One of my Favorite Life Experiences

A small, personal memory, provided for your amusement.

I was covering the 1972 elections as a young reporter, on the scene at the local Board of Elections. I knew some of the other people there, including a friend of mine from one of the major newspapers. He was a grizzled veteran reporter, much older than me, an ink-stained wretch, always in his classic rumpled trenchcoat.

At one point in the festivities, he looked over and signaled for me to follow him. I did and we walked silently through the darkened hallways of a building he obviously knew much better than I did. We arrived at an office. He opened the door, turned on the light, and sat down.

"As you know," he announced, more grandly than his audience of one required, "it is against the law to consume alcohol in the Board of Elections on election day. This, however, is the Board of Education."

He reached into the pockets of his trenchcoat and produced two bottles of beer, handing one to me. He also smoked a cigarette.

Diageo Invests $120M in Three New Bottling Lines

This is as close as Diegeo lets me get to its big plant in Plainfield.

Packaging certainly is not the most glamorous part of whiskey-making, but it's essential. It's also costly, requiring both a lot of labor and a lot of equipment.

Diageo is the only whiskey producer in North America to do its packaging at a facility devoted to nothing else. It is done in a massive but otherwise non-descript facility in an industrial park on the outskirts of Plainfield, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Roads and rails provide access and the tank farm is the only clue to the plant's purpose. Except for a small hand-bottling line in Tullahoma, used for some Orphan Barrel and George Dickel products, most of Diageo's American whiskeys (Dickel, Bulleit) are bottled here.

This is the sort of thing Diageo rarely talks about. Requests to tour Plainfield are routinely and curtly refused. Diageo did, however, allow the magazine Packaging World to report on its recent addition of three new high-speed bottling lines at Plainfield, including a 300-bpm (bottles per minute) glass bottle line and a 260-bpm filling line for PET (i.e., plastic) flasks.

Since 2010, Packaging World reports, the company has invested more than $250 million in its North American production network to put in place a mix of high-speed, high-volume lines for established brands and lines with greater flexibility for new product innovations.

"Diageo's ambition is to be the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products company in the world. Our supply chain operations will play a critical role in delivering that goal," said Diageo North America President Larry Schwartz at the unveiling of the company's most recent plant expansion. "The investment we have made in our manufacturing network demonstrates our commitment to developing this important part of our business."

In August 2013, Diageo completed a 90,000-sq-ft expansion at Plainfield, making it the company's largest bottling facility at 531,000-sq-ft The company also added a new cold-filtration system in the processing area, capable of preparing 250,000 gal of liquid per day.

Since it opened in 1966, the Plainfield facility (then owned by Diageo predecessor company Schenley) has been the focus of a number of investments. Diageo added a Brand Technical Center in 2001 to turn new liquid and packaging ideas into commercial products, and in 2009 it created a high-speed bottling area for malt drinks such as Smirnoff Ice. Also in 2009, Diageo partnered with rigid plastic packaging supplier Logoplaste to add a 40,000-sq-ft blow-molding facility adjacent to the plant to supply the majority of its PET bottles. In 2012, Diageo created a flexible production area with two packaging lines geared toward lower-volume, complex production and innovation requirements.

With the latest expansion, Diageo added a pouch filling line for Diageo's frozen cocktail products. That brings the number of packaging lines at Plainfield to 10, with the addition of Line 8 for glass and PET, Line 9 for glass, and Line 10 for PET.

In 2013, Plainfield bottled approximately 31 million cases of product, which is equivalent to 372 million 750-mL bottles. According to Diageo, "if those bottles were laid end-to-end, they would circle the globe nearly three times."

Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary Should be in Stores Now

Officially, Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary dropped last week, July 28. It's a specially-made, limited edition bourbon to celebrate Master Distiller Jimmy Russell's 60 years at the distillery. If you're interested, contact your whiskey monger now.

How limited is it? All they'll say is it's "available nationally, but in small quantities." If history is any guide, it will be gone fast, even at the MSRP of $124.99. It is 91° proof (45.5% ABV). Having every proof statement end in '1' is a reference and tribute to the brand's 101° proof flagship.

The product, made by Jimmy Russell's son, Eddie, who has 33 years of tenure, is a mingling of 13- and 16-year-old whiskeys. It was unveiled in mid-April at an event in Jimmy Russell's honor at the new visitors center. It went on sale at the distillery that day, so there are many bottles out there. This is the general retail release.

At the April event, Eddie joked that Jimmy rather famously doesn't like anything older than 12-years-old. "I figured I could get away with 13," said Eddie. He used the 16-year-old to give the whiskey extra spice notes. The result tastes like a 13-year-old but with a little something extra.

Coppersea Makes First and Only All-New York Whiskeys

"I know it when I see it" is how many people define craft distilling. See if this one passes that test for you.

Last Wednesday Coppersea Distilling, in New York's Hudson River Valley, announced that it had filled two whiskey barrels made from New York State-grown white oak and constructed by a New York cooperage, U.S. Barrel Company, a first since Prohibition.

One barrel was filled with rye whiskey, the other with bourbon.

The words "mis en bouteille au chateau" have been an important legend on French wine labels for centuries. They signify a producer who does everything on-site, from growing the grapes to corking the bottles. Founded in 2011, Coppersea is one of the few distilleries in the world capable of doing that sort of thing with whiskey. They use only Hudson Valley-grown corn, rye, and barley. They also use open wooden fermenters, direct-fired copper-pot stills, sour-mashing and floor-malting.

“From the outset, Coppersea has gone to great lengths to source all of the ingredients in our whiskeys from New York State,” remarks Coppersea master distiller Angus MacDonald. “There is a tendency to place the barrel outside of those considerations, but when you reflect on how much of the flavor of an oak-matured whiskey comes from the wood it is aged in, it becomes clear that a truly local whiskey must be aged in locally sourced oak.”

U.S. Barrel Company owner and head cooper Bob Hockert agrees. “We feel that making a high-quality whiskey barrel is just as much a craft as making the whiskey that goes into it. Our team has been creating slack barrels [which are not designed to hold fluids] for ten years, so we began this project with a good amount of expertise. Tight-barrel cooperage has its own challenges, though. We've had to build our own equipment, develop an understanding of whiskey distilling, and forge relationships with New York State loggers in order to build barrels that meet the highest standards.”

U.S. Barrel sources premium New York oak and air-seasons it for at least a year.

Unfortunately, as good as all this sounds, tasting notes will have to wait. That rule is the same for all whiskey-makers, craft or not, and may be the hardest part.

P.S., I hope their whiskey turns out as well as their video did. 

Bourbon Boom as Beer; the Goose Island Bourbon County Series.

Bourbon makers empty more than a million barrels a year, and can't use them again for bourbon, so they sell them. The market is very good right now. The big bourbon producers can sell a used barrel for almost as much as they pay for a new one. That's a pretty sweet deal.

Most of them go to Scotland. Rumor has it they make a kind of whiskey there too and prefer to age it in used bourbon barrels. A lot of them go to breweries and Chicago's Goose Island (owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev) probably buys more than anyone else. Their  Bourbon County Stout, aged in used bourbon barrels, is so popular it has morphed into a series.

It is an annual release program, with the new batch appearing each year on Black Friday, which this year is November 28. See the Goose Island web site for more information.

Beergraphs.com lists seven of the world's top 20 beers as being from the Goose Island Bourbon County Stout series. In addition to Bourbon County Brand Stout, the new releases will include:

Proprietors - It will feature panela sugar made into a syrup with coconut water, Cassia bark (i.e., cinnamon) and cocoa nibs.

Vanilla Rye - A hit from 2010 making a return. It has been aged in rye whiskey barrels from four different distilleries. Into each barrel go two pounds of vanilla beans from Mexico and Madagascar.

Coffee - An annual release, except with a different coffee each year. 2014 will be Rwandan coffee from Intelligentsia.

Barleywine - A return from last year, it's aged in 'third use' barrels that previously held standard Bourbon County Stout.

Used bourbon barrels have a real effect on beer or brewers wouldn't use them, but part of what is driving the popularity of bourbon barrel beers is the appeal of bourbon itself. It has become a name to conjure with. If beer drinkers who like bourbon barrel-aged products are inspired to try bourbon too there's nothing wrong with that.

This whole thing just keeps getting better and better, for people who like bourbon that is.

Kentucky's Distilleries Are Running Full Throttle

I hate that this must be said, but there is nothing in this post about the Full Throttle Saloon, Distillery, or imbecilic TV show. Before all of that idiocy began, 'full throttle' was a perfectly good expression meaning something that was running as hard and fast as it could be run; 'maximum warp,' to use another cultural reference.

I learned earlier this week that the Brown-Forman Distillery in Shively is now running full throttle, meaning at full capacity, more-or-less. They run their two stills 24-hours-a-day for three days, shut them down briefly for cleaning, then do it all again.

This is about the time of year when distilleries go on shutdown. A distillery is like your furnace at home. It doesn't have speeds, it is either on or off, so how much you produce is strictly a function of how long you have the switch turned to 'on.' One way they do this is by shutting down in August and again in December, the shutdown's duration determines total production volume for the year. 'Full throttle' means they take two weeks off for essential maintenance, but that's all.

The news about Brown-Forman was a surprise because it is the first time in living memory that particular distillery has been ridden so hard. It primarily makes Old Forester and Early Times. Old Forester reached its high water mark in 1978. For Early Times, it was even earlier.

For years, Brown-Forman was the contract distillery of choice for the other big producers. I also learned that as of the end of this year, Brown-Forman is out of the contract distilling business, news some of their contract customers were not happy to receive. Everything they make from now on will be for their own products.

What's happening is that there is a corporate mandate to revive the founding brand, Old Forester. Why haven't you heard about it? Because they have to make the whiskey before they can sell it. Ballin' the jack now is an act of faith that their revival campaign will be successful. I'll have more shortly on one of their first initiatives.

Brown-Forman's other two distilleries, Woodford Reserve in Kentucky and Jack Daniel's in Tennessee, are both running balls out with major expansions underway.

Buffalo Trace, probably the second-largest distillery in the state after Jim Beam's Booker Noe plant, is going all out too. That's another distillery that hasn't been close to operating at capacity in decades. Their smaller Barton 1792 Distillery, which like Brown-Forman was running way below capacity just a few years ago, is also going full tilt. Maximum warp has been the rule at Maker's Mark, Heaven Hill, George Dickel, and Four Roses for years. Wild Turkey is ramping up its new distillery and will be at full bore soon. Same with MGP of Indiana.

Jim Beam's two week summer shutdown ends Monday. "While our distilleries are producing extremely high volumes, we are certainly not at max capacity," said a Beam spokesperson.

Still, this is unprecedented, and it is no wonder other parts of the industry, from coopers to truckers to bottle and label makers, are having a hard time keeping up.

If we get a warm, wet August and September, a bumper corn crop is still possible. We're going to need it.

This is all simply remarkable. No one in the industry has ever experienced anything like it. There appears to be no end in sight. Nobody predicted this, so everybody is flying blind and hoping for the best. Bad news from China, as Diageo and Pernod have experienced recently, makes everyone nervous. Because of the aging cycle, whiskey is always made on the if-come, but the bets being laid down now are the biggest in history.

Come on, baby. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

The Deadline to Join the Chuck Cowdery Fall Tour is September 1

The photograph above was taken during our visit to the grave of Dr. James C. Crow on the "Chuck Cowdery VIP Bourbon & History Tour Experience" in March. That stop is on the itinerary again for the October 15-17 tour, but about half of the itinerary is new. Some folks in the March group had so much fun they're thinking about doing it again.

This being August 1st, October seems a long way off, but there's an important date coming up much sooner, September 1st. That's the deadline for signing up.

Why do we have a deadline? And why is it so early? These tours are a big commitment for everyone: me, the Mint Julep folks, the places that have agreed to give us special access, and you our guests. These special tours are tough to pull off because they are budgeted based on a full bus (i.e., 20 guests). If we don't sell every seat, we can't do it. Hence the deadline.

We understand that it's hard for prospective guests to commit because of the planning and cost involved. By making the deadline 45-days before the event, guests still have plenty of time to make their travel and lodging arrangements if we go, or make other plans if we don't.

If this trip sounds like fun to you, I urge you to contact Mint Julep Tours now, get the details, and join us. We'd like to do a couple of these every year, but it's hard to pull them off for the reasons explained above. If you think you'd like to do it, now is the time. There is no certainty we'll ever do it again.

So what is it like? Because the group is so small, it's very friendly. After all, we already have a lot in common. We spend a good amount of time on the bus, traveling from place to place. That's when we get to know each other and I can answer your questions. A drink or two along the way doesn't hurt either. It's a total bourbon and Kentucky experience, a real immersion. Even if you've been to Kentucky before and visited distilleries, you've never done anything like this.

To start the bus rolling, call Mint Julep Tours at 502-583-1433 or email chasta@mintjuleptours.com.