The Wu of Maker's Mark

For what shall it profit a man 

if he shall gain the whole world, 

 and lose his own soul? 

 ~ Mark 8:36

Never mind whiskey aficionados; tongues on even vodka lovers were wagging earlier this month over a rare public relations stumble in Kentucky. Rob Samuels, COO of Maker's Mark, announced that the alcoholic strength of the company's signature bourbon was to be lowered from 90 proof to 84 proof.

The company had announced, quite literally, that it was watering down the product.

The ensuing uproar was immediate, vocal, and sustained. On Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, indignant fans deplored the decision and excoriated the firm. Bartenders who prefer overproof spirits that can stand up to the dilution of mixers and ice in cocktails bemoaned the new direction. Users howled indignation and pundits prognosticated the future of the brand (opinions ranged from “I’ll never buy Maker's again” to “In a year, who will even remember?”). It became a national story. Up in Vermont, WhistlePig vowed to increase the proof of its rye whiskey. I stayed mostly mum on the topic. Regardless of what others recalled next February, I would remember who did this.

I was struck immediately by the resonance of Samuels' announcement with Philip K. Dick's 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle. The book depicts a world in which Germany and Japan emerge victorious in World War II. Between them, they conquer and divide a disgraced former United States. I must have been ten when I read it first, but Dick's depiction of wu — a slippery concept applied to handcrafted jewelry in the book, but applicable to whiskey here — has stayed with me for more than thirty years.

It wasn’t indignation over the decision to dilute the whiskey or even anger, really, I felt. Rather, it was sadness. Another layer on our ever-thickening patina of loss. True, Americans have experienced great gains in recent decades in fields such as medicine, technology, and publishing. But we have suffered a concomitant erosion of our greatness. Heroes once idolized have been exposed as flawed — sometimes deeply flawed — humans; OJ Simpson, Lance Armstrong, Joe Paterno, John F. Kennedy, Michael Vick. Endless obstructionist caviling among our politicians have led many to despair that we will ever be better off than our parents.

Our entertainment has grown recursive; witness the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Arthur, The Karate Kid, or Gus Van Sant's scene-by-scene reshoot of Pyscho, movies that did not need to be remade, that arguably should not have been remade, that do not leave the world a better place in their passing. Our homes, by and large, are not built as well as those of a hundred years ago. On it goes. NASA's space program: gutted. New Orleans: flooded and nearly lost to us. The lunacy of creationism taught as fact to defenseless children who will be unable to compete for jobs as adults because they simply will not understand how the natural world works as well as their grandparents did.

Into this morass steps Maker's Mark with another assault on our faith in the goodness of humanity. And why? Why reduce the proof of this iconic whiskey? Profit. Global thirst for American whiskey has grown steadily in recent years and supply has not consistently kept pace with demand. Maker's in particular has experienced shortages, despite a 2012 expansion that increased production capacity by some 45%. Watering the whiskey was seen as a way to increase almost instantaneously the available inventory by 6%.

Deplorable things happen. Every day. Drove my Chevy to the levee and all that. But it's not all odious Kardashians, pedophile priests, and watered down whiskey. Not even close. There are good things as well. Whether it's the residuum of my midwest upbringing or a Catholic education that drives me to be what the Jesuits dubbed a man for others, I choose to spend time making and pursuing things that make the world better. As the California designer Mike Monteiro writes in Design in a Job, "[Y]ou are responsible for what you put into the world...and you can only stand as proud of the work as its benefit to society entitles you to." Amen, brother. Whether it's websites or whiskey, we shoulder a moral responsibility for what we bring into the world.

For the past twenty years or so, there's usually been a bottle of Maker's knocking around the house, but when Samuels made his initial announcement, my thought simply was to abandon the label quietly. No point in making a fuss. I'd never tasted the lower-proof version and the erosion of quality is arguable. We were assured the taste was nearly identical. That was beside the point. For decades, Maker's has presented itself using the language of heritage, tradition, and craftsmanship, a brand — a family — hitched to the yoke of history. Through it all, that squat bottle with its red wax top remained unchanged. The trope of Maker's as custodian to an unbroken legacy of quality suffuses marketing materials, bottle design, and even the grounds of the distillery itself which in 1980 was declared a National Historic Landmark. Your haircut, your president, and your wife may change, but Maker's would always be Maker's.

Until the day it wasn't, the day we were told it was to be cheapened for the masses. And that brings us back to Dick's novel. In The Man in the High Castle, Robert Childan, a dealer in historic Americana — Colt revolvers, Buffalo Bill's head in a jar, Civil War recruitment posters and the like — has presented a piece of modern American jewelry to Paul Kasoura, a wealthy young Japanese civilian newly stationed in occupied San Francisco. Kasoura secretly laughs at Childan for presuming to present such a piece, but soon develops an unexpected attraction to it.

"Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort. It is merely amorphous. One might say, it is mere content, deprived of form.”

 He goes on.

“Yet,” Paul said, “I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?” He motioned Childan over. “It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis.”

“It does not have wabi,” Paul said, “nor could it ever. But—” He touched the pin with his nail. “Robert, this object has wu.”

Wu, Dick tells us though Kasoura, is a quality that allows us to experience a tranquility associated with holy things. It is not necessarily apparent, even to its maker who may recognize only that the object satisfies, that it is complete. By contemplating such things, we gain wu ourselves. Kasoura is profoundly moved by it. With subtle discomfort, he informs Childan that an associate wishes to replicate the piece in plastic or base metal — tens of thousands of units — for sale to the poor and superstitious in Latin America and Asia. The deal, he confirms, would be worth a great deal of money. “What about wu?” Childan asks. “Will that remain in the pieces?”

Kasoura is silent, but we know the answer. It will not.

Childan could take one of two paths. One could make him immensely wealthy. The other is less clear. He seizes the decision to meet the exporter. Then, in a moment of clarity, he realizes the trap.

Whole affair a cruel dismissal of American efforts, taking place before his eyes. Cynicism, but God forbid, he had swallowed hook, line and sinker. Got me to agree, step by step, led me along the garden path to this conclusion: products of American hands good for nothing but to be models for junky good-luck charms.

Which path does Childan take? Read the book.

Maker's Mark, however, made the honorable choice. Chairman emeritus Bill Samuels, Jr. joined Rob Samuels in a conference call to confirm that fans' protestations were heard loud and clear. Geoffrey Kleinman relates their conversation here at DrinkSpirits.com and confirms that, after just a few days of online furore, the whisky will return at 90 proof.

Well, I'll be damned. Turns out there's room on my shelf for Maker's after all. And if, from time to time, it's not available, that's ok.

Goes well with:

• Mike Monteiro's 2012 Design is a Job is ostensibly selling design for web designers, but it's a practical little manual for creative types of all stripes — and those of us who work with them.
• We also disdain watered down bacon. Maynard Davies aims to show how bacon was done the old way. 
• Don't know Dick? You may know more than you think. His stories have been made into movies such as Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly. Pick up a copy of The Man in the High Castle at your neighborhood bookstore or online here. 
• Got a thing for Dick? You may also enjoy these Charles Bukowski postal stamps. 
• David Toczko's 2012 book, The Ambassador of Bourbon: Maker's Mark and the Rebirth of America's Native Spirit, presents over 250 photos of the Maker's Mark distillery, including fermenting mash, barrels in the rickhouse, hand-dipping of the those red wax seals, and some archival material. Introduction by Bill Samuels, Jr. and foreword by Rob Samuels. Pick up a copy here. 

2013 American Artisan Spirits Judges Announced

Hubert Germain-Robin nosing brandy at Huber's Starlight Distillery

The American Distilling Institute has announced its panels of judges for the 7th annual judging of American artisan spirits next month. The lineup includes active and retired distillers, bartenders, authors, industry consultants, and a few journalist types such as yours truly who may (or may not) fit into one or more of the above categories.

The judges will analyze and critique hundreds of spirits over two days at Huber's Starlight Distillery where we'll break out into separate panels: one for brandy, one for rum, and one (or possibly more) for whiskey.

It is fun? Hell, yes. Is it all fun? No. The days start early and end late. No perfume, no cologne. No scented hand soap. No coffee (at least, not at the table and not if you don't want a big Rowley stinkeye). Though invariably some spirits are excellent and some are flawed, we remain stoic and sit almost entirely in silence. No grunts, no groans, and — as Gene Wilder's young Frankenstein would have it — no yummy sounds.

The judges are:

• Dennis Barnett - Third Wave Brands, Orange County, CA
• Ian Burrell - Rum Ambassador, London, UK
• Christian Butzke - Purdue University, Purdue. IN
• Martin Cate - Smuggler's Cove, San Francisco, CA
• Brendan Coyle - High West Distillery, Park City, UT
• Flavien Desoblin - The Brandy Library, New York, NY
• Hubert Germain-Robin - Master Distiller, CA
• Mark Gillespie - Whiskycast
• Tracy Howard - Imbibe Magazine, Portland, OR
• Monique Huston - Stoller Wholesale, Franklin Park, IL
• Aaron Knoll - The Gin is In, NY
• Guillaume Lamy - Cognac Ferrand, France
• David Pickerell - Oakview Consulting, former Master Distiller at Maker's Mark
• Brett Pontoni - Binny's Beverage Depot, Chicago, IL
• David Smith - Summer Fruit Cup, UK
• Matthew Rowley - Rowley's Whiskey Forge, San Diego, CA
• Peggy Noe Stevens - The Bourbon Women, KY
• Amanda Stewart - Purdue University, Purdue, IN
• Eric Watson - AllBevCon
• Brendan Wheatley - Belmont Farms Distillery, VA
• Richard Wolf - Wolf Consulting, KY

Will I tell you the results on my return to sunny Southern California? No, I will not. For that, you'll have to wait until they are announced at ADI's annual meeting in Denver (April 1-4, 2013). And then I'll pass it on.

Now, about that yummy sound...

The Woodcuts of Loren Kantor

When I first started carving woodcuts, 

every portrait 

oddly seemed to resemble 

Steve Buscemi.

~ Loren Kantor

Unlike sculpture, it's easy to pack a lot of works on paper — prints, posters, drawings, and like that — into very little space. And so I do. Of all these flat bits of art, I've been mesmerized by woodcuts since I was old enough to turn pages. Old anatomy diagrams, Albrecht Dürer's famous rhinoceros, early 20th century German prints, the Malleus Maleficarum (I was a precocious reader), Hatch Show Prints, and more. Even as a kid, before my parents deemed it wise to allow me access to woodcarving tools,  I learned to make simple prints with crudely carved potatoes and finger paint; flowers, animals, movie monsters, Latin and Cyrillic letters — whatever struck my meandering and occasionally morbid imagination. Alas, as I grew older, I turned to bending copper rather than carving wood.

But I never lost my fondess for those woodcuts. Lately, I've been taken with Loren Kantor's contemporary examples. Kantor lives in Los Angeles and the influence of cinema both old and new shows clearly in his work. His Absinthe is inspired by a 1913 silent film of the same name, an early bit of temperance propaganda.

Food, drink, and mania show up elsewhere in his prints; there's the ruined mug of Charles Bukowski, a bespectacled Colonel Harlan Sanders, the panic-struck face of Peter Lorre from Fritz Lang's 1931 classic M, and Gary Busey who, wild eyes notwithstanding, gets a sympathetic presentation.

Kantor presents these and more on his blog, Woodcuttingfool. Most seem to be about 5" x 7" — a good size for a desk or that blank spot on your office wall. Me? I'm trying to decide between Absinthe, Colonel Sanders, or the Richard Nixon print which uses an actual slogan from his 1972 reelection bid: “You Can't Lick Our Dick.”

Ahem.

Of course, if Halloween is as big a deal around your house as it is in ours, the Boris Karloff print may be just the thing for you.

Email him for pricing and shipping. Absinthe, for instance, is $35 and will ship for $3 in the United States. Loren Kantor: lorenwoodcuts (at) gmail (dot) com

Goes well with:

• Mikey Wild (1955-2011), a nod to Philadelphia institution Michael "Mikey Wild" DeLuca whose art, while very different, I hold onto with great affection. 

The Coming of Red Likker to Kentucky

In 1929, as the failures of Prohibition had become manifest even to the most ardently braying temperance hounds, the prolific American author and inveterate blowhard Irvin S. Cobb published Red Likker, his love letter to bourbon and Southern honor. It is not a particularly rare book. It is not a particularly good book. But I've hung onto my first edition for decades because it deals with whiskey — a topic dear to my heart —and for Cobb's brazen manhandling of the English language, which is at turns entertaining and appalling. He does not present the South so much as a caricature of the South.

The novel concerns the fictional Bird family of Kentucky and in particular Colonel Attila Bird who distilled a great deal of the red likker in question and who lived long enough to see Prohibition descend on America. In my mind, his voice hovers somewhere between that of the 1940's Senator Beauregard  Claghorn and that of Mel Blanc's diminutive Kentucky colonel from Dog Gone South. In other words, he's a joke, son. Or at least comical, though Cobb, a Kentuckian. no doubt intended to impart almost heroic qualities.

In an early section, Cobb describes an exchange from the 1790's between brothers Isham and Shadwell Bird. Before then, the whiskey with which the brothers Bird were familiar was white, none of this fancy barrel-aged stuff we take for granted more than two centuries on.

In his hand Isham held what Shadwell had bade him seek for in the saddle-bag. It was a wickered case-bottle, stoppered with a corn-cob.
 
"Tried it yet?" said Shadwell, his voice thickened,
 
"Not yet."

"Well, you'd best not lose any more time then. It's prime. Man, I tell you it's just prime! Primest ever I swallowed anywheres or any place."
 
"What is it ?"
 
"Likker. What else would it be but likker?"

"But it's red!" Isham was holding the flask up to the west and through the meshes in the plaiting the glass, by reason of its contents, showed him a deep russety-amber shade. That was puzzling.

"Shore, it's red. That's the joke about it. Red as stinkabus rum, e'en near it, yet powerful well-flavored. Take a swig and then tell me if it ain't about the potentest likker ever you put lip to."

Goes well with:

• The Maine Julep  Cobb's unrelenting style in on show here as he excoriates a Maine bartender — “a criminal masquerading as a barkeeper” — who dared serve a julep that was not up to his Kentucky standards.
• Red Likker is not a terrible book; it was just a product of its time, written by an author with a distinct brash voice, and has not aged well. If you'd like a copy, even first editions can be picked up online for less than $10. Jerry Thomas he is not.
• Even the Ten Dollar Whore Sneered at Me, a look at how far white whiskeys have come in a few short years. 

Oh, Belvedere! My First Memory of a Mint Julep

My ancestors never saw a mint julep, 

but they sipped five-day-old likker 

 out of ceramic jugs and Bell jars 

until they could not remember 

their Christian names.

~ Rick Bragg 

All Over But The Shoutin' 

My hometown of Kansas City, Missouri is, a generous drinks geographer might allow, on the outer periphery of mint julep territory. While juleps were not regular offerings, they did show up from time to time. Consequently, I acquired at an early age a fondness for these refreshing concoctions of whiskey and ice; certainly by the time I was working on undergraduate degrees, making one had become second nature.

Charlie Dog enjoys a julep

A recent viewing of the 1950 Warner Brothers cartoon Dog Gone South made me realize that my exposure to them came at a younger age than I first suspected. I must have seen it when I was five or six years old. The cartoon concerns the obnoxious Charlie Dog and his efforts to endear himself to a diminutive Confederate colonel. The colonel, alas, already has a dog, a certain Belvedere.

Charlie's minty repast on the veranda is short-lived. But the silver cup he commandeers from the colonel seemingly instilled in me a life-long appreciation for juleps. I'm beginning to understand why I like bulldogs, too...




Goes well with:

• The Barkeeper’s Favorite Weapon, just the thing to smack ice into submission for a julep.
• That's MY Hammer A bit about my father — a Kentucky Colonel — and the ice maul he made me for my juleps.

Bourbon Women to Gather at Maker's Mark

I once teased Hollis Bulleit, asking her what sort of woman drinks bourbon. “Sassy broads,” she informed me, “drink bourbon.”

I've found that generally to be true. I do like the company of sassy broads, especially with Hollis in tow. Vodka drinkers fade into the background, but  a woman who orders bourbon right out of the gate has my immediate attention.

Clusters of such bourbon-drinking women sometimes gather to guzzle, sip, or otherwise imbibe that "true and uncontaminated fruitage of the perfect corn" as Irvin S. Cobb put it. What's not to like?

Victoria MacRae-Samuels

Next Thursday, July 12th, Bourbon Women will convene at Maker's Mark distillery for a behind the scenes look at the distillery (which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark) led by Victoria MacRae-Samuels — "the only female Vice President of Operations in the bourbon industry."

That last bit seems more of a strange marketing angle (I wonder if the ranks of America's nearly 400 craft distilleries were polled for the stat), but if I qualified for membership and were in Kentucky, I know where I'd be next Thursday.

Details for the four-hour tour are on Bourbon Women's site.

Goes well with:

• A look at Gerald Carson's 1963 classic, The Social History of Bourbon.
• Senator Tydings and the Kentucky Breakfast, in which Maryland senator Millard Tydings holds forth on how to make a proper Kentucky breakfast, bourbon included.

A Little NPR Story about "Moonshine" Made in a Square Pot Still

As I was scrambling to get out of town to visit a passel of California distillers last week, Shelly Baskin rang to talk about that most indomitable of American spirits: moonshine.

Mr. Baskin was working on a story for National Public Radio about a Kentucky distiller trying to haul a bit of Kentucky's liquid history into the 21st century. Spencer Balentine makes his spirits in a custom-built square pot still. That's noteworthy because commercial stills are usually almost always round in cross-section. The still's square shape isn't unique exactly, but it is an old design that was idiosyncratic in its day and downright odd today.

Baskin writes of Balentine:

He cooks his whiskey with practice and care, following the recipe from his great grandfather to create the best batch of moonshine possible. He says, “From day one I’ve tried to recreate at least the taste, and the smell. And by doing it on the historic still I think this is close as you’ll get to experiencing that, you know, that 1958 moonshine.”

I just left Kentucky a few weeks ago. Clearly, I missed the chance to see an intriguing bit of distillation technology.

For the full story, see Moonshine is Alive and Well in Marshall County. Click on the "listen" button at the top of the article and you'll hear my croaky voice tripping over the inelegant line  “…the moment that moonshine becomes legal, it stops to exist.”

Stops to exist? Oh, aphasia. You make me sound so smart. Ceases. It ceases to exist.

Judging Artisan Spirits, 2012

I'm off to Kentucky next week for the annual judging of American craft spirits. I'll be joined in Louisville by some cocktail types, including San Francisco barman H. Joseph Ehrmann of Elixir, Audrey Saunders of  Pegu Club fame, and Flavien Desoblin of New York's Brandy Library. There will be distillers on board as well, rum specialists, and booze hounds (and I mean that in the most respectful manner) aplenty. Thirteen judges in all.

Under the imprimatur of the American Distilling Institute, three panels of judges will evaluate 244 spirits from nearly 100 distilleries over the course of two days. That breaks out as:

• 45 rums
• 60 brandies
• 139 whiskeys

Gins, absinthes, and other spirits rotate through during other years (I'll do my best to advocate for a bitter/amari category now that so many American examples are coming onto the market). I won't know until I arrive, but I suspect I'll be on the whiskey panel which will tackle not just craft bourbons, but malt, wheat, rye, corn, and clear whiskeys as well as a catch-all "other" category. The rum judges will nose, swirl, and spit in six categories while the brandies are broken into five groups; grappa, brandy from grapes, non-grape aged brandies, non-grape unaged brandies, and fruit infusions.

No, no, no. It will be nothing like this.

Even if I am with the whiskey group, I'll be getting into the brandies as, ahem, "research" for my upcoming Tales of the Cocktail session on American non-grape brandies with Paul Clark and Bobby Heugel.

Results of the ADI judging will be announced at the annual ADI conference this coming April 1-4 in Louisville.