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| Willett Distillery |
Folks from Kentucky are proud of their Kentucky Bourbon
Whiskey, and understandably so, many, many barrels of whiskey are distilled between Louisville and Bardstown (the
Bourbon Capital of the World).
They say
the water filtered through limestone here has a sweet quality that give
their bourbon its wonderful flavor.
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| Grain Combinations and Their Mashes |
To find out more about how bourbon is distilled we visited
the
Willett Distillery in
Bardstown.
You might not have heard of
Willett, it is a craft operation that produces a few bourbons and rye whiskeys
that aren’t sold in too many places outside of Kentucky.
As one returning visitor on our tour said “You
need to buy it here, you won’t find it when you get home.”
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| Fermentation Tank |
The whiskey starts from grain.
To be bourbon it must be at least 51% corn.
The other 49% or less could be wheat, rye or
other grains.
The grain combinations are
hammered into a powdery mash that is mixed with water.
In Willett’s case, the water comes from a
spring fed, limestone lined lake on their property.
Yeast is added to this mash which is then
pumped into large tanks where it ferments and bubbles.
These tanks are emptied into a larger mixing
tank and then goes through filtering screens to the still itself.
Willett’s still is copper and as pretty as a
work of art.
The alcohol that comes out
of the still is clear in color.
It is
pumped into oak barrels that are charred on the inside.
The barrels are rolled into a 5-story
galvanized steel building called a rick-house and put on racks where the whiskey inside ages and
takes on its brown color.
From there it
is bottled and labeled and sold.
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| Tasting the Fermenting Mash |
We loved the Willett Distillery tour.
We saw all the steps up to bottling, and
could touch and smell and learn as we went.
Afterwards we went ¼ mile down the road to the
Heaven Hill Distillery, home of the
Bourbon Heritage Center.
Heaven Hill produces many widely known brands of bourbon.
In fact, Wikipedia calls it the second
largest holder of bourbon whiskey in the world.
We opted not to go on their tour, but spent time in their very glossy
and commercially produced exhibit on the history of bourbon.
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| Look at that Fermenting Mash Bubble |
To encourage settlement of the wilderness area of then
Virginia, the Virginia legislature enacted the “corn patch and cabin rights”
policy. Anyone who could build a cabin
and harvest a corn crop by January 1, 1778 could get 400 acres of Kentucky
land. Corn grew well here, and sometimes
there was corn left over that the settlers could not eat or sell. So rather than waste it, they fermented and distilled
it. As time progressed, this whiskey
became the currency of exchange in this wilderness area and was shipped around
the world.
So why is it called Bourbon?
The part of Kentucky where the whiskey is made was once part of Bourbon
County Virginia.
Even after new counties
were created, people continued to refer to the region as Old Bourbon.
The whiskey produced there took on that name
as well.
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| Mixing Batches |
We love learning how things are made and going on factory
tours.
The Willett Distillery was small
and very, very clean.
It is housed in a
lovely building.
After the tour you get
to taste 2 of their bourbons and then (of course) buy some and buy other
souvenirs as well.
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| Such a Pretty Still |
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| Filling Oak Barrels |
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| Rolling the Barrels to the Rickhouse |
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| Inside the Rickhouse |
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| Tasting the Finished Product |
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