1 of 6
Photo by Theresa Stanley
Blue Dog 5
2 of 6
Cover photo by Bill Straus
Business Lexington cover 3.17
3 of 6
Photo by Theresa Stanley
Blue Dog 1
4 of 6
Photo by Theresa Stanley
Wilsons 1
5 of 6
Photo by Theresa Stanley
Wilsons 4
6 of 6
Photo by Theresa Stanley
Wilsons 2
With more than 1,500 craft distilleries now operating in the United States, the spirits aisle of the liquor store is an increasingly competitive marketplace. An emerging trend for differentiating a distillery’s products is by using rare or heirloom grains or botanicals or by producing “estate” spirits, where all of the agricultural products are grown at a single site.
These “local” and “heritage” concepts are drawn directly from consumer trends in food agriculture and distillers are hoping they will transition equally to spirits.
The Big Boys of Bourbon
Large-scale distilleries have the means to produce heirloom grain and estate products almost at will.
Drawing inspiration from the type of grain used at the distillery site when it was founded, Woodford Reserve released a limited-edition “1838 Style White Corn” bourbon in 2015. With the global reach of Brown-Forman, sourcing what was, for it, a comparatively small amount of white corn wasn’t a challenge.
Nearby in Franklin County, Buffalo Trace purchased 282 acres adjacent to its distillery for both building additional barrel maturation warehouses and to raise grains. In 2015 as part of a “Single Estate” bourbon project, the company harvested Boone County White. This corn strain dates to 1876 which is around the time bourbon legend Col. E.H. Taylor Jr. was heavily involved in the distillery site. Last year the distillery harvested Japonica Striped Corn, an 1890s purple kernel strain. No date has been set for the release of spirits made from those estate grains.
Crafting Partnerships
For smaller distilleries buying swaths of farmland is impossible and sourcing specific grains presents its own challenge. The solution has been to partner with smaller, flexible farmers interested in producing specialty agriculture.
Photo by Theresa Stanley
Blue Dog 12
Andrew Buchanan, owner of Hartfield & Co. Distillery in Paris, is working on a Bourbon County estate bourbon.
“We want to be able to put out a product that literally comes from Bourbon County,” Buchanan says. “To be able to source the corn and rye and barley from here — even wheat — that’s the ultimate goal.”Buchanan found support from John Ballengee. A lifetime farmer and retired chemist, Ballengee found inspiration in the challenge.
“I’m doing it more out of passion,” Ballengee says.
Ballengee is starting with the barley because it’s a difficult crop to grow in Kentucky. He already has spent two years working on the yield for just that one grain but thinks he’ll have a crop to send to the distillery this year and heirloom grains might come in future years.
Blue Corn in the Bluegrass
Sam Rock, one of the owners of Bluegrass Distillers, found a similar partnership with Brennan Gilkison of Gilkison Farm. Rather than estate grains, Rock needed a source for a specialty corn.
What Rock describes as initially a lark, Bluegrass Distillers had made a short run of blue corn distillate as a UK intern project. Dubbed “Blue Dog,” the spirit sold surprisingly well, but the challenge of turning it into a regular product lay in finding a blue corn supplier.
A fortuitous encounter with Gilkison at a Christmas party led to the partnership. Gilkison’s farm has the flexibility to source the specialty blue corn seed kernels, grow the grain and — most important — provide milling, bagging and delivery to the distillery. Unlike the major distilleries, Bluegrass Distillers doesn’t have the ability to unload grain trucks or mill the corn in-house.
With a steady supply of blue corn, Bluegrass Distillers has the Blue Dog now as a permanent product and has filled barrels with the distillate to produce a blue corn bourbon.
Old Hickory King Corn
Marianne Barnes, Master Distiller of Castle & Key Distillery, also needed a specialty corn. Barnes’s mid-size distillery operation is located at the site of the old Col. E.H. Taylor Jr. distillery in Franklin County just down the road from the Buffalo Trace Distillery. She doesn’t need the milling service but is committed to producing heirloom, historic and local grain-based bourbon.
“The historic bourbon produced here was made using white corn,” Barnes says. “Col. Taylor was very vocal about using white corn, and we had some of his historic whiskey analyzed and confirmed it.”
To keep with history, Barnes is currently using a modern non-GMO white corn. In her quest for greater authenticity and flavor, she sought to use an 1800s heirloom Hickory King white corn but needed a partner farm to produce it.
Through another Kentucky distillery, Barnes discovered Walnut Grove Farms, owned by the Halcomb family, and drove the three hours to the Tennessee border to check it out. After seeing the farm’s experimental wheat fields and realizing the farm had the capacity to produce custom crops including corn and talking deep agricultural science with the Halcombs, Barnes was won over. The partnership was a good match for the Halcombs, too, because they have been exploring changing from commodity farming to specialty agriculture.
“We’re interested in how a single family farm can connect with brewers and distillers and meet their needs,” says Sam Halcomb.
Currently, Walnut Grove Farms is supplying some of the rye and all of the barley for Castle & Key with long-term goals of supplying enough grain to fulfill the distillery’s total need including switching the distillery entirely to the Hickory King white corn.
Beyond Bourbon
In addition to bourbon, Barnes is making gin using botanicals from even closer to home — they’re grown right on site. Working with master gardener Jon Carloftis, Barnes has selected botanicals such as pineapple sage and honeysuckle, which grow naturally in the Kentucky climate but provide complex flavors.
Carloftis introduced Barnes to Wilson Nurseries in Frankfort, where the botanicals are purchased for planting at the distillery grounds. Wilsons Nurseries also provides hothouse services allowing the botanicals to be grown over the winter at their location.
Bourbon Water
Another Central Kentucky distillery, Barrel House Distilling Co. in Lexington, also uses Kentucky-grown white corn. They source their corn from Weisenberger Mill in Woodford County — it’s the exact same corn available on the grocery store shelves as grits but is ground to distillery specification.
Barrel House Distilling Co. also uses mineral-rich Kentucky aquifer water from Rockcastle County to cut its bourbon to proof before pouring it into the barrel for maturation.
“We tried six different spring waters,” says Jeff Wiseman, one of the owners. “If I hadn’t done it, I would have thought it was bunch of bull. It’s amazing — just the way it meshes with the corn. It’s not that any other water was bad, it’s just that that specific water meshed with our mash bill perfect.”
Ultimately, they named their bourbon RockCastle after the water.
Waiting Games
Bourbon is a slow business, and it will be years before most of the specialty, heirloom and estate products being developed now will be available to consumers.
While these bourbons will have a strong differentiating factor and can hopefully command a higher price, they require a greater investment versus using commodity grains. All of the distillers — especially the craft distillers whose investment is a much greater percent of their business — are hoping that the current consumer trends will hold and the gamble of producing these unique products will pay off in the long run.
Photo by Theresa Stanley