they took less than one).

The second section, necessary to obtain that ratification, is where the trouble lies. It says, "the transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited."

That means individual states may regulate alcohol as they see fit, regardless of any burden on interstate commerce that would normally run afoul of the Constitution's Commerce Clause. They can't ban it altogether, but they can say what can be sold, and where and when it can be sold. They can set prices and, of course, tax the hell out of it.

Furthermore, if you take alcohol into any state in violation of that state's laws, you commit a federal offense too.

Most states have used this authority to create a mandatory three-tier system for the distribution of alcoholic beverages. The three tiers are producers, distributors and retailers. The mandatory part means no tier may be bypassed by anyone, including consumers who may only legally buy from state-licensed retailers. In most cases, these laws prevent cross-ownership too. Producers may not own interests in distributors or retailers, and so on.

If that isn't socialism, I don't know what is.

Everything said about these state laws will be "in most cases" because the 50 states each regulate alcohol differently, which all by itself is a significant burden on interstate commerce. We don't have one socialist liquor system; we have 50 of them.

Here is how it works. Imagine that instead of buying L. L. Bean clothes directly from L. L. Bean in Maine and having them delivered to your home you were required by law to buy them from a retailer with no connection to L. L. Bean, who bought them from a distributor who also has no connection to L. L. Bean but has an exclusive franchise from your state government to be the state's only legal source for L. L. Bean clothing.

Under this system, retailers who want to carry L. L. Bean clothing must buy their L. L. Bean merchandise from the sole distributor in the state who carries it, whose monopoly is enforced by state law. 

The state government, as well as the independent distributor and independent retailer, all have something to say about which L. L. Bean clothes are available to you and how much they cost. Will they offer every garment in every color and size that L. L. Bean makes? Maybe, but probably not. While you probably will have a choice of several retailers who may offer different selections, the monopolist distributor will control absolutely which L. L. Bean products are available to those retailers and thus to you. Unless a state border is nearby, you're out of luck.

And even if it is you may still be out of luck because that same distributor may have obtained the monopoly in the adjacent state too. If you find something there you like, you may be breaking the law by purchasing it there and taking it home.

Now imagine that on an out-of-state trip you have discovered a clothing manufacturer that is similar to L. L. Bean but a bit more suited to your taste. You return home only to discover that none of the state-franchised wholesalers choose to carry that line. Remember, you are only allowed to buy clothes at state-licensed clothing stores. You cannot legally buy clothing online or over the phone. Once again you are stuck. Damn socialists!

Although you may travel to where that other clothing brand is sold to buy it, that may at least technically violate state and federal law.

Let's assume for purposes of our example that clothing is not burdened with excessive taxes the way alcohol is. Even so, the lack of competition inherent in this state-run system makes its products more expensive than they otherwise would be. Maybe instead of a L. L. Bean polo costing $30 it costs $50. You'll get used to it.

Free markets, baby!

Alcohol consumers, to the extent they understand it, generally hate this socialist system. So, too, do most alcohol producers and retailers. You know who loves it? Distributors. 

The three-tier system of which America’s beverage alcohol distributors are so fond imagines them as relatively small, in-state entities, and therefore easily reachable by state courts and state regulators, which might have more difficulty getting the attention of a giant multinational corporate producer. In reality, distributors have undermined this purpose by using various corporate organizational schemes to become large, multi-state operations themselves, bigger than many producers. Although they comply with the letter of the law, most now operate across state lines. Some are large and powerful national businesses. They also have found clever ways around the laws intended to prevent them from owning alcoholic beverage producers and vice versa.

Despite their advantaged position, distributors feel threatened by the desire of alcohol consumers to legally acquire beverage alcohol products monopolist distributors refuse to make reasonably available to them in their states.

In particular, distributors want to strangle the direct-to-consumer movement in its crib. They fret about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Granholm v. Heald (2005), which said that the 21st amendment does not give states the right to discriminate in favor of in-state producers in violation of the Commerce Clause. That decision has not “opened the floodgates” of underage drinking and tax avoidance that was predicted by the president of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America at the time. But since distributors still fear their privileges are at risk, they have repeatedly proposed legislation to strengthen their socialistic monopoly.

As the Court held in Granholm: “The aim of the Twenty-first Amendment was to allow States to maintain an effective and uniform system for controlling liquor by regulating its transportation, importation, and use. The Amendment did not give States the authority to pass nonuniform laws in order to discriminate against out-of-state goods, a privilege they had not enjoyed at any earlier time.”

America should end its socialist liquor system now.

To Everything There Is a Season and a Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven

 

That's a wrap.

Some of you figured this out before I did. The last post on this blog was August 4th, more than two months ago. I've never posted on a regular schedule, but two months is a long break. I knew I was wrestling with some things and didn't know what my next move would be. I don't have all the answers, no one ever does, but here is what I know now.

I am discontinuing The Bourbon Country Reader, effective immediately. The last issue was Volume 23, Number 2, dated June 2025. That's 134 issues over 30 years. It was a good run.

I am also getting out of the books business. I have liquidated all remaining copies of my 2014 book, Bourbon, Strange. I am no longer supplying Amazon with copies, but they have some in inventory. When they're gone, they're gone. I liquidated them to some of my industry friends, who will make them available in some form. I'll let them tell you about that.

Bourbon, Strange will continue to be available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

My other two bourbon books, Bourbon, Straight (2004) and The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste (2012) will continue to be available, but only from me via PayPal, and maybe at some point via some of those friends mentioned above. Click on the links above if you're interested. As with Bourbon, Strange, both of them will be available from Amazon until their inventory is exhausted, and both will continue to be available as Kindle e-books.

When the current inventory is gone, that's it. I don't intend to reprint any of them. All three, as well as my blues book, Blues Legends (1995) are readily available from used book sources, though I'm told many used copies of Blues Legends don't include the CD, which is a shame.

The significance of the August 4th blog post to all this is that I stopped selling DVD copies of "Made and Bottled in Kentucky" a few years ago but only got around to digitizing it and putting it online on that date. I discovered I had, in fact, sold every DVD I had, and it took me a while to find the DVD master. I'm not, I'm afraid, very well organized. I feared it was lost. That started this whole soul-searching project. 

The documentary was made in 1992 and launched me on my bourbon journey. At this point it's a historical document in its own right, featuring interviews with Booker Noe, Elmer T. Lee, Dixie Hibbs (who died last week), and others who are no longer with us. The long moribund Kentucky whiskey industry was just beginning to show signs of revival. The 30+ years that followed saw American whiskey production and sales grow dramatically. While there is no reason to believe those gains will be lost, the much touted "bourbon boom" has ended. It was one hell of a ride.

Back to The Reader. Because I didn't know, back in June, that I was ending the newsletter, I sent renewal notices, and many people renewed their subscriptions. I don't intend to take your money without giving you something. In the coming months I will write and publish a series of essays. Every current subscriber, regardless of the status of your subscription, will receive all of them. I haven't written them yet, but I expect they will be about my bourbon journey of the last 30+ years. 

My intention is to make all Reader back issues available online in some kind of archive, but that's a future project and I'm not quite sure how to go about it. It's on the "to-do" list.

I also will continue to write the "Straight Talk" column in Whisky Advocate for as long as they'll have me.

As for "The Chuck Cowdery Blog," it's not going away. If I have something to say, about bourbon or something else, I'll say it here. I've been writing since I was in third grade, so that won't stop. That's who I am. Part of the reason for these changes is to clear the deck for what comes next, whatever that might be. In the interim since that August post, I had another birthday. I'm now 74-years-old. Some changes need to be made, not because I am stopping but so I can keep going.

So, I'll leave it there for now. I have more to say but I'll say it in those post-Reader essays, and I'll be here as well. Thanks for taking this ride with me. I'm not going away, just moving on.

"Made and Bottled in Kentucky" Is Now on YouTube

 

In 1991, in anticipation of 200 years of Kentucky statehood, which occurred in 1992, the Kentucky legislature appropriated money for the state's public television network, KET, to award grants to independent producers to create original programs about Kentucky subjects.

Although I had lived in Louisville for nine years, by 1991 I was living in Chicago but still spending a lot of time in Kentucky. As the French say, cherchez la femme. She was a photographer, and after visiting some picturesque distillery ruins, we thought about doing a coffee table book. She would take pictures, and I would write about Kentucky's unique whiskey culture. 

It wasn't like now. Bourbon sales were way down and nobody was writing about it.

The relationship broke up, ending the book idea, but I heard about the bicentennial grants and decided to submit a proposal for a documentary about Kentucky bourbon. My career to that point had mostly been writing and occasionally producing TV commercials and industrial films, so writing, producing and directing a TV documentary was not a stretch.

KET loved the idea, but their grant wasn't enough, so I submitted a proposal to the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA). They had just received a grant from the Federal government for export promotion and gave some of it to me. I hired StudioLink, a video production company in Lexington. I was familiar with Jack Petrey, one of the owners, as a voice talent. He had a great voice with just enough of a Kentucky accent. Mike White was the shooter and editor, and Roger BonDurant did audio and lighting. The three of us were the entire crew and we crisscrossed Kentucky visiting every active distillery and most of the derelict ones. Roger is also a musician. He teamed up with Tim Lake, another Lexington musician, to create original music for the program. 

I appear only briefly (look for a green jacket) but I conducted all the interviews. Although not involved in this project, I often worked for Donna Lawrence Productions in Louisville and Donna's style was to do real interviews and build a script around that, let the experts tell the story. Today, many documentaries are fake, in that the interview subjects aren't answering questions, they're reading a script. Donna's style was not to start with pre-conceived notions as to what the story is. Let the authorities tell the story in their own words, then build a script around that, ideally with no narration. I couldn't do without narration altogether, but you'll notice that many of the interview segments are unusually long, compared to most modern documentaries. 

It was all shot and edited on 1" Betamax, which was state-of-the-art at the time, although it looks pretty crappy now.

And look who I got to talk to! Booker Noe, Jim Beam's grandson, in the living room of the house Jim Beam built. (Booker's son, Fred, lives there now.) I talked to Elmer T. Lee, Jimmy Russell, Jerry Dalton, Max Shapira, Bill Samuels, Ed Foote, Ova Haney, and many others. Bill, because he often appeared in ads for Maker's Mark, was the only one known to the public.

The U.S. economy was in recession in 1991-92 and the rest of my freelance writing business was suffering. Happily, this project was all-consuming, a lot of fun, and also paid some bills.

Everything I've done since then having to do with American whiskey sprang from that experience. 

"Made and Bottled in Kentucky" premiered on KET in June of 1992. It was subsequently syndicated and appeared on most public TV stations in the U.S. I'm told KET still plays it occasionally. I sold it on VHS for many years, then DVD, which ended in 2017. Since then, I've been meaning to make it available digitally and last week I finally did.

The Return of Buffalo Springs (Sort of)

 

Stamping Ground is a small town in Kentucky's Scott County (pop. 780). It is about 25 miles northwest of Lexington and eight miles from Georgetown, the county seat. Settled in 1790, it was named for the bison-trampled earth around a fruitful spring. 

After the herds left, that spring was turned to whiskey production. There was a distillery on the site for 100 years.

The last one, known as Buffalo Springs Distillery, was founded early in the 20th century. It sold a Buffalo Springs Bourbon, and another one called Boots and Saddle. It probably sold most of its output in bulk to brokers or rectifiers. 

After Prohibition the plant was substantially rebuilt, as pictured on the postcard above. The main buildings were limestone, a very traditional building material in Kentucky, but the design was modern with many large windows. Otis Beam, one of the seven distiller sons of Joe Beam, was its distiller. Local at first but owned by Seagram’s at the end, Buffalo Springs Distillery closed for good in the 1960s. 

Essentially abandoned, its buildings stood empty for the next 40 years. Like many distillery sites I visited in the 1990s, it felt like Kentucky's version of a European castle ruin. There were no fences or "keep out" signs. All the equipment was long gone and only a few walls still stood, including a grand one more-or-less intact at the front with no glass in its soaring windows. It reminded me of the "Highlander" movies, when the energy released by a Highlander triumph makes every nearby window explode.

The buildings are gone now but the spring still flows, and a few remnants survive. The site is now Buffalo Springs Park. One curious memento of the distillery is a concrete and rock structure adjoining several large, circular concrete pads. On September 12, 1935, the distillery held a burgoo party for the town and those concrete circles provided a firm base for massive pots of stew. 

Buffalo Springs was typical of the many small-town distilleries that once abounded in the region. It bought local corn, gave away livestock feed, and was one of the town’s few sources of non-farm employment. In the pre-Prohibition era, distilling typically didn't begin until after the fall harvest so many of those seasonal employees were the farmers whose corn was being distilled.

In its day, Buffalo Springs was a largely anonymous link in a production chain. It processed an agricultural product into a more useful and profitable commodity. It made a nice profit on the whiskey it sold as its own brands, less on bulk sales. It did not give tours. It did not have a gift shop. Although its time ran out, how many businesses of any kind reach the century mark?

When Buffalo Springs shut down, America’s entire domestic distilled spirits industry was contracting and consolidating. As it shrunk, no one expected distilleries like Buffalo Springs to return, but modern craft distilleries now play a similar role in many communities in Kentucky and throughout the country. In this they have followed the lead of small wineries and breweries, but with unique characteristics of their own. History doesn't repeat but it rhymes.

Is Kentucky's $9 Billion Bourbon Business On-the-Rocks?

 

What might have been? A brand new distillery, shuttered by its lenders.

Kentucky's best source for dependable bourbon news is the Lexington Herald-Leader, but they put some noses out of joint with a recent article about four unrelated but negative news events involving Kentucky distilleries. The article, and especially the headline, was criticized for being overly provocative and hyperbolic.

So why are we repeating it here?

For the same reason they did. Provocative headlines are intended to provoke you into reading the article or, in this case, subscribing to the newsletter that uses the Herald-Leader article as a jumping-off place for an analysis of the true state of Kentucky's bourbon business.

I won't even make you wait for the conclusion, since I've said this here and elsewhere. No, the bourbon business is not collapsing, but the so-called "bourbon boom" has slowed down considerably. The industry faces serious challenges. Most affected are the newcomers like Garrard County Distilling (pictured). They had barely begun to make whiskey when their lender shut them down.

The Bourbon Country Reader is a one-of-a-kind newsletter from the same source as this blog. But it is not the same content. The Reader is news, history, and analysis of American whiskey you won't find anywhere else. It is the oldest publication devoted entirely to American whiskey.

If you enjoy the writing you find here at The Chuck Cowdery Blog, there is a good chance you will enjoy The Bourbon Country Reader too when it arrives in your mailbox about six times a year. It is modestly priced and advertising free, unlike virtually everything else in your life. Subscribe now to rediscover the pleasure of old-fashioned words on paper, savored perhaps with a well-aged bourbon or rye.

The Reader itself is a bit of bourbon history. It debuted in 1994 with something like 17 subscribers. It has grown a little bit since then. The Reader has literally tracked the Bourbon Boom from beginning to now, when it seems to be entering a new phase. This new issue is #2 of Volume 23.

If you find yourself coming here, to the blog, for straight talk about the American whiskey industry, you probably should be reading The Bourbon Country Reader too.

Give it a try. A six-issue, approximately one-year subscription is just: 

$25 for mailing addresses in the USA. 

$32 for everybody else. (That is, addresses on earth but not in the USA. Interplanetary service is not yet available.)

The links above take you directly to PayPal, where you can subscribe securely using PayPal, Venmo, or any major credit card.

If you are unfamiliar with The Bourbon Country Reader, click here for a sample issue. 

Also in this new issue, we tell a story about one family's legacy at America's favorite distillery, and we look at the contribution corn makes to whiskey types other than bourbon.

The Deal that Made Me a Catholic

 

Mr. and Mrs. J. K. Cowdery, July 1, 1950.

My mother’s family was Roman Catholic and devoutly so. My father’s family was, as he described it, “vaguely Protestant.” They didn’t go to church and didn’t talk about religion. He had, however, been baptized Catholic at his mother’s insistence. She never took him to church either and divorced his father and left when Dad was six.

That baptism proved crucial when my parents married. They wanted to be married by a priest in her family’s parish church. Her family was not just devout but active in the parish. Her father was friends with the monsignor. Because Dad was baptized, he didn’t need to convert. He just needed to start following the rules. He had to become a practicing Catholic. Attending mass every Sunday was the main obligation. He wasn’t interested. So, the three men negotiated.

Each man had one non-negotiable position. Dad’s was that he would not pretend to be Catholic. Grandpa’s was that the marriage had to be recognized by the church. Monsignor’s was that Dad had to agree to baptize any children and raise them Catholic. Dad agreed so Monsignor allowed them to be married by a priest, though not by him, and not in the sanctuary. Instead, they were married by one of the parish’s other priests, in the house next to the church where the priests lived. 

At Grandpa’s direction, no pictures were taken of the ceremony. Instead, the wedding party adjourned to the front steps of the church and all pictures were taken there, and at the subsequent reception at a local restaurant. Grandpa understood optics.

No one was entirely happy, but everyone was satisfied, and the agreement held. Starting with me, the eldest, all six Cowdery children were baptized and attended the parish school. Every Sunday, our mother dressed us in our finest garb and sat us front row center. Dad attended sporadically. When my sisters were born, twins, staying home with the babies gave Dad his excuse to drop attendance to zero. 

I’m sure that relatively quiet hour at home did more for his spiritual health than any church service.