Baudoinia: the Fungus that Is Hard to Beat in Court

 

Heaven Hill maturation warehouse at the former Beam and Hart Old Tub Distillery (c. 1892), on Old Nazareth Road near Bardstown.

This is Part 7 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, Part 6 is here.

In 2016, the federal Baudoinia compniacensis lawsuit against Diageo, filed by Louisville personal injury lawyer William F. McMurry on behalf of business owner Bruce Merrick and several Louisville citizens, was dismissed at the request of all parties. Both sides stated that no settlement had been reached and everyone would pay their own legal fees and other costs. 

The Merrick lawsuit had claimed Diageo was responsible for the black fungus that blanketed homes and businesses near Stitzel-Weller.

Diageo argued it should not be held responsible because it was free to release ethanol under the federal government's Clean Air Act. McMurry argued the plaintiffs could sue under the state's nuisance law, which could be used to protect citizens against air pollution.

As part of the dismissal, all parties agreed not to discuss the suit, nor explain why it was dropped. The most likely explanation is that it became clear to plaintiffs that the big payday they hoped for was not coming.

About one year later, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that George Miller, a Louisville property owner who sued Brown-Forman and Heaven Hill for property damage caused by Baudoinia, could pursue his state tort claims for damages, but it rejected his demand for injunctive relief that would require distillers to adopt a particular type of unproven pollution-control technology not required under Brown-Forman's and Heaven Hill's permits from the LAPCD. The Court remanded the case to the Circuit Court for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. 

Although the Supreme Court said the damages claim could continue, it didn’t. To collect, Miller had to prove actual damages, prove Baudoinia caused them, and prove the company’s ethanol emissions caused the fungus. It is likely the value of provable damages was not great enough to justify the expense of continuing the suit.

In the current Jack Daniel’s case, the novelty is that the plaintiff is not suing Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman. She is suing Tennessee's Lincoln County for wrongly issuing the building permits.

Just because lawsuits don’t seem to stick, that doesn’t mean the fungus issue is going away. It continues to be a public relations problem for distillers.

It is hard to wrap your head around the amount of space a large producer needs for whiskey maturation. A standard whiskey barrel holds 53 gallons, is about three feet long, a little more than two feet in diameter, and weighs about 500 pounds when full. Now imagine 50 of them, 1,000, 20,000, a million.

In 2021, Kentucky's distillers filled 2.6 million barrels. As of January, 2022, there were about 11.4 million barrels in Kentucky maturation warehouses. Tennessee has about 3.5 million. That's about 750 million gallons, the same amount of industrial alcohol the American distilled spirits industry produced for all of WWII.

Maturation warehouses in Canada are a little different. Instead of racks, barrels are stored on pallets, standing up, moved around by forklifts, and rarely age more than three years. In all cases, though, maturation warehouses are big, there are a lot of them, and they contain enormous amounts of alcohol, hundreds of millions of gallons. 

Worldwide demand for American whiskey keeps increasing with no end in sight. The fastest growing segment is premium whiskey, which can take twice as long to mature as the standard product, so typically eight years instead of four.

Most large producers have multiple warehouses on their distillery campus. In some cases, 40 or more. Each warehouse holds between 20,000 and 50,000 barrels. At least one 100,000-barrel warehouse has been built. In addition to warehouses at the distillery, most producers have several off-campus stand-alone maturation facilities too. 

The Lebanon Enterprise is the local newspaper for Lebanon, Kentucky, county seat of Marion County. Also in Marion, near the smaller town of Loretto, is the Maker’s Mark Distillery, which is owned by Beam Suntory. Maker's has maturation warehouses at the distillery and in Loretto itself, at the site of the former Loretto Distillery. Maker's always has had warehouses there, but has added more.

In 2018, the Enterprise reported that Maker’s Mark CEO Rob Samuels spoke to a joint meeting of the Marion County Fiscal Court and the Lebanon City Council about the distillery’s plan to build ten new warehouses in or near Lebanon, at a site to be determined.

Maker’s Mark asked for industrial revenue bonds for the project, which the county gave it in 2012 for its new warehouses in Loretto. If the county approved, the company would receive a benefit worth millions of dollars. Marion County residents took the meeting as an opportunity to express their concerns about the further spread of Baudoinia in the county. Several Loretto residents came to warn their Lebanon neighbors based on their experiences. 

In an editorial after that meeting, Enterprise publisher Stevie Lowery wrote, “Right now, many residents feel that Loretto has been ignored by the distillery. Loretto is ‘just a road to get there,’ so to speak.  And, now, that road and everything near it is turning black from the warehouse fungus.” 

A pattern, it seems, has been established. A producer plans a new distillery or maturation facility. It seeks permission and, usually, financial incentives from the appropriate government bodies, which hold public hearings. The company and the government want to talk about economic development, but the public only wants to talk about fungus.

NEXT TIME: Baudoinia-panic kills a major Tennessee facility.

(END OF PART SEVEN.)

Baudoinia: the Fungus Is a Bad Neighbor

 

This demolition-in-progress in Louisville shows a maturation warehouse's internal honeycomb structure.

This is Part 6 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here.

Because the warehouses at Stitzel-Weller emptied out after production was moved to the new Bernheim Distillery, Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus, wasn't an issue there for most of the 1990s. Little was going on and it appeared the facility might be closed or sold. Then a growing Maker’s Mark began to rent warehouse space at Stitzel-Weller. Maker’s also revived the barrel dumping facility, rather than truck mature barrels back to Loretto. 

After it sold Bernheim to Heaven Hill in 1999, Diageo began to buy distillate for its limited bourbon needs and began to refill the Stitzel-Weller warehouses. The warehouses at Bernheim were emptied and that whiskey was either sold or moved to Stitzel-Weller. 

When Diageo acquired Bulleit after Seagram's was broken up that whiskey, distilled at Four Roses, was aged at Stitzel-Weller too.

Because its Tennessee warehouses were full, Diageo brought barrels of bourbon distilled at George Dickel to Stitzel-Weller for aging, in violation of Tennessee law. After Diageo assured Tennessee officials that the whiskey stored in Kentucky was bourbon and would not be returned to Tennessee and sold as Tennessee whiskey, they were let off with a slap on the wrist.

Aging capacity at Stitzel-Weller is about 400,000 barrels. Although the stills had been silent since 1992, suddenly the place was buzzing again as the 21st century dawned.

Because zoning in Shively was always willy-nilly, there is little separation between industrial, commercial, and residential land use. What was farmland in 1933 is now densely developed, and there is a large neighborhood of modest, single-family homes just southwest of the Stitzel-Weller property. 

As the barrel inventory there declined in the 80s and 90s, so inevitably did the amount of Baudoinia compniacensis growing on neighboring property. People forgot about it. Homes were sold, and new people moved in who had never scrubbed the black soot off their garage doors.

The 2011 Wired Magazine article about James Scott and his research at Hiram Walker gave Stitzel-Weller’s neighbors a name for their pain. One of them contacted William F. McMurry, a personal-injury lawyer in Louisville best known for his suits on behalf of victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests. 

McMurry soon filed a class-action lawsuit against the three distilleries near Shively—Diageo, Brown-Forman, and Heaven Hill—claiming their negligence was responsible for the town's property damage. McMurry argued that the fungus depressed the value of affected property to the tune of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of dollars.

The distillers answered, as they always have, that the fungus is naturally occurring, and their ethanol emissions are permitted under The Clean Air Act. 

The 2012 LAPCD notice to Diageo cited odor complaints and Baudoinia growth. The district even added the following statement to its web site, though it was quickly removed. 

“The presence of ethanol odors directly correlates with the rapid growth of Baudoinia compniacensis. While Baudoinia compniacensis is a naturally occurring mold, it is normally slow growing and eclipsed by other faster producing molds. However, when it is introduced to ethanol-rich environments, such as that surrounding a whiskey aging warehouse, it becomes uncharacteristically fast growing, resilient and adaptive to many environments. Thus, where whiskey aging warehouses exist, so will Baudoinia compniacensis.”

The warehouses at Stitzel-Weller are and always have been painted dark brown.

It is not unusual for whiskey to be aged somewhere other than where it was distilled. At a wide spot in the road near Bardstown called Coxs Creek, Four Roses has a maturation facility, but no distillery. Their distillery is in Lawrenceburg. Wild Turkey has rackhouses at the former Old Joe Distillery across the street from Four Roses Distillery, and also at the site of the former E. J. Curley Distillery in Jessamine County. All three facilities have been in use for decades. Beam, Heaven Hill, and Maker’s Mark also have stand-alone maturation facilities, typically at defunct distilleries. 

Recently, producers have been building more stand-alones. Heaven Hill has a one on an isolated parcel near Coxs Creek, just east of U.S. Route 150 (Louisville Road). 

Historically in communities where either distilleries or stand-alone maturation facilities are proposed, producers seek tax relief and other incentives from local governments, which usually consider whiskey production a good economic development investment. Sometimes opposition comes from neo-prohibitionists, but jobs and taxes usually carry the day. Since 2012, public concern about Baudoinia, whether warranted or not, has threatened the industry's growth and perhaps the industry itself.

Although there is no evidence Baudoinia is a health threat, and a great deal of evidence it is not, these days it takes more than facts to keep people from claiming all sorts of dangers. Better to simply avoid the problem by keeping Baudoinia on company grounds, which is what producers are increasingly trying to do. 

NEXT TIME: More nerdy legal stuff.

(END OF PART SIX.)

Baudoinia: the Fungus with a Drinking Problem

 

Maturation warehouses at Stitzel-Weller in Louisville.

This is Part 5 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here.

Baudoinia compniacensis isn’t dangerous, but it is weird. Researchers have observed that ethanol exposure early in the plant's life stimulates the formation of protective ‘heat shock proteins’ that confer heat resistance, allowing the mold to survive on hot metal walls exposed to direct sunlight. This gives it an advantage over competitors. That advantage seems to continue even after the available ethanol vapor declines.

Here is another mystery. You might expect interior surfaces of warehouses, especially whiskey barrels themselves, to be thick with the stuff, but they aren’t. It always has been more prevalent on exterior surfaces. No one knows why.

Baudoinia is harmless, to humans and other animals as well as to crops and other plant life. It is most noticeable on the trunks of trees and walls of buildings. People who work at distilleries or live nearby have been exposed to it for generations and no ill-effects have been reported. Trees and other plants on which it grows don’t seem to mind. They grow normally.

Many producers of aged spirits simply paint their buildings dark colors, making the ‘soot’ less noticeable. Dark-colored warehouses also have hotter interiors on sunny days, which is good for the whiskey. Some clean Baudoinia from affected buildings, but most don’t bother. 

Although Baudoinia can be removed from most surfaces with soap and water, it usually comes back. Common antifungal remedies like copper and zinc salts deter it in the short-term. Since Baudoinia is spread by air movement, it is theorized that planting trees and other plants around warehouses will reduce its spread. Since it seems to thrive even in areas where the amount of ethanol in the air is low, more research needs to be done to determine ethanol’s exact role in the plant’s life cycle. 

No one appears to be actively researching Baudoinia today. University mycologists visit distilleries to experience it firsthand, as a group from Ohio State did at Buffalo Trace in 2016, but no major new research is underway. Neither the Distilled Spirits Council nor the Kentucky Distillers Association has an official position on Baudoinia, let alone a research program. Consensus in the industry, if people will talk about it at all, is that Baudoinia is a natural and harmless plant, and not a problem. 

They would rather not discuss the negative PR.

In Kentucky and Tennessee, as whiskey sales have increased over the last two decades, more and more whiskey maturation warehouses have been built and existing sites that were unused or under-used during bourbon’s down years are once again full. More whiskey in more warehouses has led to more Baudoinia, in neighborhoods where it never was, or hasn't been for 30 or 40 years, which is effectively the same thing. 

The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 set off a distillery building boom much like the one going on now. In Louisville, most of the new distilleries were built south of downtown in the then-tiny suburb of Shively. They located there because land was cheap, taxes were low, water was clean, and municipal authorities were more malleable there than in much larger Louisville. 

Shively was mostly farmland in 1933, but after WWII, housing began to fill in the areas that weren’t already occupied by distilleries and other industrial facilities.

Stitzel-Weller, the distillery built by Pappy Van Winkle at the corner of Ralph Avenue and Fitzgerald Road in 1934, was one of the finest. As became the norm after Prohibition, everything was there in one location: distillery, offices, bottling, distribution, and maturation. 

Distilling stopped at Stitzel-Weller in 1992 when the rebuilt Bernheim Distillery opened. Bottling left too, sent to Diageo facilities in Illinois and elsewhere. But unlike most Shively distilleries, Stitzel-Weller was never shuttered and is largely intact.  

As the whiskey stored there aged out, it wasn’t replaced. Bernheim had its own maturation warehouses. By the late 1990s, the Stitzel-Weller warehouses were nearly empty, and little was going on. Because so few people worked there, there wasn’t much security, and a tacky chain link fence was erected. The place looked, and was, virtually abandoned. An eventual shutdown and sale seemed likely.

NEXT TIME: The Bourbon Boom cometh.

(END OF PART FIVE.)

Baudoinia: the Fungus that Even Grows in Canada

 

Baudoinia compniacensis. Scary, right?

This is Part 4 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here.

The new fear of toxic molds that arose in the late 1990s happened to coincide with the first uptick in whiskey sales in decades, which led to more production and fuller warehouses in the U.S., Canada, and overseas. Inevitably, people noticed the soot-like fungal growth long associated with whiskey and brandy distilleries, Baudoinia compniacensis. 

One such person was James Scott, PhD, founder, owner, and Chief Scientific Officer of Sporometrics, a privately-owned Canadian company that provides microbiological testing services. 

Scott founded Sporometrics in his apartment shortly after receiving his PhD in Mycology from the University of Toronto in 2001. The first call his new company received was from David Doyle, Director of Research at the Hiram Walker Distillery in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit, Michigan. 

In addition to the distillery in Windsor, Hiram Walker has a large maturation complex in the nearby town of Lakeshore, on Lake St. Clair. The Lakeshore complex is surrounded by homes. Doyle said the neighbors were complaining about a mysterious black growth on their houses and other property. Because they could smell ethanol coming from the warehouses, they assumed that was the cause. 

Doyle wanted to know what the growth was and if the ethanol vapors were causing it. Scott was sure he could figure it out. Doyle hired him, and Scott went to work.

Hiram Walker's Lakeshore whisky maturation facility, on Google Maps.

Bringing scientific understanding of the whiskey fungus into the 21st century was challenging. Quoting from “The Distilleries’ Shadow: A summary of knowledge about Baudoinia, the warehouse staining fungus,” published by Scott in 2009: “The nature of the fungus, however, baffled modern experts: ordinary culturing techniques as well as the most modern genetic sampling techniques were confounded by a dusting of ubiquitous, contaminating ‘weed’ fungi that accumulated on top of the primary black growth. 

“Eventually, the problem was solved by using very patient culturing with an unusual twist: since the fungus seemed to grow only where ethanol vapors were present in the air, ethanol was also added to the growth medium at low concentration. Even though the fungus was extremely slow growing, it then grew well enough to be sorted out from the overlying ‘weeds’ and brought into pure culture.”

Scott described his methodology more succinctly to Wired Magazine in 2011. “I put maybe a shot of whiskey in a liter of agar and filled the petri plates with it. That made it grow a hell of a lot faster," Scott said.

Scott got other researchers interested in the unusual fungus. They determined that the Lakeshore specimen most resembled the fungal family friedmanniomycetaceae, best known for growing inside porous rocks in Antarctica, and they were able to match it to specimens collected in Cognac. In 2007, it was given a new genus name, Baudoinia, for its discoverer, Antonin Baudoin. 

In addition to running Sporometrics, James Scott is a tenured professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is still chasing the mysteries of Baudoinia. The recent New York Times article quotes him, as do most writers of most articles on the subject.

As so often happens, greater knowledge uncovered more mysteries. Although Baudoinia feeds on ethanol vapors, it prefers other food sources. It can be found in places near warehouses where the concentration of ethanol vapors seems too low to sustain it. 

Hiram Walker became part of Pernod-Ricard in 2005. Mycologist Scott's contract ended in 2009. Since then, Pernod has contributed to a fund that helps pay for power-washing affected property. 

Like the whiskey business, the fungal world is very competitive. There are millions of species. Because it grows so slowly, Baudoinia is usually overcome by other molds seeking to occupy the same environmental niche. That is where alcohol comes in.

NEXT TIME: Alcohol is to Baudoinia as spinach is to Popeye.

(END OF PART FOUR.)

Baudoinia: the Fungus You Can Blame on France

 

Cognac wears Baudoinia proudly.

This is Part 3 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here.

The American whiskey industry is in the midst of an expansion going into its third decade. One side effect of that growth is increased prevalence of Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus, in the vicinity of whiskey maturation facilities. 

Today, virtually all major American whiskey producers are operating at capacity. To grow, they must enlarge their distilleries, or build new ones, and build many new maturation facilities, either at the distilleries or remote locations.

Distilled spirits have been known and consumed since at least the 12th century, maybe longer, but the deliberate aging of spirits in oak barrels didn’t become routine until the 17th century, beginning in France. It took a few steps to get there. 

Step one: Merchants representing vintners in southwestern France began to sell wine in England in the 13th century. The trade continued and grew in the centuries that followed, with Holland and other Northern European countries added to the customer list. 

Step two: Because these voyages were long, wine sometimes spoiled along the way. That was bad for business, so in the early 15th century merchants began to distill wine as a form of preservation. As a bonus, distilled wine was more concentrated, which improved shipping efficiency. They called it ‘burnt wine’ (brandwijn in Dutch). When it reached its destination, the ‘brandy’ was reconstituted with water and sold as wine. 

Before you say, “that’s not how it works,” remember that the product in demand was alcohol. The reconstituted brandy had roughly the same alcohol content as wine, and alcohol is what people were buying.

Step three: Throughout history, alcohol merchants have been assiduous about personally testing the quality of their products. Although no deliberate aging was done during this period, merchants noticed that the liquid tasted better after shipment, and correctly assumed that was because of the oak barrels in which it was stored. 

In time, people began to drink the distilled product straight, with little or no added water. It was called either ‘brandy’ or ‘eau de vie,’ which means ‘water of life’ in French. Today, those terms are used to differentiate between aged (brandy) and un-aged (eau de vie) fruit spirits.

By the 17th century, merchants in the town of Cognac were buying new distillate from area producers to hold in barrels until the desired taste was achieved. Time in wood created a more desirable and, thus, more profitable product. As barrel inventories grew, the merchants experimented with different aging durations and blending techniques, creating in time the very exclusive brandy known as Cognac.

Initially, aging barrels were stored wherever space could be found, including the attics of homes. Eventually it became necessary to build aging warehouses, and inventories grew to thousands, then hundreds of thousands of barrels. As the practice of barrel-aging spirits spread to Scotland, Ireland, and eventually North America, so did the practice of storing barrels in large warehouses built for that purpose. 

Through experience, it was learned that aging spirit needs to ‘breathe.’ In Kentucky and Tennessee, that means warehouses tend to be flimsy—just a thin metal skin over a wooden frame—and full of windows to promote air circulation. Some warehouses have fans.

Although these conditions encourage evaporation, the improvement in taste compensates for the loss of volume. In Cognac, they gave the lost liquid a romantic name, “the angels’ share.” 

Since aging began, distillers have known there is ethanol vapor in the air around aging warehouses. To most people, it is a pleasant aroma. As many remark, “it smells like prosperity.”

In the 1870s, a Cognac pharmacist named Antonin Baudoin was the first to describe and analyze the “dark, cryptogamic plant” he observed growing near brandy maturation facilities on masonry walls, tile roofs, and all kinds of wood surfaces, including live trees. Was it fungus or blue-green alga? In 1881, the plant was definitively classified as a fungus and named Torula compniacensis, meaning ‘the torula from Cognac.’ ‘Torula,’ a genus name no longer used, means ‘little rounded thing.’ Locals called it ‘la torule.’ 

After that, there is little in scientific literature about the fungus until the 1960s, then nothing again until the late 1990s, when the public first became widely aware of sickness and death caused by toxic molds in water-damaged buildings. Suddenly, mold wasn’t something you occasionally had to wipe off your shower curtains. It could kill you.

NEXT TIME: Heightened mold fears coincide with bourbon’s revival.

(END OF PART THREE.)

Baudoinia: the Fungus that Moved 185,000 Barrels

 

Some of Diageo's Orphan Barrel bottlings.

This is Part 2 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis. the whiskey fungus. Part 1 is here.

When whiskey maturation warehouses began to fill up with the current bourbon boom, Baudoinia compniacensis, the whiskey fungus, made a comeback too. To property owners near distilleries, it was something new, leading to much power-washing and loud complaining. 

Then a lawyer told them they were being harmed and could make money from it.

In 2012, Diageo was cited by the Metro Louisville Air Pollution Control District (LAPCD) and threatened with fines of $10,000-a-day for its part in the fungus problem. Based on that finding, attorney William F. McMurray filed suit against Diageo, Brown-Forman, and Heaven Hill on behalf of several aggrieved neighbors. McMurray often tries his cases in the press before they go to court, thereby bombarding defendants with bad publicity on top of the threat of large damage awards. 

Rather than fight the citation, Diageo agreed to remove 185,000 barrels of whiskey from the Stitzel-Weller warehouses. They said at the time they would be moved either to George Dickel in Tennessee or to an unnamed ‘other location’ about a half mile away. Diageo was not known to own any other property in Jefferson County but may have acquired warehouse space at the old Yellowstone Distillery, which is about that distance from Stitzel-Weller, on Seventh Street Road, in the heart of the post-Prohibition era’s ‘Whiskey Row.’ 

It now appears that what was taken to Dickel wasn’t placed in storage at the distillery in Tennessee but instead was dumped and bottled as Orphan Barrel products Old Blowhard, Barterhouse, Rhetoric, and Lost Prophet. Additional bottlings followed.

By creating Orphan Barrel, Diageo solved a problem and put some liquid into the marketplace that many consider excellent. It would have been nice if Diageo had made this part of the brand story. Instead, it took a review of old copies of Insurance Claims Journal to discover the truth. Diageo confirmed none of this, but its promise to the LAPCD was public information, widely published, and included the figure of 185,000 barrels. 

That raised another question. Stitzel-Weller stopped distilling in 1992, shortly after the company now known as Diageo acquired it. The warehouses eventually emptied out, but it didn’t take long for them to start filling up again when Maker’s Mark leased several. In addition to the 20+ year-old whiskey now being sold as Orphan Barrel, those warehouses also age whiskey intended for Bulleit, I. W. Harper, and other Diageo products. Again, all of this is widely assumed, but unconfirmed. 

Even if all the very old barrels were bottled for Orphan Barrel releases, what about those current production needs, the whiskey of various ages intended for Bulleit and other products? The deal with LAPCD didn’t say they had to leave the warehouses empty.

Since then, Diageo has built two new distilleries in Kentucky, in Shelby County and Marion County, on large tracts in rural areas, which is the only real solution to Baudoinia. A large site, covering hundreds of acres, with rackhouses clustered in the center, provides enough buffer to keep the fungus away from litigious neighbors. 

Hyperbolic articles about the “mysterious whiskey fungus” appear regularly and what is sometimes called “whiskey’s shadow” is casting a pall over the otherwise brilliant revival of American whiskey. Whiskey tourists find it an amusing curiosity. Producers decline to talk about it. Distillery neighbors call it a nuisance and worse. 

The same black mold can be found clinging to outer walls of whiskey warehouses in Kentucky, Tennessee, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Japan, etc. It was first observed in France, in Cognac, 150 years ago. 

Cognac wears it proudly as an ensign of prosperity. In other places it is less esteemed.

NEXT TIME: How it all began, about 400 years ago.

(END OF PART TWO.)

Baudoinia: the Fungus that Stopped Jack Daniel's

 

Baudoinia on a Heaven Hill whiskey maturation warehouse in Bardstown, Kentucky.

This is Part 1 of a 9-part series about Baudoinia compniacensis. the whiskey fungus.

“Whiskey Fungus Fed by Jack Daniel’s Encrusts a Tennessee Town,” was the headline in the New York Times digital edition on March 1. A version of the article appeared in print on Sunday, March 5, Section A, Page 18, of the New York print edition with the headline: “Whiskey Fungus Coats A Tennessee Town.”

That particular combination, the world’s best-selling whiskey and one of the world’s most-read news sources, gives the subject heightened visibility and while Michael Levenson did a fine job of reporting, there was not a lot new to report. Construction of warehouses at a stand-alone maturation facility for Jack Daniel's has been halted temporarily (probably) because of a neighbor's Baudoinia complaint. The online version includes a convenient link to a nearly identical story from 2012 about a similar ruckus in Louisville.

If you liked Old Blowhard, Barterhouse, or any of Diageo’s other Orphan Barrel bourbons, you probably should  thank Baudoinia compniacensis, the black fungus that is troubling Jack Daniel’s and likely forced Diageo’s hand in releasing those whiskeys almost ten years ago.

In the beginning, Diageo did not want to reveal anything about its Orphan Barrel bourbons. Then they relented and told where they were distilled and their mash bills, but many questions remained unanswered. 

One of the biggest was why? American whiskey distilleries usually don’t let whiskey age 20 years or more on purpose with no plan for its eventual use. They may let a few barrels go that long, just to see what happens, but they typically use or sell most of it long before it gets that old. 

Since the early part of the 21st century, when most of that whiskey was still young, it has been easy to sell bulk whiskey to the many non-distiller producers looking for something to package and sell. Demand has been strong and prices have been good. So why did Diageo let a large inventory of bourbon sit in warehouses at its otherwise-shuttered Stitzel-Weller Distillery, year after year? They didn’t try to sell it. No one outside the very secretive company even knew it existed.

Because of Orphan Barrel, we now know the whiskey was old and there was a lot of it, thousands of barrels. They won’t tell us how many but based on the sequential numbers on Orphan Barrel bottles (numbers up to 84,000 were reported for some releases), it was thousands of barrels. Barrels that old lose a lot to evaporation, but that is still an enormous amount of whiskey.

We may never know why they let it sit for up to two decades, seemingly with no plans for it, but we know why decided to sell it in 2014. At least, we think we do.

The reason, it appears, is fungal. Not fungus in the whiskey, fungus on the houses, cars, and lawn furniture of Stitzel-Weller’s neighbors. And those neighbors were angry about it.

Baudoinia, the whiskey fungus, stains property near whiskey maturation facilities wherever they may be, from Louisville, Kentucky, to Lincoln County, Tennessee and beyond. It has been studied for more than 150 years. Baudoinia can and does grow everywhere but it grows faster and hardier in the presence of ethanol vapor. 

There is zero evidence Baudoinia is hazardous to health, but it is an ugly nuisance. It is also an unavoidable by-product of aged spirits production. 

In the case of Diageo’s Orphan Barrels, Baudoinia has been part of Stitzel-Weller’s neighborhood since the distillery opened in 1934, but after 1969 bourbon sales began to tumble and so eventually did production. As the industry adjusted to the new sales reality, inventory levels at Stitzel-Weller and other distilleries fell, and with them prevalence of the fungus. 

When warehouses began to fill up again with the current bourbon boom, the fungus made a comeback too. To homeowners who moved near distilleries during the downturn, it was something new, leading to much power-washing and loud complaining. 

NEXT TIME: how the Metro Louisville Air Pollution Control District got the ball rolling in 2012.

(END OF PART ONE.)