Mash Note

Tom e-mails on my post on orphan booze brands:

In a previous position with the company I work for, I spent some time visiting various distilleries in the Commonwealth of Kentucky (among many other things, our company makes components for bottling, packaging and conveying machinery). Before thinking that a visit to a distillery must be heaven on earth, I have to tell you that the average distillery smells like a fraternity house basement on the Sunday morning after the football team upsets the schools biggest rival (or after the Fraters annual meeting?).

The mashing process is particularly odiferous and the stale alcohol spilled on the floor is well, I hope you get the picture. Anyway, one of the things I found interesting are the number of different brands the average distillery bottles. Many are brands that I've never seen in a liquor store and my contacts at the time said that many were brands distributed overseas. In some cases the booze was top shelf stuff that was bottled under a different brand name for reasons that weren't explained adequately to "move the goods".

At one time I had a little bit of knowledge about what brands were top shelf but bottled under a different brand, but all the testing to see if it was the truth has effected my memory. I understand that Maker's Mark was a brand that had fallen on hard times until the son or grandson of some wheel in the world of Bourbon whisky bought the rights to the name and started making it again like the Sheep Dip brand discussed in your post. Anyway, just as their are tours of wineries in Napa, there are also tours of the distilleries - complete with free tastings throughout the Bourbon country of central KY. I don't know what kind of experience that might offer, but I would certainly recommend a designated driver.