Angel's Share

I always like to punctuate my annual trip to Gethsemani monastery with a tour of a bourbon distillery. There are seven major distillers of Kentucky bourbon, America’s only native spirit, all within a 30-mile radius of the monastery and the Kentucky River’s limestone water source – and I have now visited five of those houses of alchemy. I never tire of the story of fermentation and the 235-year-old struggle to perfect and lifeguard a purely local art that is now cherished around the world.

Real bourbon can be made only in Kentucky – the secrets being local limestone-rich water and charred white oak barrels. The whole story of bourbon came about by accident:  Daniel Boone-style moonshiners in the 1700’s who eventually got good enough at their trade to ship corn whiskey to New Orleans via the Kentucky River – but one batch went bad because of the barrels’ previous contents (probably fish or vinegar which had been shipped in the barrels before being filled with whiskey). In the interest of economy, distillers began to torch the inside of their shipping barrels before filling in order to kill whatever prior flavors (ergo, bacteria) had been left there. This torching, unbeknownst to them, brought out the oak’s natural sugars which would in turn impart a toasty/oaky flavor as well as a deep amber-red color to the whiskey. The immediate message from New Orleans was, “Send us more of that charred whiskey!” The charred whiskey was eventually called Bourbon because of the town’s name near the shipping dock on the Kentucky River where the barrels were loaded for transport. As every tour guide will say, “All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.”

A visit to a bourbon distillery is a revival of the senses. Before one even emerges from the car, the heady smell of fermented grain and torched oak infuses the nostrils and lungs. In past years, I have attended Maker’s Mark, Buffalo Trace, and Woodford Reserve; this year I attended two distilleries – Jim Beam and Heaven Hill, the two oldest and largest of the lot. I have two more to go, maybe next year – Turkey Hill and Four Roses.

Tours usually begin near the silos where mostly corn, but also rye, barley, and sometimes wheat are ground and made into a mash, then placed in room-sized fermentation vats made of copper or wood; they are infused with special yeasts and left to ferment and bubble for months at a time before distillation; torched barrels are filled and taken to a warehouse where they will stay in a climate controlled environment for four to 20 years – or more. "Tasters" are a special breed, born and bred in Kentucky as far as I’ve heard – and nothing is bottled before their discriminating approval.

Much like bread baking or any home fermentation process, the life of the bourbon is in the yeasts that convert plant starch into sugar and alcohol. Each distillery touts its own strain of living yeasts that flavor its product just so. There was tragedy just 14 years ago when the Heaven Hill Distillery burned to the ground. Our tour guide, a young man barely over drinking age, said he lived about 20 miles from the distillery at the time; walking home from school that afternoon, he could see billows of smoke and smell the burnt oak and yeasty bourbon. The distillery was producing bourbon only a few years later – and only because the precious yeasts had been saved.

He talked about Jim Beam, a fourth generation distiller (there are now seven, and an eighth is trying to decide what to do with his life) who saw the family distillery through the hell of Prohibition – that’s how they refer to it in Kentucky – and Mr. Beam was back mixing corn with limestone water at the cost of $1,190.48 only two or three days after Prohibition ended – because he had kept the vitality of the bourbon yeasts in a jar at home. Our tour guide said Mr. Beam was known for a lifetime of carrying his jar of living yeasts to work each morning – in case the house burned down – and carrying his jar of living yeasts home each night – in case the distillery burned down.

 A small screen with the pattern of many four-leaf clovers without the stems was placed at the opening of one oak barrel on our tour, allowing precious 10-year-old vapors to waft through the screen. “Now where have you seen a screen like this?” our tour guide asked. One small pious woman with a tall red-faced husband nearby piped up, “In a confessional!” Her husband seemed surprised to hear such a large voice emit from his tiny wife.

Each of us filed solemnly past the “confessional screen,” taking in celestial vapors to the deepest recesses our lungs would allow. Eyes began to roll, heads to swoon – and we many strangers from foreign lands began to speak in one tongue, each to each.

“Angel's share,” our tour guide explained, referring to the 30 percent volume which is lost to evaporation from each barrel. "We give 60 percent of our profits to the tax man . . . 30 percent in vapors to the angels . . . and what’s left, we drink . . . “

The tasting room is where the real fun begins. Strangers become friends seemingly for life, except that we forget to exchange addresses once the tour is complete. I have photos of people from Australia, London, Scotland, Mississippi, California . . . a section of Atlanta where I used to live, and even from around the corner in Louisville, Kentucky. You see, we are given generous portions of pricey stock – 10-year single barrel, 18-year single barrel, 9-year small batch, 12-year 'very special' batch, an unfiltered, uncut variety that is 125 proof . . . A process of the senses begins – comparing color though sunlit windows; sniffing with the lips slightly parted to give angel vapors an entranceway through the olfactory gates; finally, tasting and comparison before question and group discussion time. Very happy now, we are each given a chocolate bourbon ball and led into the glimmering gift shop . . .

I drove carefully back to the monastery in time for Vespers that evening – thinking about the Life that is 'caretaked' so lovingly in all manner of ways on this earth – and I do believe the monks’ voices were never more angelic.