The Pilgrimage to Bourbon Country - One Miraculous Day in Kentucky Part 2: A Private Tour of Willett Distillery with Drew Kulsveen

April 30, 2014

The Pilgrimage to Bourbon Country - One Miraculous Day in Kentucky Part 2: A Private Tour of Willett Distillery with Drew Kulsveen

Last week we kicked off our recap of spring break in Kentucky with a look inside Four Roses.  It was inspiring to see the inner workings of one of our favorite distilleries.  But our day on the Bourbon Trail was just getting started.  There were some miraculous things to come.  

The next stop was Willett Distillery.  Willett may in fact be our most beloved operation.  Most everything they've touched over the years has been gold, though in recent history it's been sourced from other distiller producers and bottled by Willett.  Recently Drew Kulsveen, a fifth-generation Willett, has resurrected the family business and started producing whiskey again.  When our hosts Alan and Brock told us that Drew had agreed to give us a personal tour of the distillery, we all of the sudden got extremely excited to meet Drew and perhaps get to taste a sample of the new product - the first original Willett whiskey to be produced since the 1970's!

Willett is the picture-perfect fantasy of a Kentucky distillery.  At the end of a dirt road, you find a small property with a series of rickhouses, a small pond and fountain, and the farmhouse-style distillery.

Mill and outside of main distillery 

Spring and rickhouses

Drew starts the tour by showing us the inside of some previously used barrels.  

You can see the char on the inside of the barrel.  And if you look really closely at the side, you can see a vertical line that shows how deep the whiskey soaks into the wood.  This is the key part of barrel aging!

We get to taste some of the fermented mash (beer) that's about to go into the still.

The still itself is a tall hand-hammered copper thing of beauty.

Cuts are made, heads and hearts.  Willett doesn't make a tail-cut, but reuses the tails as part of the next batch.

And of course the hearts go into the barrels.

Yup, check out that fill date.  This is bona fide new Willett whiskey, distilled in 2012!

Drew took us into the rickhouse for a closer look.

Four stories of beautiful oak, filled to the brim with new Willett whiskey, patiently awaiting its time to get bottled.  It's like a big room full of heaven.

Drew takes us all the way up to the fourth floor...

And sneaks between the rows with his drill and a glass to retrieve us a taste of his new baby.

Well, not to spill the beans too much, but we can tell you that we tasted three different products.  A rye whiskey (just a couple months short of being a "straight rye"), a high-rye mash bill bourbon, and a wheated bourbon.

While all the whiskey was young, you could immediately taste the quality of the distillate.  The rye was sweet and spicy.  The bourbon was all fresh corn and vanilla.  For us, the wheater was the winner of the three.  We remember thinking "we'd probably buy this right now, but we can't wait to taste it in a few years!"

More than anything, it was just so amazing to be part of the birth of this new chapter in the history of Willett.  Everyone there treated us like family, and that's what this place is all about.  Generations of family dedicated to making great whiskey and sharing it with the world.  The pride in the product could not have been clearer.

Thanks again to Drew, Alan, & Brock for an amazing time.  Here are the three of them are enjoying a dram.  Cheers guys, what a great day!

Brock, Drew, & Alan

While you might not get a personal tour from Drew, make sure you stop by Willett if you're ever in the area.  It's a class operation and they're really onto something special.  /SB

The Pilgrimage to Bourbon Country - A Miraculous Day in Kentucky Part I: Four Roses

April 23, 2014

The Pilgrimage to Bourbon Country - A Miraculous Day in Kentucky Part I: Four Roses

Kentucky in April was one of those magical experiences that we'll remember for a lifetime (& hopefully repeat again next year!).  We started on Friday at Keeneland, a beautiful place to see the races.  

Then on Saturday we were off down The Bluegrass Parkway deep into bourbon country.  

If you haven't been to Kentucky this time of year, it's simply ideal.  The flowers are out, the weather is a crisp high sixties during the day and forties at night.  The bourbon trail takes you past horse farms, rolling hills, and through a beautiful pass over the Kentucky River.  Our first stop:  Four Roses Distillery.

Obviously we're huge fans of Four Roses.  We've reviewed all the limited releases we could get our hands on in our War of the Roses Marathon.  We got a taste of this year's Limited Edition Single Barrel a couple of weeks ago at Whisky Live.  It's all been pretty stellar.  So we were brimming with excitement to see where all the magic happens.

Since Four Roses uses three primary ingredients: corn, rye, and barley, it starts with three huge and appropriately labelled bins.

The recipe is then soaked in warm water to produce mash.

And we're talking a lot of mash:

Then things get start to get hot as the temperature goes up and the yeast is added.

It's hot in there...

Real hot!

It gets so hot that they only actually run production in the spring and fall and shut down in the summer.  (Another reason to go in April!).

Once the yeast does its job converting sugars into alcohol, you've got beer.  The beer goes into the beer still.  Here's what it used to look like. 

Here's the modern version (holds a lot more beer!):

What comes out of the beer still goes into the big still, aka the doubler.

They make their cuts.  The tails come out here:

The heads come out here:

And then go in here:

The hearts go into the barrels and end up here:

Pretty neat stuff.  But our miraculous day in Kentucky was just getting started.  Tune in next week as it starts to get really special with part 2!

/SB