by Fred Noe
So the work could be more challenging than it sounds, and I ended up liking it all right. I suppose I also liked the routine. After years of excess, years of partying, years of no real direction (case in point: I took seven years to graduate college), I finally found my footing at the distillery, felt earth beneath my feet. Like I said, it wasn’t glamorous work, but it was honest work and it helped me grow up.
I mostly liked the people I worked with. They were solid people who had worked at the plant for years and years. Many of their fathers had worked there, and even some of their grandfathers. The Beams, I realized, weren’t the only family with bourbon-making roots. Bourbon and Beam had supported generations of Kentuckians for years and years. It was in a lot of families’ blood.
Sometimes, after work, we would meet at the bottom of the hill in the parking lot (the Clermont plant is built on a hill) and we would relax and have us a few. No crazy stuff, just sipping and smoking. Someone might be playing guitar, someone might be singing. We’d sit there on the bumpers of our cars or in the back of our trucks and watch the night fade, see the sun come up over the hills, the light hitting the rack houses, turning them pink, then a little orange. I remember staring up at the rack house, wondering what time the ghosts got up, wondering what they thought of me—the prodigal—now.
We drank our share of whiskey, but we didn’t overdo it. We were professionals; it was all about quality, not so much quantity. (Although, to be sure, there were a few who were into both, but they didn’t last too long; they tended to weed themselves out.) We were selective of what we drank, knew where the best whiskey was stored, which rack houses, which barrels.
Sometimes we sipped on new whiskey, bourbon that hadn’t been aged yet. White Dog, clear as water, but dangerously seductive too. Drink too much of that and the next morning you would wake up with an earthquake between your ears. Bust Head, Booker called it. “You got the Bust Head,” he would say.
Some of the workers, the old-timers especially, had something called a “mule.” It was a distillery secret, no outsiders knew about it. It was basically a plastic tube that you could hide down the front of your overalls. You would pull it out in the rack houses if no one was around, knock out the bung of a barrel (the plug), and slip it on in and have yourself a nightcap, or an afternoon pick-me-up, or a fat-free breakfast.
There was a trick to knowing which barrels to sip from. Since the barrels were aged for years and years, they naturally picked up their share of dust as they sat quietly, undisturbed in the shadows. But every so often you would come across a barrel with no dust on one side, and that’s the one you put your mule in. The reason they didn’t have any dust on them was because the men (many of whom had, shall we say, prominent stomachs) would lean against the barrel while sipping on it. Their guts kind of shined the barrel up. Those barrels were called the sweet barrels. The shinier the barrel, the sweeter the whiskey. I always thought we should come out with a special bourbon, call it “Shiny Barrel.” I know it would sell well in Kentucky. People who knew their whiskey would know what it was all about and line up to buy it for sure.
I worked at the distillery for 28 years, moving around the place, serving in a number of capacities. As Booker wanted, I was learning the family business from the ground up, all aspects. Bottling, labeling, the distillery, the fermenting room, the dump room. My knowledge of the business grew inch by inch, day by day. Looking back on it, I was like a bourbon myself, aging slowly, gaining flavor in the relative quiet of the Clermont plant.
Age and experience are important things in the bourbon industry. You can’t learn everything in one day, or one week, or even a year, especially in a business as old as ours. It takes time to absorb all the different facets and it takes patience to learn the nuances. There is a rhythm to making whiskey, it’s a slow, easy, and methodical process. This isn’t Silicon Valley where things change every day. This isn’t Wall Street with the big ups and downs. This is Bullit County, Clermont, Kentucky; things may change here, but when they do, they change slow.
I was content enough. By then I had met up with a girl who would later become my wife. I had met her driving “the loop” in Bardstown. The loop was a Saturday or summer evening ritual, and you’ve probably seen it in movies about small towns. Bunch of people pile up in a car and drive around. We started out at Burger Queen (that’s not a typo; in Bardstown, we had a Burger Queen; not sure why) and ended up about a mile away at the McDonald’s. Then we’d drive back again. It usually turned into a parade of cars, people honking their horns, the radios up high, seeing what’s going on. Teenagers did it, people in their twenties did it. Bardstown is a little isolated; there aren’t many other towns really close by, Louisville is close to an hour away and Lexington even further, so our entertainment options were limited. It was either drive the loop, or sit on someone’s front porch and watch people drive the loop.
Well, I met Sandy driving the loop, and we started hanging out and then going to ballgames, and later, the local night spot, Boots and Bourbon, and one thing led to another and pretty soon we were married and pretty soon, man, I was a father.
It was all good. Sandy was a Bardstown girl, so she had a basic understanding of the bourbon business, knew what it meant to be a Beam, so there was no major education needed. She knew that bourbon, whiskey making, was going to be my life and she was fine with that. She understood she wasn’t marrying a doctor or a lawyer. I tell you, having a spouse who is on board with your career, someone who gets it, that’s a big help. And Sandy got it from the start and she’s been there the whole time.
So I was all settled down and everything, Hank Williams, Jr. and that life, gone forever, the transgressions of my youth a memory. The days blended together, one after another, and my life kind of flattened out, no real highs and no real lows. I was happy enough. I had everything a man could want: a good wife; a son, Freddie (Frederick Booker Noe IV; we like to number our kids); a good job working with good people. Family nearby. Sandy and I were living in the Small House, next to Booker and my mom. I told myself that was enough
But I knew it wasn’t, knew something was missing. Down deep, I felt an itch to do something different, an itch to see the world. I didn’t leave Bardstown or Kentucky very often, it was pretty much my whole world, so that itch was understandable and over time it grew.
Booker was gone a lot, traveling, seeing new things, meeting new people, while he promoted the product. It was the 1990s and the Small Batch Bourbons, particularly Knob Creek, were on fire, demand high. When he came back, we would sit around the kitchen table, maybe sample a few batches of Booker’s the distillery had sent over, and he would tell stories about Australia, Japan, France. Places I could only dream about. That itch would get stronger after talking to Booker, but I ignored it, told myself to be happy with how things had turned out.
Things changed one day, though, when Booker came home from some faraway place tired. Being the ambassador for one of the world’s most recognizable brands, being the face of a growing and global company, being here and being there, constantly entertaining people, key customers, retailers, salespeople, media, was finally taking a toll. He was pushing 70 by then, and the front porch was calling.
“I’m done,” he said. We were sitting out back, staring at the smokehouse, waiting on supper. When Booker was in town, we still tried to eat together. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
I just sat there and let him blow off steam. He had complained about life on the road before, so I didn’t think much of this latest tirade about airports and too-small seats on airplanes. He had recently spent time in Japan and had to push two beds together to sleep, which he thought an outrage.
“You can’t quit,” I said.
“It’s not quitting. They got a word for what I’m doing and it’s called retiring. And that’s what I’m doing. I am retiring. Ball players do it. Hell, even racehorses do it.”
I wasn’t taking him seriously. “You can’t do that.”
“I ca
n do whatever I damn well please. I’m not getting on any more airplanes. That last trip almost killed me. Waiting in line at the airport for an hour and then they lost my suitcase. Besides, I ain’t feeling too well. Gettin’ swimmy headed. My legs and my feet are swelling up all the time. No, I’m done, all right, I’m done. Besides, they don’t want to hear from an old man anymore anyway. They want someone younger. A different perspective. I’ve told all my stories and I’m getting tired of hearing myself talk.” He went quiet, started in on a good mulling. Then he softly said something.
“What?” I hadn’t heard him.
“I said it’s your turn.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? This is your time. Changing of the guard. I already talked to people about it. They’ve been watching you for a while and the reports have all been pretty good. You put your time in here, so they’re going give you a shot.”
“A shot?”
“Yeah, a shot. Speaking of which, I’m getting a little thirsty.” He pushed himself out of his chair and went into the house.
I watched him walk away. Time to scratch that itch, I thought.
BOURBON PRIMER
The Distillery
Since I spent so much of my life at our plant in Clermont, I thought it might be helpful to offer up a little description and a few definitions of the various parts of a working distillery. Every distillery is a little different, but they all have common terms and places, so in case you’re interested or you’re ever in the neighborhood and want to stop by, here are a few:
Fermenting room: A large building with 19 fermenting vats inside of it. This is where we add our secret and special family yeast and let it do its work: turning the mash into alcohol. The mash sits in these tubs for a few days, until it starts to bubble.
The still: Ground zero, where it all happens. After it’s been fermented, we take the mash and we run it through a column that’s close to 200 degrees on the inside. This heat turns the alcohol into a gas or vapor. We then condense that, turn it back into a liquid. This newly distilled spirit is called Low Wine. Since the Low Wine still has a lot of impurities in it, we run it through something called the Doubler, which is really just another still, and produce something called High Wine. High Wine is colorless and looks like water and, as I’ve said, its nickname is White Dog. It’s drinkable and it’s probably what whiskey used to look and taste like 200 years ago, when my great-great-great-great- grandfather Jacob sold it, because they didn’t have time to age it much.
Cistern room: This is where the White Dog is filled into new, American oak barrels, which, by law, can only be used once. As I think I’ve mentioned, these barrels are burned or charred on the inside. Our bourbons get all of their color and a lot of their final taste and aroma through these barrels, so they’re important. (When we’re done with these barrels, we sell them off to scotch and tequila distilleries; that’s why those spirits taste pretty good.) The bourbon goes into the barrel at no more than 125 proof. It’s been cut a little with water to get it down to that level.
Rack houses: After the cistern room, we send the barrels off to grow up in the rack houses. These are those large and spooky buildings I’ve mentioned, about nine stories high. This is where we age our bourbon. We don’t heat our rack houses and we don’t cool them, and we don’t rotate the barrels that are inside of them either. We just put the barrels in there and leave them alone, let nature do its work. (PS. There aren’t any ghosts up in them. At least none that have been documented.) Between our Clermont and Boston plants, we have more than 1.5 million barrels aging at any one time.
Dump room: After the barrels are done aging, anywhere from four to nine years, we bring a bunch of them down and “dump” all the bourbon out, marrying it all together.
Bottling line: This is where I started my illustrious career. It’s a noisy and pretty big place where we fill bottles with our whiskey. We have a state-of-the-art bottling line, it’s fast and it’s efficient, and that’s all you probably need to know.
If you come visit the distillery, we now offer guided tours that take you inside the distillery so you can see how we make our world famous whiskey; a tasting room where you can sample our bourbons in style; our American Stillhouse where you can learn more about our history (and maybe buy a few momentos . . .) and a smaller stillhouse where you can help make bourbon. All in all, a great experience.
Distillery Facts (Clermont and Booker Noe Plants)
We make 115,000 gallons of whiskey a day.
We put in 1,550 barrels in and out of the warehouses each day.
We produce 400,000 barrels of bourbon a year.
We have 1.6 million barrels in storage at any given time in our warehouses.
CHAPTER 6
THE MAKING OF A BOURBON AMBASSADOR
I started my education on becoming the company’s Bourbon Ambassador by trying to learn the proper way to speak Southern. They flew up some expert speech coach from Atlanta to spend a day with me to help me do that. Apparently people in Atlanta speak a certain type of Southern that is acceptable to the rest of the world.
“I already know the proper way to speak Southern. Been doing it my whole life,” I told Jim, the PR guy. I had inherited Jim from Booker, Booker had bequeathed him to me, and I could tell he was a little embarrassed about the whole thing.
“It’s just to help you do your job,” he said.
“Hell, what she going to teach me, the right way to say ‘y’all’?”
“She’s going to teach you how to talk more city Southern.”
“City what?”
“City Southern.”
“What do I talk now?”
“Country Southern.”
“What the hell’s the difference?”
“Well.” Jim stood there and did his own mulling for a while before saying, “It’s just one day, Fred. Come on. And we’ll have a nice lunch. I’ll order in from that place.”
The City Southern session didn’t go according to plan. The coach was an energetic woman who jumped up and down and waved her hands around like she was part of the landing crew of an aircraft carrier that was under attack. I’m sure she meant well, but I wasn’t doing much to cooperate. I thought the whole thing ridiculous.
“You’re dragging your words out,” she said.
I looked at her. “That’s how I talk.”
“Condense your cadence.”
“Condense my what?”
“Your cadence.”
“What’s a cadence?” I looked over at Jim, who pretended not to hear me. He was studying a menu from the restaurant we were going to order lunch from.
“Let’s try again,” the coach said, clapping her hands. “Speak from the diaphragm.”
“My dia-what?”
We spent a good part of the day up at the Beam House at the distillery, the same house where my great Uncle Jere had lived, the same house where my cousins Carl and Baker and David had lived, trying to change the way I talked. I had generations of Country Southern in me; that wasn’t changing anytime soon.
Finally, after a few hours of her trying to get me to condense my cadence, enunciate and articulate, and not drawl too much and not drag my words out and not say “ain’t,” and “y’all,” and “reckon,” she waved her hands one last time and gave up.
“Maybe we should get something to eat,” she said.
“Good idea,” Jim said. He suddenly perked up.
We ate lunch and I made a point of drawling a little bit more just to irritate her. Afterwards, the Southern speech coach quietly got back in her rental car and went back to the airport. I never saw her again.
“That didn’t go quite like I envisioned,” Jim said as she pulled out.
“Why, I reckon not.”
The next step in my Bourbon Ambassador education was media training. Teach me what and what not to say to reporters and writers when I was being interviewed in case I was ever on 60 Minutes. Jim was in charge of this. He had traveled
with Booker for years, so he knew a lot about damage control.
We were at the distillery, back upstairs in the same room in the Beam House with a camera, PowerPoint, and message points. There was a little book they gave me, “The Do’s and Don’ts” of talking with the media. (“Don’t say, ‘No comment.’ Do use the reporter’s first name. Don’t drink on the air. Do show the bottle, label first, to the camera.”) Jim and his crew instructed me on how to sit and hold my hands, and how it was important to remember not to cuss on live TV, and then how to sit and hold my hands some more. Then they filmed me and played it back on a TV so I could see how I held my hands and didn’t cuss. The morning dragged on and on. I had every intention of taking my training seriously—bourbon, the process, the brands, the history, the tradition, that was all sacred business—but this? You got to be kidding me.
Finally Jim, sensing my frustration and impatience, turned off the camera and ran his hand over his face once or twice, which was, I was learning, how he mulled.
“Did you do all this for my dad?” I asked him.
“What? Booker? Oh, God, no.”
“What did you do with him?”
“Well,” he cleared his throat. “Well, I would let him say whatever he wanted, then afterward I would call the reporter and beg them not to print what he said. Then I would send them a case of bourbon.”
“Did that work?”
“Yes, pretty much every time.”
We became quiet. Jim looked out the window for a minute, then he started to put the camera away. “I’m thinking that maybe we should try that approach with you.”
“Sounds like a good strategy.”
“Let’s get lunch.”
“Sounds like an even better one.”
A few days later, Booker asked me how all the training was going, so I told him about the Southern speech coach.