The Future of BourbonGuy.com

August 22, 2024 Eric Burke

I don’t know about you, but since the pandemic hit, the ol’ dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to. One side effect of that is I buy a lot less whiskey these days than I once did. And when I do purchase a bottle, it tends to be a little more expensive because I go for “quality over quantity.” These days, I can go a couple of months between purchases—partially because prices are insane and partially because my wife and I have cut back so much on our drinking that we just don’t need to replenish as often. The unspoken downside to running a site like this is that it’s way too easy to overconsume in the name of content, which, if you aren’t careful, can easily become a habit that’s hard to break. When we did Dry January this year, it was partially to see if I could break that habit.

Luckily for us, Dry January was extremely easy, but it kind of put into focus the subconscious worry that it might not have been. I’ve always preached moderation—when I mentioned it at all—but I didn’t always practice it. That’s unfortunate because most of the time, I didn’t even notice I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching. But I’ve gone almost nine months now where, outside of tastings, I maybe have one or two drinks a week instead of two or three a day.

That isn’t to say I don’t have a beer or two when I go out for supper, or I don’t just have a cocktail on a random Tuesday. But that happens much less often now than it used to. I feel like I have a much healthier relationship with alcohol than I did at this time last year, and I’m happy about that.

So, to bring this back to why I’m talking about it here—this lifestyle change has had an impact on the site. Frankly, I just don’t have as much liquid to write about, and honestly, I don’t feel much of a need to go buy more than I currently am. I used to have a very bad shopping problem when it came to alcohol. I’d get involved in the hunt for something fun and end up buying something that wasn’t “fun” just because I didn’t like going into a small business and walking out without supporting them. This meant I had a closet full of things I’d purchased that I only kind of wanted.

Speaking of that, my local corner store’s budget must have taken a hit this year, though my personal budget is doing much better now that I’m on track to spend about 20% of what I did last year in the liquor category.

We’ve been posting twice a week for over a decade at this point—well, most weeks, anyway. And to this point in 2024, we’ve been keeping up our standard two-times-per-week writing schedule, even with reduced spending, mostly on the back of samples with just a few purchases here and there to supplement. However, I don’t think that is sustainable long-term. So because of that, I’ve reluctantly made the decision to step back a little bit. I’m not going anywhere (for now—who knows what the future holds), but I am going to cut the “official” publishing frequency from twice a week to once a week. I’ll bump it back up during March Bracket Season and on any occasion when I find myself with too many samples piling up, but for the most part, I’m hoping that a reduced frequency will let me continue to work on my health, my family, and even my finances.

If you’ve made it this far, look for a new review next Wednesday and most Wednesdays going forward. Thanks for being a loyal reader, however long you’ve been one.

~ Eric

In honor of Canadian Rick: Canadian Club Chronicles “The Icon” 45-year-old Canadian Whiskey

April 9, 2024 Eric Burke

It isn’t often that I look at something this expensive, so I thought I’d give a little backstory on how it ended up on my shelf.

It was 2013, and my wife was planning the yearly trip she takes with her mother. Usually, it is somewhere local, like the North Shore of Lake Superior or Door County, Wisconsin, but this time, my mother-in-law wanted to see Niagara Falls. She’d never been and wanted to see it before she no longer could. Normally, the trip is just the two of them, but I’d never been out of the country and asked if I could tag along. They were driving, and I didn’t have enough vacation time to spend the entire week with them. So it was decided that I would fly out, they would pick me up in Toronto, we’d do some sightseeing, and then I would ride back with them.

Want to raise the suspicions of a Canadian customs agent? Fly in on a one-way ticket. She asked a lot of questions about what I do for a living, why I was there, who I was meeting, and why I didn’t just ride along with my wife when they drove in. The defeated way I admitted to not having enough vacation must have done the trick, though, because that was the last question before I was allowed to go.

But anyway, back in 2013, I was chronically online—like all the time. Twitter was my jam at the time, as it was still a few years away from becoming the total cesspool that I abandoned for my own mental health a few years later. I met a lot of really cool friends based on a combined love of all things whiskey. And when I mentioned online that I’d be in Toronto for a couple of nights, well, that was when Canadian Rick took over.

He didn’t go by that or anything, but that was how my wife and I thought of him.

Rick was very possibly the nicest guy I’d ever met. He set up an entire meet-up for local whiskey lovers at our hotel room. But before that, he surprised us at the Forty Creek distillery. He’d found out that we were going to be taking a tour and sat in the parking lot waiting for us to show up so that he could introduce himself to us and welcome us to Canada. And he did that by flirting with my mother-in-law and giving my wife and I the heel portion of a bottle of a very old Alberta Premium. I think it was about 30 years old. There was just enough left in the bottle for a pour for each of the two of us.

It was delicious. It literally sent a shiver up my spine as I sipped it. Until very recently, it was the oldest whiskey (or whisky since it is Canadian) that I’d ever tasted.

The next night, everyone showed up at my hotel room, and we had a lovely tasting. They tried their best to get me to enjoy Scotch the way they did, to no avail. I gained an appreciation but not a liking. (For context, it was sincerely said of one of the samples: “It has the aroma of Band-Aids and candle wax, mmm, delicious.” I did not think that sounded delicious…) Luckily for me, they also brought a bunch of Canadian whiskey along. Now that I liked. Enough so that we had to stop at a couple of LCBO locations on our drive home, even though I was massively hungover and working on very little sleep as my wife drove us back.

After our trip, Rick made sure to keep in touch. We visited on Facebook, via email, and, of course, Twitter. We even shared whiskey samples back and forth. He’d ask for Bourbon and, in return, send Canadian. Eventually, I pretty much gave up social media, and we drifted apart. I know I’m not doing justice to just how nice Rick was, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Right as we were starting our brackets last month, we received word from a mutual friend that Rick had passed away. And as you do when you learn that a friend that you’d drifted away from is gone, I wondered why on Earth I hadn’t tried harder to keep in touch. Even though I know there were some lovely whiskeys, I have no idea what we tasted that night in Toronto, but I remember the joy that we all had in tasting them together. There is a lesson there somewhere.

So, what does all that have to do with the bottle of Canadian Club that we are talking about tonight? Well, it was on that trip that I fell in love with good Canadian whisky. I’d been seeing this bottle of 45-year-old Canadian Club just sitting in the case for almost a year. And when I thought of Canadian Rick and his heel of 30-year-old Alberta Premium, something tugged at me to buy it. And when my daughter gave us a $150 Total Wine Gift Card for Christmas this year, I knew exactly what I wanted to put it toward. $300 is a lot for a bottle of whiskey. I’ve never spent that much previously, and it is very likely that I never will again.

And I’m very glad I did. It was the perfect bottle to open to toast Rick’s memory with when we heard the news of his passing. It was the only pour out of the bottle before we did the tasting notes for this post, and it will be a while before we pour another, I’m sure. But maybe someday, when there are only a couple of pours left in the bottle, I’ll need to pay it forward and pass that heel along to a friend newly met.

Canadian Club Chronicles “The Icon” 45-year-old Canadian Whiskey

Purchase Info: $309.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Price per Drink (50 mL): $20.67

Details: 45 years old, 50% ABV.

Nose: Delicate, pleasant oak, along with cinnamon and floral vanilla.

Mouth: Creme brulee, marzipan, oak, and cinnamon.

Finish: Refined, balanced, and of medium length. Lingering notes of vanilla custard spiced with cinnamon and a gentle oak.

Thoughts: This is delicious. The first descriptor that popped into my head was" refined." It is extremely well-balanced, with neither the proof nor oak overpowering anything else. A few years ago, my wife and I tasted a vintage bottle of Canadian Club from the 1970s. It was very floral. Much more so than the currently produced product. You can still taste the floral 1970s Canadian Club roots even at its advanced age. This is definitely something that will live on the special shelf and only be poured on special occasions or for special people.

I didn’t get a chance to tell you anything about this whisky, but if you’d like to learn more about it, Whisky Magazine had a nice write-up when it was released in late 2022, and of course, here is the original press release.

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Revisiting Elijah Craig 18-Year-Old Single Barrel to Celebrate a Major Cancer Milestone

July 26, 2022 Eric Burke

IMAGE: A 2021 edition of Elijah Craig Single Barrel, 18 year old

Ten years and some months ago, my wife and I got the worst news of our lives to that point. My wife had Stage 3 ovarian cancer. Yesterday we celebrated the ten years since she was given the all-clear by her doctor. No signs of the disease in her system. In light of this, indulge me in a much longer post than usual before we get to the whiskey review.

Ovarian cancer has historically been a killer. Even today, there is currently no early detection test for it. This means that a lot of people find out way too late for anything to be done about it. My wife was lucky. Extremely lucky.

When she was diagnosed, it was a fluke accident. She knew something wasn’t right with her body, and every doctor she talked to told her she was fine. A year later, she ended up having a cyst on an ovary surgically removed, and the doctor that was supposed to do the surgery had a family emergency. Because of this, his boss ended up performing the surgery. His boss was one of the best gynecological oncologists in the state. Since it was her specialty, she nosed around a little while she was inside and found something. My wife had multiple tumors on her ovaries and bladder. Tests confirmed that they were cancerous. She was at Stage 3. She went into immediate chemotherapy, and within a few months, she was given the all-clear. She was lucky on so many levels. She happened to have another issue in the same area, she ended up with a specialist doing the surgery instead of the scheduled doctor, and she had a particularly slow-growing form of cancer.

Today 1 in 78 women will develop ovarian cancer in their lifetime. And though this is typically considered an “old woman’s disease,” not just old women are victims of this disease. In my wife’s cancer groups, children as young as ten years old have died of this horrible disease. In the US today, 49% of those diagnosed are still alive after five years, but that number drops to only 35% at ten years. Less than half of the women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the US will survive five years. Think about that. There are over 160 million women in the US. That means over 2.1 million of them will develop Ovarian Cancer in their lifetime, and after diagnosis, over 1 million will be dead within five years. These numbers are bad. But they used to be worse. Just five years ago, the numbers I would have been reporting would be predicting a half million more dead by five years. Still, according to the National Institute of Health’s National Cancer Institute, almost 20,000 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2022. And sadly, 12,800 or so of our fellow citizens are predicted to die this year from the disease.

But the good news is that in those women where it is diagnosed early, the survival rate is much higher. Unfortunately, only 16 percent of cases are diagnosed in the early stages. The problem is that many of the symptoms are also symptoms of other things. Bloating, pelvic pain, feeling full quickly, and needing to pee are not exactly uncommon in women. And many doctors are willing to dismiss them. What my wife and I have learned through this is that if your doctor doesn’t listen to you when you know something isn’t right, find a new doctor if you have the means. And keep doing it until you find one who will at least check it out. And if you don’t have the means, pester them until they do something.

If you want to know more about this disease, please go to the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance, the CDC, the American Cancer Society, or the NIH. I know this is a whiskey blog. But what is whiskey without someone to share it with? My wife loves whiskey. She helps with the tasting notes and is the “silent” partner of this site. I want each and every one of you to have someone to share your whiskey with, and I don’t want you to lose them or yourself because talking about “girl parts” is hard. My wife was lucky, but if the first doctor had listened to her, maybe she wouldn’t have needed to be.

Tonight we are celebrating ten years clear. And we are doing it with one of her pre-cancer favorites: Elijah Craig 18-Year-Old Single Barrel (EC18).

Kids, pull up a stool and listen to Old Man Eric spin you a tale of how things used to be. Way back in the year 2012, you could find an 18-year-old, single-barrel bourbon, on store shelves, for less than $50. Oftentimes there would be a full facing of them right there on the shelf, maybe even from multiple barrels. Now in 2012, EC18 wasn’t for everyone, namely me. In my estimation, it was more than a little too flabby and oaky. But my wife liked it, so we had it on the shelf relatively often. We found out as my wife was recovering from a chemotherapy session that the days of old, yet inexpensive bourbon were ending. Heaven Hill was putting the jewel of the Elijah Craig line on hiatus. My wife, of course, sent me out to buy two bottles for the closet, and being an attentive husband, I immediately complied. When EC18 came back, it cost three times the price. (I reviewed both pre- and post-hiatus versions here). I think I bought it once after that.

And then I didn’t see it again until March of 2021, when I saw it high on a shelf behind the counter at Ace Spirits in Hopkins, MN. I knew that we were coming up on a major anniversary where it would be appropriate to celebrate with a fancy pour and thought this would be an appropriate pour given how it was intertwined with her treatments. It cost more than I’d have liked, but you don’t celebrate ten years without cancer very often. It turned out that I was about a year off in my calculations, so this has sat in my closet for well over a year now. But here we are. Ten years and one day after the all-clear, revisiting one of her pre-cancer favorites.

If you are curious what her actual pre-cancer favorite was, it was Four Roses 2009 Mariage. It was so widely available here in Minnesota that I bought the last bottle of it in 2012, the day after her cancer diagnosis, to hold onto so we could celebrate her all-clear when it happened. What can I say? I’m an optimist.

And since that bottle of Four Roses Mariage has been long emptied, let’s dig into this more than adequate substitute.

Elijah Craig 18-Year-Old Single Barrel: Revisited

Purchase Info: $164.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN (March 13, 2021)

Price per Drink (50 mL): $11.00

Details: Aged 18 years. 45% ABV. Bottled 12-2-19. Barrel: 4809

Nose: Caramel, vanilla, nutmeg, and oak.

Mouth: Spicy cinnamon, caramel, and oak.

Finish: Warm, and the flavors last forever. Notes of sweet vanilla and cinnamon.

Thoughts: This is a delicious bourbon that holds a soft spot in my heart for reasons outside the taste. I wouldn’t have spent $182 after tax on a bottle of bourbon if I didn’t have a sentimental reason for buying it. As far as the bourbon itself, though, my wife still loves it. I like it, but it's just a touch too oaky for me as I'm not really a fan of super oaky bourbons. But that is nitpicky stuff. Everything else about it is delicious.

Download an Infographic on Ovarian Cancer to Share

WhistlePig 10-Year-Old Small Batch Rye Whiskey

June 30, 2022 Eric Burke

IMAGE: A 50 ml bottle of WhistlePig 10 year old rye

So. Depression. It’s something I’ve been struggling with lately. I’ve been on depression and anxiety meds for close to a decade now. And most days are great. I’m generally a happy person. But every so often something happens and the familiar spiral of nothingness threatens to rise up and overwhelm me. Thankfully I am medicated, and my dosages are pretty well dialed in at this point, so my bouts don’t last too long. Usually, it’s just an afternoon of listlessness and a lack of motivation to do even the littlest thing. Which, if ignored can go further. Because the worst part of these bouts is that I know that I should be doing the things that need to get done, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. And then I get upset with myself for not doing what needs to be done. I question my self-worth. It’s like “if you can’t even vacuum the giant ball of hair on the floor when you see it there, why are you even here?” It’s…not fun. And it takes time to get through.

Luckily for me, I have a job that allows for self-care. Sometimes my job even forces it upon me whether I want it or not. As was the case on Tuesday of this week. There is a German Shepard that I watch named Doug. I’ve watched him since he was three months old. Usually, he is overwhelmingly excited. As he was on Tuesday. But as I was feeling that spiral of depression and nothingness start to overwhelm me, he intervened. I was laying on the sofa, trying hard to figure out why I couldn’t just vacuum and do the dishes—spoiler alert: it was a depressive episode, I’m a little slow on the uptake when they start—when he just crawled up and laid on top of me. And he didn't take no for an answer. He noticed that his Uncle Eric wasn’t right even before I did. And that kind of love tripped something that allowed me to start to climb out. I still wasn’t motivated to do anything, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The emotions were on their way back. I’m grateful for Doug.

I’m not sharing this for sympathy. But I do think we need to start normalizing mental illness. So I’m letting you know what happened to me this week. Why I didn’t write anything on my regular day. And who knows, maybe it’ll help someone else if they are in a similar spiral.

But you aren’t here for that, you are here because you saw a photo of a tiny bottle of WhistlePig Rye. so let’s get into it. I’ve never purchased anything from WhistlePig before. And to be honest, I probably won’t again as most of their stuff costs more than I want to pay for sourced Canadian Whisky. But as I was wandering through Total Wine last weekend looking for something that I could write about, I saw this little three-pack of miniature bottles for $27. So while $27 for 150 mL of whiskey is very expensive, it was a lot less expensive than the $85 that a 750 of just one of the bottles would have cost. Plus, I like to reward producers for making these sampler packs. I think they are a great way to experience various whiskeys when you are on a budget.

And I’m always on a budget. I mean, I’m frugal. Just look at the tagline at the top of the page. And in my mind being frugal is different than being cheap because it isn’t that I won’t spend money. I just like to make sure that I’m spending it smartly on things that will be good, interesting, or both. And in this case, I get content for three posts for $27 which is probably less than I’d have spent for content for a single post usually.

So, is WhistlePig Rye good? Or interesting? Is it by chance both? Or neither? Let’s find out.

WhistlePig 10-Year Small Batch Rye Whiskey

Purchase Info: $26.99 for the WhistlePig Rye Whiskey Piglets multipack of three 50mL bottles at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN. Retail price locally for a full bottle is $84.99.

Price per Drink (50ml): $9.00

Details: 50% ABV. 10-years-old. Canadian Whiskey, blended and bottled in Vermont.

Nose: Cedar, mint, cherry, and a touch of barbecue smoke.

Mouth: Cedar, mint, cherry, cinnamon, and a hint of dill.

Finish: On the shorter side of medium length and of medium warmth. Spicy with notes of cedar, dill, cherry, and cinnamon.

I like this so it gets a smile. But I wouldn't buy it again.

Thoughts: This is pretty tasty, but I'd never pay the $85 that Total Wine is asking for a bottle. To me, it just isn't $85 good. It was more of a $30 good. It's a fairly unassuming rye whiskey. I'm glad I got to try this in a small bottle. It's not bad, just way too expensive. So final verdict: good, but not interesting.

(and now cue the people who love and covet WhistlePig to leave comments about how I'm just an idiot, and an admittedly crazy one at that, in 3... 2... 1.)

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The Cure Starts Now: Ultimate Bourbon Raffle

August 10, 2021 Eric Burke

Long-time readers know that cancer is a touchy subject in my house. In March of 2012, my wife was diagnosed with Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. After surgery and chemotherapy, she was given the good news that she showed no evidence of cancer. If you haven’t watched a loved one deal with chemo, I envy you. Watching someone I love suffer so much from the very thing that was trying to save her life? That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We are lucky. She has had clean scans ever since.

Yesterday I received an email from The Cure Starts Now. I’ll let them describe themselves: “The Cure Starts Now, which is a non-profit foundation that represents something truly different – a grassroots effort dedicated to, not just fighting one cancer, but the elimination of ALL cancers. We are on a mission to find the Homerun Cure by funding research for cancer.”

Now, as I mentioned above we hate cancer in this house. And not just the kind that affected us, but all of them. If someone asks me to donate to a cancer charity, the odds are that I’m going to do it. So I would have been happy to receive the email anyway. But in this case they were asking me to help promote a fundraising event that might interest you the reader as well. Here is a little more from the email:

Why does this matter to you? Well, we would like to ask if you’d blog about our Ultimate Bourbon Raffle being awarded at our annual Once in a Lifetime Gala and Auction. We have first and second place prizes, full of amazing bourbons, that I am sure you know all about! Below are the prizes brought to us by our friends at the Party Source.

First Prize - Double Eagle Very Rare.
Second Prize - Pappy Van Winkle collection. The winner will receive a 10, 12, 15, 20, and 23-year bottle.

Anyone who is a lover of bourbon does not want to miss out on the opportunity to win one of these amazing prizes. You and your followers can visit https://csnevents.org/Bourbon to buy raffle tickets. Only 750 tickets are being sold, so don't miss out!

Now, I’m not going to ask you to buy a raffle ticket, I know my readership skews frugal. But, I will ask you to consider it, if you are able. The world will be better off once cancer is defeated. And the more people we have looking for a cure, the quicker that will happen. Plus…who knows maybe you’ll be a lucky winner. (Unless I am…I just bought my raffle ticket)

Ordinarily this would be where I would ask you to give me money. A $3 coffee or a purchase at my Etsy store. Tonight, I’m going to ask you to instead donate that to a cancer charity of your choice. If you want to donate to The Cure Starts Now (who has a 94 out of 100 rating on Charity Navigator) you can by visiting https://donate2csn.org, but they are by no means the only cancer research charity. Do what feels right to you and maybe together we can help make the world a little better.

This post is not about bourbon...

June 2, 2020 Eric Burke

I’ve started and deleted this post more times than I can count today. In case the title didn’t convince you, this post contains no bourbon content. I didn’t think that it would be fair to anything I might review to have this as the lead in. This is my reaction to recent and current events in my city. To shield those who would be offended, I’ve done the best I can to keep “politics” out of it. But, to be fair, as this is the prattling of yet another liberal, white dude, you’d be forgiven for not reading it at all. I’m sure it comes off as just “more words” or an empty gesture as I offer no solutions. But as a writer, writing is how I come to understand my feelings and myself better. This post is for me to work out a few things in my own heart and mind. And this seemed like as good of a place as any to do that.

Many of you know that I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro area. For the last week, the centers of my city were burning. First figuratively. Then, sadly, literally. I've spent the last four days worried about friends and family who live closer to those centers than I do. I've spent the last week wondering how we as a city, a state, and a nation could still be at this point. The point where a man's cold-blooded murder by four men could be captured on video, and the punishment be the loss of four jobs and one arrest.

Of course, I knew the answer all along. And it made me angry. Angry at the injustice of my fellow humans being treated as less than human. And angry and guilty at the knowledge that as a cis, white man, I would never be subjected to the hate and the fear that a black man is, by those who don't know me. Angry that friends had to watch white men in red hats, who were not from their area, "patrol" the streets outside their houses. Angry that those friends had to lie to their children and try to hide their anxieties as they locked their doors and pretended to have a sleepover upstairs. Scared and angry for my cousin, who happens to be a person of color and lives in Minneapolis. Angry that the professionals who were supposed to be protecting them seemed to take every possible opportunity to escalate the situation.

I spent the weekend watching my city burn. And I couldn't find it in my heart to condemn those that lit it on fire. I was empathetic. Both to the owners of the burned businesses and the anger of those that did the burning. Even though I understand that there are always opportunists in any tragedy (a few bad apples, one might say), I also know that rage isn't rational. Rage is a flood of anger that can no longer be held back by the dam of rational thought.

I've experienced rage. I was a teenager who was uncomfortable with his own sexuality. I was belittled and bullied by those around me who suspected more than I was even willing to admit to myself. I had to live and sleep with my bedroom door open because my mother and stepfather thought I might be doing...something, I still don't know what, even though my younger brother didn't have that restriction. I was physically threatened by my father for not being manly enough, even though my younger brother was showered with affection. As a young man, I sadly let my rage explode more often than I should have. And I pointed that rage at my brother, even though none of it was his fault. Now, as I am older and hopefully wiser, I can't find it in my heart to criticize others' expressions of rage. Especially when that rage has been so dearly earned.

I've been told that this site is a distraction from the hate and divisiveness in the news. I'm sorry that today I'm not writing about bourbon. The fact of the matter is that I refuse to be distracted, or be a distraction for others, from the events happening in our country today. I believe we are experiencing the defining events of our generation. I am hopeful, perhaps naively, that change is finally coming. That soon, all humans will be treated equally in this country, regardless of their religion, skin color, or their place of origin. That my friends won't have to teach their children how to survive a traffic stop. And that my family won't be told to "go back to the reservation."

My love to each and every one of you. Bourbon content will return on Thursday, as I think we could all use a drink. Stay safe.

My Maker's Mark Ambassador Experience

May 23, 2019 Eric Burke

IMAGE: The green grass and black buildings of the Maker’s Mark Campus.

If you are new around here, I should tell you first and foremost that I am a fan of bourbon. I’m not an expert, though I’ve learned quite a bit in my fandom. I’m not a journalist, though occasionally I share a press release. I’m not 100% impartial, though I try my best to recognize my biases and account for them in my writing. I’m a fan. And much like I wear my favorite college team’s gear, I’m also a member of various bourbon fan clubs.

Clubs like the Maker’s Mark Ambassador program.

It was 2011 and I was on my first trip to Kentucky. Somehow, I had convinced my (then) non-bourbon-drinking wife that this was a great place to visit on our spring vacation. We did the entire Bourbon Trail (plus Buffalo Trace). This was back when tours were free and the entire trail consisted of only 6 stops. We visited Four Roses when its gift shop was the size of a closet, Wild Turkey before its current distillery was built and Jim Beam before they actually gave tours of more than just an aging warehouse. Back then, the only distillery that really seemed to understand the fan experience was Maker’s Mark. They took us on a tour that included the distillery, gave us a tasting and told us about the Ambassador program.

The Ambassador program, was described to us thusly:

Sign up on the computers in the giftshop.
Get in a queue to have your name engraved on a copper plate that is affixed to an aging barrel.
When your barrel comes of age, you’ll be invited to the distillery for a private tour and have the opportunity to buy a couple of bottles of Maker’s made from the contents of your barrel.
In the mean time, they will send you Christmas presents every year.

My wife and I both signed up (she was a confirmed bourbon drinker by the end of our weeklong trip). And the above is basically what happened. But along the way, we ran into a few snags. In our “welcome packet” were a few forms to allow us to sign up new Ambassadors. Unfortunately a computer snafu resulted in our information being replaced by the new signups. Which by the time we had it straightened out resulted in our first Christmas gift going to someone else and a two year wait to get our names on a barrel. It was only finally resolved by a polite email to Bill Samuels Jr.

And then we were finally officially Ambassadors. We were getting cool gifts like an “Maker’s Ugly Sweater” for our bottles, a Maker’s Santa hat for our bottles, silly gift boxes, bottle mistletoe, and most recently socks with little Maker’s bottles on them. We were invited to Ambassador meet-ups at local liquor stores. We got emails detailing everything from the proof-lowering snafu to the release of Maker’s 46, Cask Strength, and Private Select.

Along the way, I started writing more. I got serious about being serious about bourbon. I started to feel like maybe I’d grown past the Ambassador club. But then, I got the email that our barrel was ready. I was like a kid on the night before Christmas. It was as if I was back in 2011 and everything was fun and I wasn’t nearly as jaded. It reminded me that I was a fan of bourbon first and someone that talks about it second.

So we took our trip to Kentucky and visited Maker’s Mark. We didn’t take the tour, because we’d been on so many over the years and it looked like it was just the regular group tour, but we did buy and dip our bottles. They had our names and Ambassador number on the label. The trip was fun. The visit was fun. The dipping was fun. We had fun. And to me, that’s what being a fan is all about.

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A Photo Tour of the Former Old Crow Distillery

October 4, 2016 Eric Burke

During my September visit to Kentucky, I had the pleasure of being shown around the former Old Crow Distillery by the current occupants. My thanks to Dane, Glenn's Creek Distilling's Lead Distiller for showing us around. I'll talk about Glenn's Creek's current operation in another post, but first let's take a trip through the ruins of what is left when a whiskey distillery is abandoned and left to crumble for 30 years.

When Beam bought National Distillers, they closed down the Old Crow Distillery. They maintained use of a majority of the aging warehouses, but abandoned the rest. They still own and use those warehouses. Above is the main campus of the former Old Crow Distillery. The remaining non-Beam owned aging warehouses are out of frame off to the right. The majority of the upcoming photos were taken as we walked through this portion.

But first, we visited the remaining aging warehouses. There are currently three aging warehouses remaining on the Glenn's Creek property. One was deemed no longer safe and is in the process of being removed by reclaimers. I think all the bricks have been spoken for so I don't think you can use Old Crow bricks in your upcoming project. The wood is being used to build the aging racks to store Glenn's Creek barrels.

The brick aging warehouses are overgrown with ivy and trees. This are has been cleaned up recently, but you still need to watch your step.

Old fuses in a fuse box on the side of a warehouse.

Across the way is the main part of the distillery. We made our way over there next.

The building in the distance is the former bottling and shipping building. It currently houses the entire Glenn's Creek Distilling operation.

Old Crow once suffered a fire. After that, it suffered flooding. The lower level of this building still house some of that flood water. This is in the basement of the grain handling building.

This is what we visited of the boiler area. Before being abandoned, it looks to have been upgraded. There are shiny bits of metal back behind the wall and a primitive computer control board down at the end. the interesting thing is that it seems to have been actually abandoned and not mothballed. Under the dust, there are still March Madness brackets that the employees were in the process of filling out.

Thirty years of distillery mold.

Thirty years of dust and pealing paint.

Outside again. This is a peak between two buildings.

No Idea. But maybe try not to lick this.

Neither our host, or us, could figure out what this used to be. Mold, fungus, insulation? No idea. Probably best not to lick it though.

In fact don't lick anything. I'm going to guess that lead paint and asbestos are pretty much everywhere. This is fermenter number five. The fermenter was sealed until fairly recently. It is notable because there were yeast spores (Old Crow or wild) inside that were recoverable by the current occupants and which are used to ferment one of their products.

Old valves and pipes in the fermentation room.

The spring that supplied Old Crow Distillery with water. This water is still used by the current occupant for uses that don't need potable water.

This is a look inside the beer well. It held 62,745 gallons. Sometime in the last 30 years, it flooded and the flood waters that ran into it brought something else along for the ride. There are currently fish living in there. They seem quite happy.

A window just barely hanging on. This is a ruin after all.

A large stash of abandoned material. They really just locked the doors and walked away. They allowed scrappers to come in for the still. But most of the stuff just sits there waiting to finish moldering away. In the distance are the loading docks.

Finally we snagged just a couple more outdoor shots. We also wandered past Glenn's Creek, the creek that the distillery was named for. We saw the small diversion dam that Old Crow Distillery used to help gather creek water for themselves. We saw the back of the shipping docks where trucks that must have been much shorter than semis nowadays were loaded up to carry away bottled product. There are vague plans to convert it to a stage, but there is a lot of clean up to be done first.

It was a strange feeling walking through the ruins of the old factory. Seeing the damage that time can wreck and yet finding tiny pieces here and there that showed that real people worked there and had fun doing it. This was once a big part of people's lives. Its nice to see that it is now in the hands of people who respect that history and hope to one day get it cleaned back up so others can see it as well. I hope they can figure out a way to make that happen.

UPDATE: Since I initially wrote this I've noticed that Glenn's Creek Distillery have started a GoFundMe project to help fund the restoration of the Old Crow distillery ruins. If you have the means, think about helping save a piece of history.

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