by Fred Noe
“He needs to follow the new math,” I heard her say.
Booker stared down at her, growled, grumbled, shuffled his feet, grumbled some more, suppressed a “God damn.” He wasn’t used to not getting his way. Sister Dorothy didn’t transform herself into a wolf, but she didn’t budge either. She had the Lord and the religion of the new math firmly behind her, and Booker knew it. He had met his match.
“Get your coat,” he told me, his eyes still on Sister Dorothy.
The next day at breakfast, Booker asked me if I wanted to go to military school in Tennessee. I asked if they had nuns there and when he said no, I said yes.
I was twelve years old when I headed off to Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee, about 150 miles southeast of Bardstown. I had been there before, but not for school, just for summer camps, and I went with my best friend, John Walters. So despite my age—I was one of the youngest boys there—I wasn’t nervous or scared. I was ready for an adventure and I got it.
Castle Heights wasn’t exactly West Point, but it wasn’t exactly Fast Times at Ridgemont High, either. They took the whole military part of military school pretty seriously, so it was strict. Some of the boys went there because of the athletics—we had good football teams—but most of them went there because their parents had shipped them off. They were boys like me, “high-spirited characters” who needed to be brought down a notch or two. Or three.
We had to get up at 6:30 and put on uniforms and march in formation to breakfast, and there was inspection every Friday where some officer gave your room the white-glove treatment while you stood at attention, sucked in your gut, and prayed they didn’t check under your bed. A favorite expression of the Academy was “Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance,” so we were always running around preparing for something. The Vietnam War was going on, and if the Viet Cong decided to invade Lebanon, Tennessee, well, we were ready.
Since discipline and following orders weren’t exactly my strong suit, I surprisingly took to it all pretty well. I marched, I cleaned, I more-or-less studied (emphasis on the less), and I played football. And I was almost killed.
The almost-killed part happened soon after I got there. I was sitting on the steps of the Administration Building, shooting the breeze with my fellow inmates—I mean cadets—minding my own on a cloudless, windless day, counting my blessings to be away from Sister Dorothy, when out of nowhere, a huge tree branch fell on me. This wasn’t a twig now, this was a limb. At the very last second, I jumped out of the way, but it got part of me anyway, laid me up pretty good. I was knocked cold. If I hadn’t jumped when I did, I surely would have been killed. I remember lying in the hospital bed, pondering life and death, wondering why a tree would decide to fall on me, single me out, on a perfect day. Then I started wondering about Sister Dorothy, wondered if she was behind this. She had powers. You can run but you cannot hide. To this day, I still think she had something to do with my brush with death.
My parents visited me a lot, my mom missed me, so every few weekends, there they were. My mom and I were close. Booker was a handful, and she and I would team up to weather his moods together. She was the complete opposite of Booker; quiet, religious, patient. We looked out for each other. It wasn’t her idea to send me away, it was Booker’s decision, but, as I said, I was ready for the change, and while I missed her, I didn’t really miss home.
When they came down to the Academy, Booker brought whiskey for all the teachers, cases of bourbon. He would pass them out from the back of his trunk with a smile and a pat on the back. The faculty loved him. He was like a bourbon Santa Claus, except he came twice a month and he didn’t care if you were naughty or nice, just that you didn’t flunk his son out. Looking back on it, that’s probably why I lasted six years there.
I eventually fell in with older boys; they met Booker, found out who I was related to, put two and two together, and became my best friends. I ran pretty fast and hard with them. There was a creek in back of campus and late at night, we’d slip out our windows, avoid Shorty, the night watchman, and meet up and party, have a big time.
There were a set of keys at the Academy, sacred keys that unlocked every door in the place. They had been stolen years before from a teacher by some seniors, and each year these keys were passed down to the next class. Never in the history of the Academy did anyone other than a senior get to have those keys. But in my sophomore year, they were presented to me. It was a big honor, a solemn responsibility.
I probably got those keys because I was as wild as most of the seniors. I also got them, I suppose, because of my family tree. While I was hardly a celebrity, I know being a Beam made me stand out. That was the first time I felt that, felt a little different. Being a Beam in Bardstown didn’t mean much, we were all Beams pretty much, but away from home, for better or worse, it drew attention.
That family tree helped me get those keys and those keys meant freedom, access. My friends and I took full advantage, unlocking classroom doors late at night, smoking cigarettes and purposely leaving the butts on the teacher’s desk, finding the answers to tests, raiding the kitchen. When I finally graduated, I handed the keys over to another boy, told him to treat them with respect. Those keys helped get me through the Academy. And I needed all the help I could get.
Despite the change from St. Joe’s, I wasn’t motivated, knew I wasn’t going to make the military a career. I just wanted to hang with my buds, party, do the minimum to get by in the classroom, wait for the weekend. I was in and out of trouble, collected a boxful of demerits and demotions. I knew I was frustrating my family, letting them down, but I was a kid, something of a rebel, and that was the way it was.
Near graduation, the woman at the post office, a tiny little thing, made an interesting observation about me. She said, “You’re in and out of trouble so much that you remind me of another boy we had here not too long ago. Greg.”
I shrugged, picked up my mail, turned to leave. I wasn’t all that interested in some Greg.
“Yes, sir, Greg Allman, he was a piece of work. Wonder what ever happened to him? Probably no good.”
To sum it up, my military career wasn’t exactly stellar. I went into Castle Heights Military Academy a private and six years later, left Castle Heights Military Academy2 a private, which, I was told, was highly unusual.
After I graduated, Booker told me I could go to any college I wanted, as long as I could get in. I pondered this decision for a while. Since I never had given college much thought, I decided I better do some research to help me find the right academic institution that fit my selective criteria for higher education. I picked up Playboy magazine, saw a list of Best Party Schools in America, saw that Western Kentucky University over in Bowling Green was rated number two in the nation, and closed the magazine.
My exhaustive research was concluded.
BOURBON PRIMER
I think it would only be right that I spend a little time talking about how bourbon is made. I’m making an assumption, since you’re reading this book, that you have an interest in the process. I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. As you no doubt have surmised by now, I have a strong aversion to textbooks and people posing as teachers.
Before I go any further, I want to talk about how bourbon got called bourbon. As I mentioned earlier, bourbon got its name from the county in Kentucky where it came from—Bourbon County, which was named after the French royal family for all of their help during the Revolutionary War. So the county is kind of a big thank-you note to France. (Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of Kentucky towns and cities are named after the French: Louisville, Versailles, Fayette. We’ve even got a Paris. If nothing else, we Kentuckians are appreciative.)
Originally, Bourbon County comprised about one-third of the state. When they started making whiskey, it was just called whiskey but that eventually changed. Whiskey from Bourbon County eventually became Bourbon Whiskey. According to some research, the first time that name appeared in print was
about 1820, in a local newspaper ad. (Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking, by Henry. G. Crowgey, page 121, if you don’t believe me.) Over time, Bourbon County shrank; they kept carving other counties out of it, and now it’s relatively small in size. Ironically enough, for years it was dry, too. Go figure.
So now that we have the name figured out, let’s move on to what bourbon is: it’s a whiskey. Now, I’ll tell you what whiskey is, since that’s the natural next question: it’s a spirit that’s made from a grain like corn, rye, wheat, or barley. Bourbon is a whiskey because it’s mostly made up of corn and rye (though some have wheat). To be able to call a whiskey a bourbon, it has to be made up of at least 51 percent corn, and it has to be aged at least two years inside charred, new oak barrels that can only be used once. If we reuse a barrel, whatever is inside it can’t be called bourbon.
All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. Other whiskies include scotch (main ingredient, malted barley), Canadian (rye), and Irish (malted barley). Those are all good whiskies, but they’re not bourbon. Bourbon is the best, at least in my not-so-impartial opinion.
The process starts with corn. We use field corn mostly from Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. We grind it up when we get it, and we add other small grains like rye and malted barley, and then we cook it with water.
I have to make a special mention of the water here, because it is special. The water Kentucky distillers use is ideal for whiskey making. A lot of it is spring water that’s naturally filtered through a limestone shelf that runs through the region. The result is water that is free of iron and rich in minerals—as sweet as water comes.
So we mix the ground-up grains with this sweet, pure water and the result is a kind of mash. We cook that up, which converts the starch in the grain to sugar. Next, we add the yeast. Each distillery has its own special yeast and we keep a close eye on ours; it’s not something we share because each yeast culture is a little different, and this difference has an effect on the final taste. Also, using the same yeast culture ensures consistency in the whiskey. We don’t want whiskey that tastes different from barrel to barrel.
Our yeast has been in the family for years. As I mentioned, Jim Beam used to cart it home with him because he was afraid the distillery would burn down or there would be a flood or earthquake or some other calamity. He was a little obsessed with his yeast.
Anyway, once the yeast is added, fermentation starts. This means sugars from the grains are broken down. At this point we have distiller’s beer—a nice, sweet, soupy mixture that has a little alcohol in it. We then take that mixture and distill it, heating it on up with steam until the alcohol turns into a vapor. These vapors are cooled and condensed (turned back into liquid) and then distilled a second time. This second distillation purifies the alcohol and increases its strength. The result is a clear liquid that looks like water. We call that liquid “white dog,” because if you drink too much of it, it will bite your ass like a dog.
After we’ve made enough of the white dog, we put it in those oak barrels that have been charred or burned on the inside and load them into our rack houses. Time and the seasons take over from there. Our rack houses don’t have heat or air conditioning, so we’re dependent on the weather to make things right. During the hot, humid summers, the whiskey flows into the charred wood, and during the cold winters, it contracts, flowing out. As I mentioned before, the charring creates a carmelized layer of sugar, known as “the red line.” As the white dog moves in and out of the wood, it passes through that red line, picking up color and flavor along the way.
We have about 60 rack houses located throughout central Kentucky, and they house about 20,000 53-gallon barrels each, though we now have a few that store 50,000 barrels. While the rack houses are sturdy and durable and can handle most of what the weather can throw at them, they can still fall victim to severe storms. A few years back, lightning hit a rack house from another distillery and scattered barrels every which way. It was national news. Some whiskey even ended up in the Kentucky River, and the EPA had to come out to test the water to make sure it wasn’t too high proof. That’s the exception, though. Mostly, rack houses are built to last, and they have.
Anyway, once the whiskey has spent time getting to know the inside of a barrel, we “dump” various barrels into a vat to marry the bourbon together. For the most part, we take a vertical cross section of barrels3 from our nine-story rack house. A bunch from the first floor, where it’s cooler and the proof isn’t as high, then more from the second, and so on, all the way up to the ninth floor where it’s hot (it can get more than 100 degrees easy up there in the summer) The ninth-floor bourbon is pretty high proof, since a lot of the water has evaporated.
Once we get it all together, we cut some of it down with water to lower the proof, then bottle, ship, sell it. All in all, a pretty good system and a pretty special whiskey.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. On January 7, 1964, the U.S. Congress, under Lyndon. B. Johnson (we always say the “B” stands for “bourbon”), passed a resolution declaring that bourbon was “America’s Native Spirit.” The resolution declared that “whiskey is a distinctive product of the United States and is unlike other types of alcoholic beverages.” This means that bourbon can only be made in America.
Who says Congress never accomplishes anything?
In summary, here’s a handy pocket guide to what makes a whiskey a bourbon. It must:
Be made up of at least 51 percent corn
Come off the second distillation no more than 160 proof (80 percent alcohol; proof is always twice the alcohol content)
Be aged to no more than 125 proof in new, charred, white oak barrels for a minimum of two years to be called straight bourbon
Have no coloring or flavoring added to it
Bottled at a minimum of 80 proof
Be made in America (For the record, it can be made in states other than Kentucky, but for the most part it’s not. About 90 percent of the world’s bourbon is made in Kentucky. I don’t know where the other 5 or 10 percent comes from, but I tell you what: I wouldn’t drink it.)
A Little Tidbit
Back in the old days, bourbon was more than just a drink to take the edge off a hard day of plowing or fighting off bears. It was also currency; it was sold and bartered for food, livestock, clothing, and even land. Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln’s father, Tom, sold the family farm in Kentucky for $20 and 10 barrels of whiskey before moving on to Indiana, then Illinois. Unfortunately, housing prices haven’t changed that much in Kentucky.
3Most of our whiskey is taken from a vertical cross section, but Booker’s is taken from the fifth floor, a horizontal cut. Also, our single-barrel Knob Creek comes from just that—single barrels. It’s a great whiskey.
1Jim Beam had one son and two daughters: Jere, Mildred (Mimi), and Margaret, my grandmother. Margaret married Frederick Booker Noe, which is how I got my name. I should have told you that earlier, in case you wondered if I really was a Beam.
2If you’re interested in ever visiting the Castle Heights Military Academy or maybe sending your son there in hopes of straightening him out, don’t bother. It no longer exists. The campus is now the headquarters of the Cracker Barrel Corporation, which I find funny and a little ironic; I really like the Cracker Barrel.
CHAPTER 3
BOOKER: YES, SIR.
I think it might make sense for me to take break from talking about myself, switch gears, and talk about my dad, Booker. I’ve already given you a glimpse of him, but as I said, he deserves his own chapter. He loomed large in my life, was a significant presence. He also had a big impact on the bourbon industry, and played a role in shaping it into what it is today.
Like a lot of fathers and sons, Booker and I had our moments. Good, bad, bad, good. I know I frustrated him at times: my partying, my decisions, my lack of direction. Hell, I drove him plain nuts at times. But in the end, we turned out all right together, stuck by each other. That’s the whole point of
family, isn’t it? You tough it out, weather the storms, and leave on a high note.
I guess you could say that my dad was a character, an American original. Did what he wanted, said what he wanted, ate and drank what he wanted. He was Kentucky, bourbon, and Beam, all blended together: uncut, unfiltered, and high, high proof.
He was born on December 7 (which would eventually become a day of infamy for another reason) in 1929, just as the stock market was collapsing, so at first people called him Hard Times. It was a nickname that didn’t really stick since his real name, Booker, was pretty catchy in its own right. (For the record, and in case you’re keeping score, his Christian name was Frederick Booker Noe, II, which, minus the “II” part, was his father’s name, which also happens to be my name and, wouldn’t you know it, my son’s name. Not sure what we would do if we’d had any girls.)
Booker was born in nearby Springfield, Kentucky, but soon moved over to Bardstown to go to boarding school. By all accounts, he had a childhood somewhat similar to mine. He played football in high school, then spent about a semester at the University of Kentucky, after receiving a scholarship to play for a coach named Bear Bryant, before dropping out. This disappointed Uncle Jere to no end. Booker was his boy; Uncle Jere loved him, loved UK, and loved football, so he took the news hard. So Booker, embarrassed and ashamed, hit the road, hitchhiking across the country. He was gone for months; no one knew where he was and it was the talk and mystery of Springfield. Just up and vanished. He eventually surfaced in New Mexico, broke and hungry and about to enlist in the Air Force because they promised to feed him, when my family got wind of his whereabouts and wired him some money to come home, which he did. Soon after, he went to work at the Clermont plant, where Uncle Jere and Cousin Carl trained him. I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if he had gone Air Force. Hell, I’d probably be the world’s oldest private right now.