Angels' Share (Bourbon Springs Book 3)

by Jennifer Bramseth

  Lila picked it up. “How long have you worked here?” she asked, still looking at the photo.

  “Since before I was born, I guess,” he said, and laughed. “Mom was always around.”

  Lila thrust the picture in front of him. “When was this one taken?”

  Bo took the frame from her and his happy countenance melted into what she suspected was nostalgia. “That was about fifteen years ago, right after I graduated from college. Came straight to work here. Graduated and the next week started here.”

  “Where did you go to school?” she asked.

  “Centre College,” he said, and put the frame back on the mantel.

  “Lovely down in Danville,” Lila said, and bowed her head. “Colin graduated from Centre,” she said, referring to her late husband.

  “Colin?—oh—your husband. I didn’t know that,” Bo said, still looking at the photo he had returned to its spot.

  “Hannah went to the University of Kentucky, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, we went different places because we’re different people. I wanted a small campus, small place. A lot like Bourbon Springs, really. Hannah wanted the experience of the big city, and had to go to Lexington. She loved UK, of course. I’m still shocked she came home.”

  “I’d love to bring one of my classes here sometime,” Lila said as she continued to examine the displays. “So much history here.”

  “Good time would be just before the holidays,” he said. “The distillery will be decorated for the season and you could have the run of the place. Just call my mother and set it up.”

  “Actually, I am bringing some students here next month,” she revealed. “But I didn’t think the Old House was part of the tour. I didn’t even know about this place.”

  “We can make it happen if you want to bring them here,” he assured her, and she rewarded him with a smile.

  “So just how much Garnet do you drink?” she asked as her eyes continued to roam the room.

  “You mean socially or on the job?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “If I’m at home or not in the distillery or a rickhouse, that’s social. But if I am partaking on the job, it’s usually just sips. I’ve probably had the bottle I have at my house for nearly half a year, I’d say. The businessman in me wants to ask whether you have a bottle of Old Garnet at your house, but I’m afraid of the answer I might get.”

  “Isn’t it the law in Craig County that every resident must have at least one bottle of Old Garnet in his or her house?” Lila joked, smiling at him.

  “I wish it were,” he replied, and escorted her out of the building, his hand lightly on her back.

  She followed him into the distillery building itself where she heard Bo wax poetic about the new mash tub and how it would help with production. Hearing this information made Lila uncomfortable since the crux of their dispute revolved around Bo wanting more room to age bourbon, but he never got close to that issue. Instead, he began to describe the mash process and led her up a flight of stairs to view the tubs.

  All but one of the five massive, two-story-high cypress tubs were full, and Bo took her to the edge of a full one and explained that it was the first day of the process for that particular batch of bourbon. The tub’s yellow liquid contents were bubbling, hissing and swirling, and it looked like a giant cauldron for some fantastic, invisible wizard. Lila smiled when she thought of Bo in that role, standing watch over his concoction and making sure everything went according to plan.

  “That’s all natural,” he said, pointing into the tub, which was alive with movement. “Just the natural fermentation process. Don’t get too close or the carbon dioxide will knock you for a loop.” Lila gingerly peered over the top of the tub, which came up to the middle of her chest. “You can taste it if you want,” he told her. “Some distilleries don’t like that, but we don’t care. Anything harmful gets cooked out at the high temperatures.”

  “I don’t think I care to taste,” Lila said, backing away, still peering at the frothy golden mixture.

  “Watch,” he said, dipping a finger no more than an inch into the swirling liquid. He brought the finger to his mouth and tasted. “See? No problem.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry, but that looks disgusting.”

  “Trust me,” he said. “It’s not bad. It’s natural, and it’s a little sweet and grainy.”

  Very tentatively, Lila put her small hand over the edge of the tub. Before sticking a precious digit into the stuff, she splayed her fingers and held a palm over the liquid.

  “Smartly cautious,” Bo said, nodding with approval. “You can feel the heat coming off of it, can’t you? But it’s not hot.”

  Trusting him, she dipped in the tip of a forefinger, and before she could lose courage, popped it into her mouth and held it there.

  Bo had been right in his description of the mash. It was mildly sweet, and grainy. It tasted like bits of cornmeal in a sweet, watery substance—which was exactly what it was.

  “Well?”

  “Just as you said,” she told him.

  “Come over here,” Bo directed, and she followed him to the edge of another tub.

  This tub’s surface was thick with a substance much the same color of what they had just viewed in the first tub, but all along the top was a crusty, thick layer that looked a lot like cornbread.

  “This is about day three of the process,” he told her, and stuck his hand into the goo up to the wrist. When he withdrew it, it was covered with flecks of what looked like chunks of sand or cornbread. Then he tasted it, just as he had the first tub’s contents.

  “Try it,” he urged Lila, and nodded toward the tub. “I sort of scooped out a puddle there for you so you can get to the liquid underneath.”

  Still leery, she slowly approached the tub and looked over. Lila saw an area that looked like it had been disturbed and where the thick crust was broken and there was liquid underneath. She again put a finger in and tasted.

  “Whoa,” she said, her eyes bulging from the sharp tang she detected. “Packs a punch, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s right, and it should taste just like that. Tastes different than the first tub, but I don’t think it tastes bad, do you?”

  She agreed with his assessment and he smiled. She could tell he was loving his chance to teach the teacher.

  Leaving the mash tubs behind, Bo took her to the large copper stills. He pointed out the enclosed glass-and-brass proof box, with the liquid running through it out of a pipe or spigot.

  “That’s the product before it gets placed into the barrels,” he said. “It’s not bourbon yet, but what we call ‘bourbon eligible,’ or white dog.”

  “Why is it called white dog? I guess the white comes from the clear color?”

  “Yes, and can you guess why the other word is dog?” Lila pursed her lips and puzzled a few moments, but soon shrugged and gave up. “Because of the sensation you get when you drink it: it bites,” he said, laughing.

  He kept explaining the process and added some of the history of the building, the oldest part of which was almost one hundred and seventy years old. Lila watched him as he gestured, talked, looked, explained, and she realized she was looking at a reflection of herself.

  Bo was showing her the thing he loved—the distillery, the process, the place. It was how she felt when she taught history. She loved to share her knowledge, to make kids understand and appreciate the past, and motivate them to learn and do more. It was how she felt when she showed people her springs.

  He explained the barrels (purchased from Commonwealth Cooperage in Littleham, about twenty-five miles away), the bung (the circular piece of poplar wood that was used to plug the filled barrel), and filled a barrel and plugged it himself to show her how it was done. The filling process involved a towering stainless steel tank with a nozzle; Bo confirmed that it worked along the same lines as a gas tank, and that the equipment had an automatic shutoff mechanism.

  “Although ther
e have been times it’s malfunctioned and product has gone spewing up out of the barrel and all over the place,” he said, gesturing to the floor, which looked mostly clean but bore some faint traces of the outlines of spills. Bo then moved the filled barrel onto the barrel run and they went outside again. “We’re one of only two distilleries that still uses a barrel run to move the barrel into a rickhouse,” he said as they watched the barrel move along the tracks, pulled by gravity away from the distillery. Lila’s eyes followed the narrow double track down which the filled barrels traveled, and she saw that the barrel’s destination was behind the building where Bo was taking her. Lila watched until the barrel rolled out of sight, and she hoped it enjoyed its trip; she knew that after today, it would remain motionless in one of the nearby rickhouses for years as the bourbon inside it aged.

  Opening a battered wooden door, Bo led her into a three-story old limestone rickhouse, stacked to the ceiling with barrels. Lit by several dim lights high above and a few stuck amidst the stacks, the wooden surfaces of the ricks, barrels, and floor cast a welcoming and comforting glow, and the wood-and-bourbon aroma inside was heavenly and welcoming. As Bo gave her a short history of the structure (the oldest rickhouse on the property and one of only two limestone rickhouses still in use in the Commonwealth), they walked through the rickhouse to the small bottling operation in a connected structure. Once there, Bo introduced her to the master distiller, Walker Cain, who was passing through on his way back to the distillery.

  “I don’t think you’d want to see every rickhouse we have,” Bo said, “but I’ll take you to each of them if you wish. I love them all, although the one we walked through happens to be my favorite.”

  “No need, but thanks,” she said, secretly amused that Bo had a favorite rickhouse. “I really need to get somewhere to warm up,” Lila said, and rubbed her arms. “It’s colder today than I thought it was going to be.”

  “I have the perfect thing to remedy that,” Bo said with a smile. He zipped up his parka and they headed back to the visitors’ center.

  Chapter 5

  They crossed the large empty lobby and Bo stopped in front of the door to the tasting room. He reached to open the door, but it was locked.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  “Tasting room?” Lila asked, reading the brass sign over the door and ignoring Bo’s frustration. “But it’s so early, and I really shouldn’t—”

  “It’s all part of the tour,” Bo insisted. “Everyone who comes through here gets the chance to taste Old Garnet.”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s not even ten o’clock,” Lila said, unlatching her barn coat and removing her blue hat, causing her hair to frizz up again.

  “What’s wrong? You need to be somewhere?”

  She looked at him with amusement because she realized that to him, tasting bourbon at that time in the morning didn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. And she saw that maybe she was the one with the out-of-place expectations. She was at a historic distillery in the middle of Kentucky and had just been taken on a personal tour by one of the owners. It would be odd not to have a tasting. In fact, Bo might be seriously insulted if she refused.

  “Never mind,” Lila said with a wave of her hand, and looked down at the ground. “Hey, what’s that?” She pointed to something behind Bo’s foot.

  It was a small key, and Bo bent and picked it up. “Could I be so lucky?” he asked himself, and slipped the key into the lock on the door.

  It clicked open and they gave each other a look of conspiratorial glee before entering the room.

  Bo waved Lila into the room first and closed the frosted glass door behind them. Her eyes widened in appreciation as she moved into the space, and she felt herself relax with every step. It was a large square area with a glass wall along the back, allowing abundant natural light to stream into the room and providing a great view of the creek and valley below. Even on that cloudy day, the light poured in, giving the space a nice ambiance. Edging the room was a wooden U-shaped table, flanked by matching wooden stools, and at each seat was a small strip of wood with two circular indentations. In the middle of the U was a barrel, topped with a number of small clear glasses and several bottles of Old Garnet. Underneath, the floor was the same honey-colored hardwood found in the lobby. It was an elegant room that effortlessly blended the clean lines and newness of the room with the idea of the aged mellowness of a bourbon.

  “Take a seat,” Bo encouraged and moved to the barrel in the middle of the room. “And take off your coat,” he suggested. “Get comfortable.”

  Lila was naturally drawn to the windows and walked to the far end of the room to take in the view, despite the gloominess of the weather. After shrugging out of her coat and putting it and her purse on an adjacent chair, she took a seat at the bottom of the U in the very middle. By that time, Bo had removed his parka, rolled up the sleeves of his blue chamois cloth shirt, and was examining the bottles.

  He poured a small line of bourbon into two glasses and brought them to Lila, placing each into the two small circles on the piece of wood.

  “Do you drink bourbon?” he asked.

  “Not much,” she admitted, and braced herself to see the disappointment in his face. Instead, she saw excitement.

  Bo launched into an explanation of how to taste bourbon.

  “Take a small sip, taste it with the tip of your tongue and then coat your tongue with it,” he explained. “Let the bourbon fall over the edges of your tongue and toward the back of your mouth, then swallow.”

  Lila looked at the glasses in front of her. “Which one should I sip first? Is there a difference between these two?” she asked, pointing from glass to glass.

  “No,” Bo said. “Two glasses of Old Garnet. That’s our only product. But we give samples in separate glasses in case people want to taste it straight and mixed, and also so people don’t drink it all at once. Want to avoid that.”

  “But couldn’t people just dump it all into one glass or drink both really fast?”

  Bo pulled a chair from the center of the room near the barrel-table and sat directly in front of her. “They could, but using two glasses does tend to cut down on that type of conduct. And most people who come here aren’t looking for a stiff drink. They’re looking for a different kind of experience.”

  “What kind of experience is that?” she asked, leaning onto the table and toward him.

  “It’s all of this,” Bo said, turning his head as he glanced about the room and through the windows behind her. “They want a slice of Kentucky, of tradition, of the Land of Bourbon and Bluegrass.”

  “And you are an excellent salesman for that, Bo. I gotta hand it to you there,” she said, nodding and thinking about the tour he’d just given her as her eyes followed his around the room.

  “But that’s not just what we’re selling. That’s what we are.”

  Bo wasn’t joking or boasting. He was deadly serious, and Lila noticed that he didn’t claim the mantle of his heritage simply for himself; he had used the word “we” when referring to the distillery, this corner of the world he called home.

  “OK,” he said, still looking directly into her eyes, “time to taste.”

  Lila sat up straight and fixed her eyes on the glasses as though she were about to begin some kind of test.

  “I don’t really think I want both of these, Bo,” she admitted, pointing to the glasses.

  He took the glass to her left. “Then I’ll use this one to teach you how to taste,” he said. “Go ahead and pick yours up, but don’t taste yet.” She picked up the remaining glass and waited. “First, gently swirl the bourbon in the glass and let the scent rise from it, then put your face over the glass and breathe in through the mouth and nose. Watch me.”

  Following his own instructions, Bo swirled the bourbon and then inhaled with eyes closed. He looked as though he were praying.

  Lila did as he did, except she did not close her eyes. When she inhaled, the pungent scent of alcohol and w
ood, along with something spicy and sugary she couldn’t define, wafted into her consciousness and stung her eyes. To her surprise, she liked the combination of sensations.

  “Now swirl it again a little, and watch how it swirls and trickles down the interior of the glass. Those are called the legs.” He again demonstrated, and then held his glass aloft to watch the movement of the liquid in the glass.

  “Bourbon has legs?” Lila said, following his movements. She wasn’t sure if she saw what Bo did when the bourbon moved in the glass.

  “It’s a term that refers to how the liquid looks and moves, an indication of the viscosity of the bourbon, how thin or thick it will feel in your mouth. You don’t really need to know much about that right now to enjoy it.”

  “Well after you’ve talked about it, I expect you to give me some more lessons on that someday,” Lila declared.

  “Spoken like a true schoolteacher,” he joked. “And if you want more tasting lessons, call me at any time.” Shifting in her seat, Lila felt herself blushing a little even though she hadn’t yet imbibed. “Now, sip, and remember how I told to be sure to coat your tongue.”

  Again mirroring Bo’s movements, she brought the glass to her lips, and, keeping her eyes locked with his, took a tiny sip.

  It stung just a little, and she moved the liquid in her mouth until it drenched her tongue. She saw the muscles in Bo’s face moving and knew he was doing the same. Then Lila tipped the liquid to the back of her mouth, held it briefly, and swallowed.

  It was wonderful.

  The taste was strong, but still sweet, woody, and creamy. Although all things bourbon abounded in Bourbon Springs, and one couldn’t easily avoid having a bourbon ball or a piece of cake or pie with bourbon as an ingredient, Lila had never sipped bourbon, even though a Bourbon Springs native. She had always consumed it with something else, like in a mixed drink or baked good. Lila realized as she sat there with Bo just how much she’d missed out on the pleasures of bourbon because the experience of sipping it straight was much more enjoyable than she’d imagined.