Original subtitles

CHRIS MORRIS: I was at a whiskey festival in Edinburgh, Scotland,

and a little lady walked up to me

and said, "This is Scot, I am so proud

of the Scotch whiskey industry, it's heritage and what it's meant

to our country.

Why aren't you Americans as proud of your bourbon?"

I can only tell her, "Ma'am, that's a long, long story."

FRED NOE: The state of Kentucky, the vast majority of it is dry.

And that always amazes people when I'm out around the world

when I tell 'em 95% of the world's bourbon is made in Kentucky,

and in 75% of the state, it's illegal to have a drink of whiskey.

♪ Come down off of that mountain

♪ Come down all you men ♪

MATTHEW LANDAN: Bourbon is the quintessential

defining aspect of Kentucky culture.

It is at every Kentucky event, whether it's the Kentucky Derby,

or it's at a get-together watching March Madness,

it's always present.

There's a long, long culture and history that kind of wraps itself around Bourbon

and Kentucky.

I think, in general, westward expansion, most of our sort of beautiful literature, art,

some of our famous cities.

All owe them maybe a small part, or in sometimes a large part.

It's the Kentucky bourbon.

You're drinking history when you drink bourbon.

Bourbon is as part of the Kentucky character as anything I can think of.

JIM RUTLEDGE: People recognize, that know Kentucky,

"Oh, you're from Kentucky, Kentucky bourbon."

It's not Thoroughbred horses, it's Kentucky bourbon that's putting Kentucky

on the map globally.

We took whiskey,

evolved it from the Celtic style,

the Scotch-Irish style

and evolved it into, what is today, the last style of whiskey

to emerge from the culture and that is bourbon whiskey.

The impact that the bourbon industry has had on Kentucky has been...

I don't even think you could measure it.

The state textbooks will talk about slavery,

talk about tobacco, coal, will cover the history of the Commonwealth.

But they don't mention bourbon.

Like we don't exist.

The thing is bourbon is part of what Kentucky's all about.

MICHAEL VEACH: You know, the first Constitutional crisis

was the whiskey rebellion, prohibition was another huge, important part of

American history.

ERIC GREGORY: There's something about bourbon and whiskey that brings tales of

the Wild West, the frontier or the pioneer,

the pioneer settler, like we had here in Kentucky.

And it's just very authentic, and I think that's what some of the mystique is about it,

'cause it has such a rich history and heritage.

Probably happened about 200 years ago,

Kentucky was known for the water, the limestone water in this region.

BILL SAMUELS: There's only one limestone shelf in the country.

And it's right in the middle of Kentucky.

JIMMY RUSSELL: You got to have that hot summer months

where that bourbon can go out in that wood and age.

Then, the winter times, you got to cold-water extract,

that barrel's got to breathe, it's got to move in and out of that barrel.

If it went in the barrel and stayed, it would never age.

Or if it never went into the barrel, it'll never age,

it'll be just like moonshine.

If you go too far north, south, east or west,

or even go out of the state of Kentucky,

you really start changing how your whiskey starts aging.

When bourbon first started out, it started out as just as a whiskey,

and to convert the excess corn into something that wouldn't spoil

and that you could sell for hard currency.

RICK BELL: To get cash, you had to render your excess grain, your excess corn

into a product. It started out as a side product.

It wasn't why they were raising their corn,

they could just raise so much corn here,

that they could not... The surplus was so great,

you couldn't afford to transport it back to where

the population centers were, which was in the East Coast,

and it served as a substitute for cash.

We didn't have national banks, we didn't have standardized currency,

it was more a trade-based world.

RUTLEDGE: The first tax that was ever levied in the new country

was on distilled spirits the farmers who were making, and a lot of them rebelled.

The rebellion didn't last long and after the rebellion,

many of them moved to the western frontier,

which was Kentucky or Tennessee, or Indiana.

CHUCK COWDERY: The people who settled in Kentucky were distillers,

they came here to plant grain, they found that the grain that grew the best was corn.

So they were immediately distilling from corn

which was not unheard of, but not that common.

The Scotch/Irish came here because Patrick Henry,

Governor of Virginia... First Governor of Virginia,

was giving away free land.

And he just happened to set court houses up inside the lime stone shelf,

two of the three of them.

So the people settled around the court houses because that was easy,

and lo and behold, what they found was they were making

better whiskey here in Kentucky using corn

than they were with rye back in Pennsylvania.

Sometimes, when their other crops weren't unable to sell,

or they had excess corn or whatever the situation might've been,

producing Bourbon, or spirits, might have been a lifesaver for those folks.

Historians say certainly in the very first year,

the settlement of Harrisburg, whiskey was being produced because it was vital

to society, it was medicine, it was exchange, it was keeping grain from spoiling,

it was just part of life.

VEACH: As people expanded west,

they brought with them everything they needed.

And this included stills.

MAN: The still was one of the most tangible pieces of real estate

these families owned, it was the something that the first son would inherit.

You see that in deeds and you see it in wills.

But if you grow corn, especially in a frontier environment,

you're limited to the number of things you can do with it.

And distilling it was one of them,

and distilling it was good, because it preserved it and so and so forth.

Even though corn's harder to work with than these other grains,

took a lot of perseverance to distill from corn.

You know, the frontier life was a very harsh one.

It was working from sunup to sundown.

Clearing fields, planting fields, harvesting fields,

taking care of livestock, slaughtering livestock,

building fence rows.

Whatever it took, you work from sunup to sundown.

And when you got up in the morning, you were still sore from the previous day.

So what would you do? You would start with a little shot of whiskey

to help ease the aches and pains.

LUBBERS: Let's not forget that George Washington

was one of our country's first distillers,

and one of the reasons he became a distiller

wasn't because he was passionate about making whisky,

but as an ex-general, as an ex-president,

when he retired and went back to Mount Vernon,

he knew that every soldier in the Calvary got a daily ration of whiskey.

And he saw another income stream,

so he hires a Scotsman by the name of James Anderson,

who makes his whiskey for him, but he has those contracts and he sells it.

Dams and bridges and canals that are built

all feel the same way, you attract people through whiskey

and say, "This is an incentive for you to come here."

Social gatherings were the thing.

And you would gather at your local tavern,

or you would gather at a barn raving

or a cabin raving or a wedding or a funeral

and someone would bring a jug.

But the whiskey that started being traded

and it was shipped on rafts, generally

in the spring of the year when spring rains,

and creaks would rise, and they'd be able to float it to the rafts

down to the Ohio River.

Down the Ohio river, down to the Mississippi to New Orleans.

New Orleans is a French colony.

What are they drinking? They're drinking French brandy.

What makes French Brandy different from our American whiskey?

It's been aged in charred barrels,

has been since the 1400s.

Let's age our whiskey in charred barrels to make it taste

more like French Brandy,

and when they did, people started buying it.

In some ways, that's the most unusual thing about Bourbon, about American whiskey.

It's the only type of distilled spirit in the world

that must be aged only in new barrels.

Two Frenchmen, come from the Armagnac region of France,

came to the United States, in order to set up trade with New Orleans.

They built a mill and a warehouse

at the falls of the Ohio.

They had an ample opportunity to buy whiskey cheap, as people would unload

their flatboats into the Terrascan brothers' warehouse

and wait for the river to rise,

and I think they were the ones that actually started putting it into charred barrels,

and letting it age, and then sending it down to New Orleans.

Which, the trip to New Orleans itself, would aid the aging process

as the whisky would slosh through the barrel increasing the interaction between the oak.

RUTLEDGE: That was made in Bourbon County, Kentucky,

but it was a good corn whiskey, people began to ask for this

and the barrels that were going down there had a big "B" on it for Bourbon County.

The legend has it, it's named Bourbon because of flat boats bringing this whiskey down

from Maysville, it had invoices of Bourbon County.

Now the problem with that is that there was very little legal trade,

and you don't invoice your illegal trade.

There is also the fact that the first mention of bourbon was not till 1821.

Now by the 1820s, you start having steamboats making the trip

between Pittsburgh and New Orleans.

You have the steamboats making the trip, instead of becoming a 9-month or year-long trip

to New Orleans and back.

It's a 3-month trip.

Now, you're on that steamboat and you're returning home.

You go up to the bartender

and say, "I really like that whisky I was drinking in New Orleans,

give me some of that whiskey I got was drinking off of Bourbon Street.

Give me some of that Bourbon Street whiskey or eventually, Bourbon whiskey."

The bartenders on these steamboats are going to start to make sure they have it,

and as the steamboats ply up and down the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri rivers,

they're spreading the word of bourbon.

Going down the Ohio river by flatboat,

or even getting to the Ohio river,

you would take your flatboat and you would put it in the Kentucky river

or the Salt River and the Big Sandy River, or whatever,

and float it down to the Ohio river.

Then float down the Ohio river, to the Mississippi, and on down to New Orleans.

This is a long and dangerous trip.

You had Native Americans in the 1770s and '80s and '90s

on both sides of the river who were willing to remove

your goods and your scalp.

'Cause your scalp was worth a lot of money to the British up in Detroit.

But once you got down there,

you sold your goods.

And you sold your flat boat, because you weren't going to try to row that flat boat

back up the Ohio, Mississippi rivers.

You had two choices, you can catch ship in New Orleans

or you could walk back up the Natchez Trace.

And when I say walk, yes, you could ride a horse.

As a matter of fact, legend has it, that's where the horse industry in Kentucky comes from,

is that once they made these trips, if they were going to come back up

the Natchez Trace, they would buy the fastest horse they could get,

because once again, it was a very dangerous trip, because you had Native Americans

and bandits willing to separate you from your cash and your scalp.

So if you had a faster horse than anyone else, you had a better chance of getting away.

Bourbon spread on the rivers, I don't think there's any question.

It didn't go upstream so much until later.

The steamboats is responsible for spreading the bourbon culture as anything.

This product got to be popular and all of a sudden you could start sending it up

to Saint Louis or sending it up to Minneapolis,

or sending it down to New Orleans.

Without steamboats taking our product in the 1800s down the high river

to the ports in New Orleans along the way,

we would not have the bourbon increases that we did.

The river made Louisville a town.

Steamboat made Louisville a city.

And it was the steamboat era and steamboat technology

that revolutionized America, and went into trains and went into inner urbans.

VEACH: So it was the early highway system.

When you did trade, it was much easier to float things down these rivers

than it was to try and haul it back over the mountains.

I think a lot of the farmers started adopting the lessons of technology.

WES HENDERSON: The early guys were limited a lot

by the technology that was available to them.

You start to see some progression towards innovation in terms of

flavors and taste profiles, I don't mean flavorings.

I mean flavors...

And taste profiles of bourbon, and trying to do things

a little different there.

It's not the chemist that come up with it, but it's the guys who just want

to try out something a little different.

Try a different grain, try something different,

try to age it a little differently,

try it on the top.

I think that that sense of innovation has marked that industry very, very well.

During the Civil War, the armies sought out whiskey as medicine

as they went from distillery to distillery.

The Union Army came through Kentucky on their way to fight major battles,

fell in love with the liquid and after the war was over,

they decided they needed some more, and they placed orders to buy some.

They were incredibly popular pharmaceutical drugs

and some were patent medicines and some were straight.

But what we forget is that the civil war produced something like 400,000 morphine addicts.

Because they used morphine as the only painkiller,

but the only other painkiller was whiskey.

You had this post-Civil War era America and as those folks aged and went away,

the acceptance of alcohol as a benefit to your health...

There was a reason why we say, "To your health," when we give a toast.

It is seen as a healthy thing and was certainly seen in those days as a cure.

VEACH: Every war that the United States has fought, with one exception,

has been paid for by a whiskey tax.

You know, the Whiskey Rebellion tax was created to pay for

the Revolutionary War debts.

When we went to war with Britain again in 1812.

In 1814, they brought back the whiskey tax in order to pay for it.

It was eliminated after 1817, it comes back in 1861 to pay for the Civil War.

Anytime you get a big demand for whiskey and it becomes more expensive because of taxes,

you see these big companies that want to make it cheaper.

And back then, they were just making what we would call everclear or vodka today,

and adding prune juice, cherry juice, tobacco juice,

iodine for color and slappin' the word whiskey on it.

I mean, it was terrible, some of this stuff had no age on it at all,

it was just nutrigrain alcohol with shoe polish in it,

and maybe a little sorghum, or a little bit of honey to give it flavor.

Well, that didn't sit well with some of the distillers in Kentucky,

so they got together, they passed the Bottled-In-Bond Act of 1897.

It was really the first legislation in this country that guaranteed

the quality of a product and set standards for a product.

It's very, very specific.

Not only does it have to be a minimum of four years old,

it has to be exactly 100 proof in the bottle.

You have to list the distillery it comes from, and it can only come

from one distillery.

It must be from one season, so it's like a vintage, if you will.

They started putting the ingredients right on their label, by law,

and it said 50% alcohol, 100 proof.

So the first Consumer Protection legislation in the history of the United States

doesn't have to do with the safe labeling of our food,

as the Pure Food and Drug Act, nine years later in 1906.

It was about whiskey.

Bourbon is responsible for the Pure Food and Drug Act,

and bourbon is responsible for trademark and trade name development.

In fact, the brand name comes from...

As Federal law, that required the heads of barrels to be stamped or burned

with the brand name.

When they started putting whiskey in bottles,

when they started selling it by the bottles rather than just barrels of whiskey,

that really gave a reason to put the producer's name on it.

What was so interesting then, the Federal government was directly involved.

They had the regaugers. Every time you knocked the button out of a barrel,

there was a guy from the Alcohol-Tobacco tax,

and they were there to make sure that none of the employees were taking it,

and that what came out of the barrel went into the bottling process.

American whiskeys are by far the most restricted whiskeys in the world.

You have Scotch, Irish, Canadian, they have restrictions,

but nothing's restricted like American whiskey.

And then you have Bottled-in-Bond

which is the most restricted of the most restricted

whiskeys in the world.

I think the major players in bourbon history,

like Col. W. H. Taylor, Jr. welcomed taxes...

Right.

and welcomed regulations, so that he could set his bourbon apart

from the rectifiers.

So they finally had to say, this is what bourbon is.

And that's when they defined it to be 51% corn.

It has to be distilled no higher than 160 proof, it can't be put in the barrel

any higher than 120.

This had a huge effect on the straight whisky industry up to prohibition.

Prohibition is a peculiarly American experience,

and they did refer to it then and still do as the noble experiment.

American was undergoing a huge,

cultural change

at the end of the 19th century

into the early 20th century.

Population centers were moving from rural America to urban America.

And the people who- The abolitionists,

and woman's suffrage movement and the prohibition movement were all the same movement.

It was all the same people

and just started advocating for each thing in turn.

What changed and really brought about this was when they shift the emphasis

from drinking alcohol to the saloon.

From the 19th century, to the Industrial Revolution, when people

were going into factories,

and right outside every factory was a street full of saloons,

where they would all go on lunch hour and all of those saloons gave free lunches.

They would have a buffet, and sometimes, very good,

and the food was all free,

but you had to pay for the liquor.

Now the belief at the time, which to some extent was true, was that the typical laborer

or the typical working man would basically drink and gamble all of his earnings

and nothing ever got home to the family.

This lead to a lot of backlash against the saloon.

The Anti-Saloon League was saying

saloons were dens of evil where not only drinking

but gambling and prostitution were going on.

But the real reason for not liking the saloons was more political

than anything.

You had these images coming out of the cities of corrupt Irish saloons,

that are running political machines.

And German beer gardens on Sunday afternoons, where people got out and drank beer,

they weren't home praying,

they were playing music and singing, having fun on a Sunday afternoon.

There was a prohibition party, a political party.

And for 70 years, they were the third largest political party

in America.

The moment just keep growing and growing and it became politically,

especially in rural communities, it became politically smart to identify yourself

with the prohibition party.

They began to take over a lot of states,

and most of the South, before prohibition,

most of the southern states were already dry.

Prohibition was voted in in Maine, in the 1840s,

and then back out and then back in,

and it would go into different states and it may last ten years and go out.

When the bill came up to vote, it was nowhere near close. It was 171 to 34

in favor of prohibition.

Kentucky was the third state to ratify the amendment.

We were already- 105 of 120 counties were already dry.

Prohibition passes in a record quick amount of time and the nation goes dry.

The city lost over 8,000 jobs, the next day in the newspaper,

there were 25 distilleries closed.

It was roughly 2,000 folks. There was 1,000 people worked in the cooperages.

They lost their work, they lost about a dozen breweries.

Prohibition really hurt the industry, because you had basically

15 years where there was not any production.

But then, like local advertising agencies,

people who printed the labels,

all of those jobs you don't associate...

Along with half the crews on the steamboat,

and roughly a third of the crews that worked on the trains.

That's what we shipped.

Prohibition was very hard to enforce.

If you had a basement load of whiskey before prohibition,

there was nothing anybody could do about it.

You could drink everyday, there was nothing illegal about drinking alcohol.

A lot of people think that it was illegal to drink, but it was not.

It was illegal for us as manufacturers to manufacture,

sell or transport alcoholic beverages.

It was legal though if you owned whiskey or liquor

before prohibition, you could still drink that

all through prohibition.

Plus whiskey was still a very important part of the pharmaceuticals

of the day.

But you could buy medicinal whiskey.

Speakeasies kind of pushed those laws and pushed everything,

because it's like, "Okay, if it's legal to drink,

I can have friends over to this location, to my house,

and I can have people drink."

Oh, well, the speakeasies were... In some cases,

they were, saloons closed the door one day and the next day they reopened.

You would go there, you wouldn't just invite anybody in.

So many times, they had a little peep hole

or a little trap door, and you had to check if somebody had

the right password or knew somebody before,

because they didn't want the government agents to come in

and shut them down.

A lot of times it was a fiction.

A lot of times, everybody knew there was a bar there.

LUBBERS: If they had a bunch of bottles behind the bar,

and it looked like they were selling it,

they had shelves that would drop down and all that would disappear.

So all the evidence was gone and if you stood there

with a drink in your hand, that's not against the law,

"I just had a couple of friends over."

You know, there were studies that say that people actually

increased the amount of alcohol they drank during prohibition.

There were more speakeasies than there were bars before prohibition in New York.

But that was part of the appeal.

I think that was part of the attraction.

I think people enjoyed breaking the law.

VEACH: Prohibition could not have happened

if they had not passed the Income Tax Amendment.

Because before the income tax,

the whiskey tax was paying for about half of the Federal budget.

Very few of the local police officials or courts really believed in prohibition,

and they enforced it as loosely as possible.

But it was a Federal institution and so you had Federal agents coming down

often, if not in opposition to the local cops,

they weren't getting much cooperation.

Mayor LaGuardia, he was never for the prohibition law.

So he didn't tell his local police and all that,

he said, "Don't bother anybody."

And so not every government official was behind this law.

So, it must've been an unbelievable time.

The government decided they needed to maintain,

they used this term, "Strategic reserve of whiskey in the country."

And in 1921, there were about 60 million gallons put back in reserve,

in barrels.

By 1927, the strategic reserve had gotten down to about 17 million barrels,

they had drawn out that much.

And the government realized if we didn't start replacing it,

then we were going to be out of it in four years.

So they issued, I think it was originally ten, that got consolidated

down into seven distilling licenses in America.

And these were legal, they go back into operation.

Of the seven companies, six were located in Louisville.

AL YOUNG: We sold whiskey under the Four Roses label during prohibition,

which kind of provided a good segue into becoming a powerhouse bourbon

after the repeal of prohibition.

When it comes back to being legal in 1933,

bourbon whiskey's an aged spirit,

you can't just, okay, it's legal now, we'll start making it

and selling it.

It takes four years,

to get a good, aged product out there.

So it takes a lot of effort for the bourbon to even get re-established

at the end of prohibition.

And just about the time they're beginning to do that,

the Second World War comes along and you have war time prohibition,

because the industry had to make alcohol for the war.

The bourbon distilleries in World War II, they were

required to start making alcohol

for the production of neoprene, for rubber.

And they all put in distillation columns to do that,

so they were limited on the amount of bourbon they could make

versus the amount of alcohol they had to make for the war effort.

1941, we get into World War II.

Folks, we need you to make high proof alcohol

to make smokeless gunpowder and different synthetics for the war effort.

So they do that, they get the contracts from the government

to make high proof alcohol

to do that, so they did their part even though,

they didn't get paid for that, they could've made more whiskey and made more money

selling the whiskey that they sold.

But they did what everybody did during World War II, you did that.

GREGORY: Every time there's been a war, we've turned to the alcohol and spirits industry

to help fund that war.

Every chapter from the whiskey rebellion to the prohibition

and here it is, 70-80 years later,

and we're still talking about prohibition,

it was such a fascinating chapter

in our history that Kim Burns is doing documentaries on it.

Who'd have ever thunk it?

But after prohibition,

was the industrialization of the bourbon and the whiskey industry where...

You had to have a lot of capital to come in

and open a distillery from scratch or to bring one back from being mothballed.

Now you throw on top of this the late '60s or early '70s,

a generation that said we're not gonna trust anyone over 30,

and we're not gonna drink what our parents drink

which was whiskey.

They started experimenting with products such as vodka and tequila.

Vodka and gin and rum and blended whiskeys,

they were the dominant players of the day.

And they're a lighter style.

So the bourbon distilleries got together and say, "Well, if people want

lighter styles, we're going to make our product lighter."

So they take it from the Bottled-in-Bond's, of the 100 proof,

and they lower it to 86 proof.

Almost every whiskey you see back then

and straight whiskeys says 86 proof.

And, to this day, when you kill something,

and it killed that segment of the bourbon straight whiskey.

When you kill something or do away with it, you've 86'd it.

JULIAN VAN WINKLE: And one the favorite things we like to tell people is that...

People say, "Why don't you bottle it at 90 proof

or 86 proof, like all the other distilleries?"

They said, "Why ship all that water all over the country?"

So, he'd come up with stuff like that which would be a lot of fun...

The American public now had choices.

They didn't just have to drink whiskey.

Bourbon was strong up till the early '70s.

You young people come along,

you started drinking that white goods,

your gins and vodkas and things like it.

And a lot of the bourbon distilleries hurt their sales at that time.

Things start declining and it gets really bad

by the mid 1980s.

Light was better, everything light.

This healthy lifestyle, but light, light, light.

And it's only in the end of the 1980s

into the 1990s

that you start seeing products such as single barrel,

malt batch, extra aged products.

Creating interest

in whiskey again,

and the market's starting to level off.

And we see something I had thought was gone, cigars came back,

cigar festivals, big smokes.

Steak houses were established. Now we had a number of wonderful steakhouse chains

across the country.

Red wine became popular, craft beer show up.

Single malt scotch. All of a sudden Americans are drinking,

eating, smoking big, rich flavor.

And that begins an interest in the return to bourbon,

because bourbon is rich, elegant, big compared to the light.

What lead to this boom is that it's a boom only because

it went so low.

There had to be a transformation,

there had to be a modern age of bourbon, or it was not going to survive.

So it's really... it's two different phases,

there's the birth and there's the rebirth.

RUTLEDGE: The thing that began to turn our industry around,

back in the mid-late '80s, early '90s was the introduction of premium bourbons.

And the focus on premium bourbons, premium single barrel bourbons,

premium small batch.

We as an industry really didn't do that much different,

began to point out and showcase how good we were with these premiums.

Elmer knew about

Albert Blanton going into the warehouse

and selecting single barrels for parties

and, you know, special guests and things like that.

And that concept, the idea is really what

started premium bourbon selections.

I think it was just kind of waiting to happen,

um, I'm guessing that we've taken some of the single malt market,

those drinkers and pushed 'em over to our side,

or they enjoyed both of 'em now.

You know, the only thing I can do is go back to that congressional resolution

in 1964,

and say that as a result of that

and being a distinctive product of the United States,

bourbon could be made anywhere in the Untied States.

And now, you've got distilleries springing up throughout the country.

When I started, basically it was a southern gentleman's drink.

Men got off work in the afternoon down south,

went to their favorite bars,

they got their cigars and cards and went to the backroom

and started playing cards.

Now, it's become a worldwide drink and the ladies really got big into bourbon business

now all over the world.

I think what happened

in the last 10, 15, 20 years has been that a generation came up

that didn't know they weren't supposed to drink bourbon.

It seems like there's a lot of younger people

consuming bourbon, where it used to be kind of an older...

Old man's drink.

Bourbon is not just being consumed by 55 plus,

you know, folks that are 55 years or older,

which is the age of the general demographic.

We're seeing folks down in their 30s and middle 20s or whatever

that are enjoying bourbon as well,

so the reach of our demographic is expanding.

Social media and the ability to communicate so easily,

globally, and for somebody in Japan know of what we're talking about here.

There were bulletin boards on AOL, on CompuServe and, you know,

those services that also had a lot of bourbon content.

So the Internet's been very important

in terms of people being able to communicate with other enthusiasts.

There's a desire for a return to tradition,

authenticity and craft.

And I think bourbon really represents that.

People are looking for, you know, extra aged,

different proofs, the stories that are behind these products.

Education, I think, is what's made bourbon grow,

and people are not scared of bourbon anymore.

I think people who have... Have gotten into it,

have gotten into it for the same reasons I did.

A fascination with the culture, the history.

I really do think the... The reason bourbon sales are continuing to grow

is because the customers are demanding quality.

When they go out and spend their hard-earned money,

they've got a $20 bill in their pocket,

what is the best-quality spirit they can for their $20?

I think it's how you, as an individual, feel about the flavor as you taste it

is what makes bourbon so unique.

No bourbon is better than another bourbon.

Some bourbon is... Are just simply more expensive

because less is produced.

So, be thoughtful of that when you're drinking it.

The bottle that costs you $10 can sometimes just be

as memorable as the one that costs you $1,200.

There are so many factors that have really

come together here that have made bourbon where it is now.

The cocktail culture is certainly one of them.

MORRIS: As this mixology culture, this bartending culture

is spreading to Europe,

where they didn't make cocktails,

now they're starting to in France and Germany,

certainly Great Britain has really embraced the cocktail,

and again, you make cocktails with bourbon.

The taste is in, uh, thanks not only to the distillers,

but thanks to the... The regional chefs

that we have around the country.

The reemergence of the cocktail culture,

much of that utilizes bourbon.

Then there's the fact that bourbon tastes better than it used to taste.

Mad Men has been credited both with the cocktail revival

and with the American whiskey revival,

since so many of those cocktails where made with bourbon and rye.

Cocktails, bars, I mean, it's just kind of like fashion.

It's a... It's a revolving scene.

We had kinda gotten away from the idea of

a lot of great-tasting cocktails

in the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

People just were kinda ordering a lot of the same old boring things,

and, you know, with mid-2000s bars of the New York and Chicago

and San Francisco opening up and starting to do

the kind of speakeasy style... Style of cocktail, you know, started to educated people

of what's actually out there,

and, you know, the whole rebirth of the cocktail culture.

It's been a great thing for the industry.

JARED SCHUBERT: It's really nice that the bartenders, especially,

the working class people in the restaurant industry

have attached themselves to, what I believe,

is a working class product

and brought it, really, back to the forefront

of being really incredible whiskeys.

It's not just for an older palate.

Young... Young people enjoy bourbon,

and they're drinking it neat and straight and... Some...

And, obviously, cocktails also,

but, uh, lot of people that start drinking bourbon,

you know, they're not just mixing it with Coca-Cola or whatever.

They're having it on some ice

or just putting it in a cocktail. So, it's a good cocktail.

The old-fashioned, for example, has become a drink of choice

of the next generation from what I've heard.

Uh, and it started originally at Pendennis Club here in Louisville.

When you go to a bar, you've got a creative bartender

that wants to make a good cocktail for you so you'll come back to his bar.

He's not gonna give you an inferior spirit.

At least, he shouldn't if he wants you to come back.

I think it's kinda funny and foreign, almost, the bartenders around here.

'Cause we're used to... Just drinking it with a shot and a beer

and, you know, maybe an old fashioned or a Manhattan,

but not getting too... Too busy with the cocktails we make.

You know, we really enjoy it in the pure form.

That's why we're seeing this huge surge in visitorship.

We've... We're hosting twice as many visitors this year

as we did five years ago.

And we believe that five years from now,

it will double again.

And that energizing, it's a hell of a lot of work.

But when you get to do work better than it's ever been done before,

and when you get to connect with people

that are so energized by what we do,

that's pretty inspiring.

But now, it's gained such momentum with...

With things like

the Bourbon Trail and the bourbon festivals.

In 1999, the distilleries were looking at ways to promote Kentucky bourbon

because we had just come off of the immediate downturn,

and we were trying to start ramping up

the single barrels, the small batches.

They looked to see what was going on in California wine country

and Scotland with the Whisky Trail,

and, so, you know, we've got this great number of distilleries right here

within a few miles of each other in Central Kentucky.

Why don't we create a tourism experience around that?

So, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail was born that year.

This whole Bourbon Trail,

I think it's caught people by surprise.

I mean, we're talking something, like, 700,000 visitors a year, and...

And just here, during the Speakeasy Programme,

the people that I have come through,

who are doing all eight or nine of the stops now.

It's takes three or four days. You don't just, uh, you know...

They're not located all side-to-side.

They're all over the simple part of the state and here in Louisville now.

And now, you know, 15 years later,

we're getting 600,000, 700,000, 800,000 visitors a year,

and it's, truly, one of the hottest tourist attractions in the country.

I think the Kentucky Distillers' Association and the Bourbon Trail have had

a huge impact economically

on a lot of areas because of the distilleries as they build visitor centers

and hire people to work in those visitor centers.

The Kentucky Distillers' Association is a non-profit trade group

that was actually found in 1880,

when about 32 distilleries got together, uh,

and pretty much decided they're tired of paying taxes,

or, at least, higher taxes.

So, they met at Louisville Golf House and formed a trade association

and have been working together ever since.

They help with... With many things.

They help with the lobbying and all that...

The business of the... Of... Of the business.

The programs that we have put in place

as an organization to market our category,

specifically the Kentucky Bourbon Trail,

the Passport Program have been invaluable

to the success of our industry.

And we're coordinated and work together to make the pie bigger.

To promote bourbon tourism,

to promote the defining elements of Kentucky's culture,

which bourbon's a big part of that.

Of course, the individual brand companies are responsible for themselves.

We're responsible to promote and grow with reserve.

But having a partner like the Kentucky Distillers' Association

certainly makes it a lot easier

in some aspects of this modern world.

Bourbon's a tremendous investment for the Commonwealth of Kentucky

because the spin-off factor is so high.

Just a couple of years ago, for every bourbon job that was created,

another three jobs were created down the line.

That's cooperage, or trucking, hospitality,

a whole number of industries that have now

kind of become niche markets for the bourbon industry.

COFFMAN: It supports almost 16,000 people in the state of Kentucky.

This is from farming industry, transportation, logistics,

storage, packaging, labeling, manufacturing,

just your operators,

from fermentation into distillation.

So, it's really turned in quite a big driving force.

It's the people who serve it in the bars

and the people who are driving the bus

that takes you to the distilleries when you buy that tour.

All these industries are coming to Kentucky

and it's having an incredible impact,

especially in the local communities,

where you've got locally-sourced grains now, farmer's impact.

You've got, you know, some distilleries

even growing their own multi, barley, rye...

Another distillery is talking about setting up cows

and having cattle as a side business. So...

Yeah, it's a great investment for the Commonwealth.

We spend a lot of time developing relationships with the farmers,

you know, on a day-to-day basis.

So, we... We, actually, go visit these farms,

we talk to these guys that are growing corn for us.

That's what you do, you stick with your partner.

I mean, like, the folks at Independent Stave,

they've been making barrels for 100 years.

DeMossville family, they've been connected with us

here at Beam

for all that time,

and, you know, they make a good barrel. We use their barrels.

Their barrels make our product what it is,

we know when them trucks come in with their barrels.

We don't have to worry about the barrels.

That's the least of our worries. Same way with Vendome.

There's one company in Kentucky, Vendome Copper & Brass Works, very well know in the spirits

and the brewing industry for their copper-works.

NOE: Yeah, they've been the still,

that's the backbone of the distillery.

I mean, that's where you take the beer running through that

and turns it into the white dog

and then separates the alcohol from the... The beer.

If you want to buy a still, you want to buy from people

who've built the largest stills in the world

for the largest and most successful bourbon companies in the world.

They make very big stills, 72-inch diameter,

columns all the way down to small 50 gallon pot stills.

HARLEN WHEATLEY: They've built a couple of our stills,

they're one of the best. They've got a lot of history.

It's kind of the same thing. They've got a lot of history and legacy in the business.

They've got a lot of expertise and they do a pretty good job.

NOE: You got a problem with your still, you talk to them

and they help you work it out.

They... They know their stills.

You know what you're getting when you go to a group like Vendome Copper & Brass Works.

They're extremely important players,

and they are respected all over the world,

uh, for what they do and they are the best at what they do.

Uh, they've really come into a very niche market.

On the craft side, it's really a booming enterprise right now.

About ten years ago, we started to see a...

Just a little hint of these micro distilleries,

these craft distilleries start now.

And, um, while at that time, we didn't quite know where that might lead to,

we... We thought that there might be

a little bit something there

and, sure enough, you know, probably, you know,

five years ago or so, it really started hitting me.

And I think the craft distilleries here have thrived

because the bigger distilleries are here... and vice versa.

I think that a lot of people have just got into the bourbon business,

with all these craft distillers.

And I don't know how many are gonna be around in 5 or 10 years, but

it's a great fun business to get into, but it does take deep pockets if you're gonna

put whiskey down for years and years and years.

GREGORY: The craft guys will tell you, I would hope and I believe they would tell you,

that the industry has embraced them and done everything they can to make sure

they survive. This session, the big distilleries were helping us

get a bill passed to reduce the craft licence fee.

So that craft distilleries didn't have to pay as much as they did.

'Cause $3,000 a year is what the distillery license is in Kentucky.

And that may be nothing to Jim Beam,

but that's a whole of money to somebody just starting up.

When they can spend that on

corn, or advertising, or brand building or something like that.

STEVEN BESHEAR: And we've created a tour similar to the bourbon tour,

and the bourbon trail for the smaller craft distilleries,

and it is now taking off, and it is starting to attract a lot of visitors

into our state.

The small distillers, the micro distillers have not made a dent in volume.

They're still so small that the volume that they contribute is meaningless.

But in terms of the sheer buying

they've been hugely important.

But each of them must think they have something recommendable.

So, I think that these people that do this

have all got to be fairly adventuresome and believe they're gonna produce something

that's superior to other 149 brands.

Most of the craft distilleries that started here by 2010 or 2011,

are now on their first or even second expansion phase.

So, they're doing something right.

It's also a good pressure valve,

especially from a tourism standpoint for the bigger distilleries.

Because now if you go to a big distillery

and there's an hour or two hour wait,

there's probably a good chance that there's a craft distillery withing 10 or 15 miles away

that they can go visit and then come back and visit the bigger distilleries.

So, the craft distillery gets the benefit, and

you don't have angry people waiting around a big distillery trying to get in to a tour.

They're selling very small volumes but they've made a huge difference

in terms of what people are talking about, what people are thinking about,

what people are buying and tasting and trying.

What they're seeing when they go into the stores.

So suddenly, there's a lot more excitement about...

about the category.

It's gonna be a great supplement

and support for the bigger distilleries, and

it all goes together. And they're all working together.

That's what's so great here, is that they all realize, both large and small,

that they're success depends upon all of them promoting

what is great about Kentucky and that is Kentucky Bourbon.

I don't think there's any other industry in the world

where competitors within the market are such close friends.

Truly, not because somebody's talking to us, or we're in front of a camera.

Not another business in this world that can come close to the camaraderie shared by,

not just within a distillery, within a plant, but within our industry.

It amazes people how the bourbon guys we're always together,

giving each other a hard time, or sneaking up trying to

pull somebody's ear or do something. Jimmy Russell's always sneaking up on me,

grabbin' hold of my ear, telling me, "Straighten up, boy!"

If you ever go to the bourbon festival in Bardstown, Kentucky, in September,

you'll see how close the all of us are, and how we work together.

We do anything we can to help each other out.

The need for bonding, the need for co-operation,

is very important because you all have to watch each other's back.

The sales guys, they're pretty competitive, but

the distillers, we're all buddies.

We have a lot of fun, we enjoy being with each other,

and would do anything in the world for each other.

Most of the big guys, they open up their arms and say, "Come on, guys

be part of it." And,

we want you to succeed just like we've succeeded.

If anything in the world went wrong in distillation,

or if a distillery lost a pump or a motor, and if we had it,

we'd lend to them in a heartbeat, just to keep running.

I mean, I wouldn't hesitate to call Makers' Mark and ask them a question.

Or talk with Chris Morris over at Woodford Reserve or anybody.

And if they needed a piece of equipment for example,

and we had it and we can spare it, we'd loan to them, never ask a question about it.

In 1996, we had a catastrophic fire that destroyed... The heat lighting

struck one of the rickhouses,

and there happened to be 70 mile an hour winds that day

and it spread from rickhouse to rickhouse, and by the end of the day,

there were seven warehouses on fire.

They lost seven warehouses,

and the first thing we all did, the other seven distillers...

Let is know what you need, how we can help, 'cause it put a big hole in their inventory.

Our distilleries burned down, we gotta make whiskey tomorrow,

we got employees, we got people with families, with kids.

We wanna make whiskey for them but we lost 100,000 barrels.

We all stepped up, to them 'em, immediately.

We were making bourbon for 'em.

Selling barrels, doing whatever we can do to help 'em.

We made our whiskey on their stills for three years

until we got our new facility in Littleville, Kentucky.

I think everyone one of us feel

we are all in the same boat. We're producing an American spirit that,

we should be proud of that, and everybody gets along really well.

Well, you know, we all know each other. We've known each other for years.

Lot of us have been in the business a long time.

When we add a new distillery to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail,

we just did that with Stitzel-Weller. The historic Stitzel-Weller's removal,

and there at the announcement,

you had representatives from every distillery there cheering them on.

Where else you're see that in any other industry?

That your competitors are there congratulating you, applauding you for success.

We're on the same team, and we help each other and in turn,

the whole industry benefits because of that.

I had no idea how friendly these guys were to each other.

And, you get the master distillers in a room together,

you better get the waiters on pretty deep,

'cause they start cutting on each other and kiddin' on each other,

it could be stand-up comedy. It really could.

I think that the producers, especially at that level,

the family members, we get along real well.

We even have a secret handshake, I can't tell you about it, but

we have a lot of stuff in common.

Kentucky is based on family.

Families are very important here and families are very strong here.

There were lot of families out there that were involved in the industry,

that played an important role in the industry.

The Browns, the Wathens, the Medleys, the Beams, the Dans, the Van Winkles.

BESHEAR: The families that started the different types of distilleries,

a lot of them are still in the same hands.

Or, there are still family members working there.

We got or grandson or "itty" son here with us now.

Bruce just started to work for us just now, so,

he'll be the fourth generation of the Russell's

working here at The Wild Turkey Distillery.

It does seem to be a generational thing for those established

and older distilleries. And even for those that are new,

they tend to be branches of those older families.

Some people say that The Bourbon Family Tree grown straight up.

BESHEAR: You will have fathers, grandfathers, even great-grandfathers

working and have worked at the same distillery over the years.

It is a big family business and it is a big family.

STEPHEN: We started this and we now

can hand the opportunity down to the next generation.

Something that I did not have.

That I had to start this to be able to hand it off.

I'm really proud of that,

and I'm happy to do that, and I hope that

they will continue, not just my footsteps, but

many footsteps before us.

Beams are the prominent ones now,

because they're the ones that seemed to have survived mostly.

There were Beams in almost every distillery in Kentucky.

They had been a family that had developed the art, figured it out.

They would go from distillery to distillery, and that's

kinda like a journeyman or a master distiller

who would and solve problems for people.

We have my great-grandfather and my grandfather's notes and recipes.

So, I've studied those,

see how that works with modern techniques.

It's been a learning experience for me.

The entire industry used to be family tradition,

hand me down from grandfather to

to his son, to his son, to his son...

pass it on down through family history

and learning the process by route.

I really feel, making whiskey, making bourbon, making rye,

all these are an art.

It's your impression on the product that you want to taste...

The product that you want coming off is the taste that you're striving for.

WHEATLEY: Some distilleries basically use a master distiller in public relations,

but at Buffalo Trace, we're a little bit more traditional. We do...

a little bit of everything.

I'm responsible for production of the whiskeys,

and anything distilled.

Today's master distillers are rockstars.

Which harkens back to James Pepper,

and Colonel Taylor.

And some of the earlier distillers.

As a prerequisite, we're generally old.

It takes a while to get here, you can't go to school to learn

to be a distiller.

The sheer amount of technical know how,

that is required it's really stunning.

They deserve what they get because they're putting out...

It's a volatile product.

It's a combination of science and art.

It's the art, I guess, that I love the best.

That's learning to use the senses.

The sight and smell, and taste and touch, and...

to smell and taste, knowing

if something is going to be right or not.

Perhaps a problem with something.

A distiller is interested in making it continually consistent

in flavor and quality, and

...in public acceptance.

When something goes a little astray...

Not sure quite what it is in fermentation...

A particular fermentation problem.

We can... Easier to figure it out, and what caused it,

how it happened, and prevent it from happening again,

or, at least, if it happens again,

we know how to get out of it.

It's interesting that they have applied

massive modern technological advances

to what was traditionally a craft.

But if you ever get a chance

to go down to our plant at Bernheim down on 17th Street,

go in the control room. You'll think you're in NASA.

It's highly controlled and it's a major manufacturing operation.

With this kind of... this romantic image

that we have of it being a rural product

but, in fact, when you see it being...

You know, really run... When you see...

When they really run it, it's impressive.

COFFMAN: Probably your biggest hurdle you're going to have

to get into the business

is the capital expenditure you have to put out.

It's very capital-intensive.

There are definitely a lot

of barriers to entry in this business.

Not just economic barriers,

but getting distribution is not always easy.

Getting the funding or the financing

to build the distillery is not easy.

Not everybody can understand the dynamics there.

You're going to wait two, three, four, eight years

before you start seeing any money come back.

You're not for sure how that thing

is going to turn out four years from now.

So you've got to have a tremendous

amount of confidence, you know,

in your own production, or if you're starting out

using contract production, and you're curating barrels,

you've got to know what you're doing there.

Because the end result can be disastrous

if you don't know what you're doing.

These are not just "Make it today, sell it tonight" vodka.

This is... We have to... This is 10 years old.

This is four years old. We have to think about this stuff.

RUTLEDGE: Long-range planning...

better words for it is "long-range guessing."

And it's a bet... I'm not even sure

if the term "educated guess" is good.

A lot of this business is luck.

It just kinda happens, and the way it happens...

There's nothing very scientific or planned about it.

All this whiskey's got to age. And so everyone is looking four, five, six,

seven years down the road,

and trying to figure out, you know,

how much they need that far down the road.

I mean, that's a tough job.

A lot of people make four-year-old bourbon.

And we make also a four-year-old bourbon.

But, still, that's four years from now. You have to,

you know, project the sales and what your plans are.

STEPHEN: We only can make a very limited amount.

So I know that, no matter what I make,

there'll be a demand for it.

It's a crap shoot, knowing what to make the most of.

It's an educated guess.

But right now there's no way to guess that big.

I mean, there's no capabilities...

We're running our distilleries wide open.

All we can get out, get in the barrel.

We've already made our bourbon for 2037.

So you say, six, eight, ten.

I tend to go six, eight, 10, 15, 20 and 23.

So I've already looked at 2038,

and what we need for 2038.

But the ageing factor,

I mean, yeah, if you knew that rye was gonna be this...

I mean, we always made rye whiskey,

but not a lot of it, because it wasn't a big seller.

But, like, overnight, all of a sudden,

rye whiskey's the hottest thing going.

We've got some, but we don't have

as much as we could sell if we had more.

If we'd have known Kentucky bourbon

was going to sell as much as it is,

and become as popular as it is today,

we'd have made a heck of a lot more of it

six, eight, 10 years ago.

It's either going to be too much or too little.

You're not gonna be right on the money.

You know, that's not the way that works, so...

So you have to make adjustments along the way.

This year we made so many barrels for 2037.

And as we go, we'll kind of follow the trend

and monitor it, and see how things go.

You know, for the next 23 years.

You're kind of looking into your crystal ball,

and trying to keep up with demand,

and nobody saw the spike in demand.

You can figure a slight demand increase...

When you're getting spikes of 25,

30, 40% a year on products,

there's no way to calculate that.

If you were that smart,

you ought to go buy Powerball tickets.

One of the things from year to year,

you always want if you're going to have enough corn,

and then the price of corn...

I've seen it be as low as a dollar and a half

to as high as 8 dollars and a half a bushel.

So then there's been years of drought.

Then you wonder how you have to go out and hustle a bit more,

trying to find the corn, and not only that,

but the quality of corn.

If we want something really good in a bottle,

we're fighting a battle,

an uphill battle that can't be won

unless we start off with the best raw materials.

The only speed bumps typically you'd have

with any kind of distillation system

is going through the bureaucratic hoops

that you have to sometimes,

both with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Tax Trade Bureau

or the state.

DAVID FLOYD: I submitted a request to the LRC,

Legislative Research Commission,

that we form a Bourbon Trail Caucus,

made up of members in the legislature,

Senate and House, who were...

who represented a county

where bourbon was produced.

The Bourbon Trail Caucus was formed specifically

to advance the Bourbon industry in Kentucky

in as many ways as possible.

It's been a great partnership with founding families

of the industry and the companies

that are partnered with them.

You're not going to find a better corporate citizen

in Kentucky than a bourbon distillery, quite honestly.

I do a lot of charitable events.

Eddie does a lot of charitable events.

Anything we could do to help out any community,

and charitable events and all, we'll do that.

It gives us a great feeling to be able to donate something

to charity and give back to the communities.

Brown-Forman gives millions of dollars every year

to the arts community in Kentucky.

Nobody has done more than Bill Samuels for education.

He raises money for education efforts

and the Heart Association, everything else.

It's not just about bourbon.

It's about trying to give back to the commonwealth

which has been so good to all of us.

Heaven Hill, Four Roses, all of them.

It's fantastic. I mean, they really and truly

care about Kentucky.

They have continued to hire and we have doubled that workforce

just in the last two years.

GREGORY: That means more jobs and more tax revenue

coming back in Kentucky,

which means more corn purchased by local farmers,

which means more money for education,

which means more good-paying jobs here.

And just, you know, keep that path flowing.

The average salary is $90,000, or a little more than

$90,000 a year, and that's a great salary

for anybody raising a family.

JAMES KAY: And I think that lawmakers across the state,

even those in conservative areas,

are welcome to the aspect of us growing this industry,

and building bourbon as not only something

that's part of our heritage,

but something that is going to be a strong part of our future,

and particularly our economic future.

I think that's because more and more legislators,

despite the constituents they have,

are coming to understand that bourbon

is the signature industry for Kentucky.

I think that everybody in every part of Kentucky

recognizes the importance

of having a strong bourbon industry

and our laws reflecting that.

We generate a whole lot of money in tax revenue.

About 60% of every bottle of bourbon

goes to taxes and fees of some kind.

There are seven different taxes on every bottle

before it even reaches your lips.

And two of them are what's called the "ad valorem" tax.

We call it the "barrel tax" here in Kentucky.

For every year that a barrel of bourbon

is ageing in a warehouse, it's taxed.

Part of the reason why an 18-year-old bottle of,

let's just say, Elijah Craig is more expensive

is because it's been taxed 18 times

while the product evaporates.

You know, so we pay a lot of money in tax revenue.

Kentucky, unfortunately, is one of the most

heavily taxed liquor taxes in the country.

The... The taxes that we pay on those ageing barrels

almost overwhelmingly go back to fund local education,

and that's $12-$14 million a year and growing,

'cause it's based on the number of barrels we have in Kentucky.

Not only has bourbon brought new attention

to the alcohol laws which are fairly outdated in Kentucky,

but also, it involves tourism

and other aspects of economic development and improvement.

So as the bourbon industry is booming,

it's creating a lot of issues

that we, as lawmakers, need to address.

A few years ago there was a big trend in some New York bars

where they were vaporizing alcohol

with devices and trying to get a high that way.

And as soon as we heard about it,

we went to the legislature and immediately passed a bill

to ban those in Kentucky.

Bourbon's made to drink and enjoy.

It's not made to get drunk and do these things with,

it's something you sit down and sip on,

enjoy the flavor and taste of it.

I mean, when we were into our NASCAR and Indy car racing,

one of the big programs we did was our drivers...

We went on college campuses in the areas of the track

and talked to the kids.

I said, "Hey, you know, practice drink smart."

"Drink responsibly." That's what it's all about.

I don't think the stories get enough credit for what they do in responsibility

and measure. I mean, they're all doing multi million dollar

advertising campaigns to, you know, think smart, drink smart.

We practice, you know, what we call 'drink smart'.

Which, you know, we always say,

if you're not old enough to drink, don't.

As a bar owner, it's always right there. Right there.

That, hey, you're responsible for the people you serve drinks to.

I don't think anybody want to feel responsible for

some kind f horrific accident to one of their friends.

Or to a stranger. It doesn't matter.

It's our job as producers to make sure that

that we adhere to the guidelines that are...

our own industry has created.

We done a great job of creating advertising guidelines

and other guidelines that ensure that we don't advertise in front of

people that are underage, or put ourselves in situations where

we're exposing our product needlessly to people that aren't of age to consume.

Our products are meant to be used

where they're supposed to be. Not abused.

'Cause it's like anything. Too much of anything is not good.

And we want to make sure that people who use our product use em' correctly.

And make sure that we don't cause any problems.

And I think one of the most important things about...

the new generation of bourbon connoisseur

and the new customer of bourbon, particularly in Kentucky is that

this is a new generation.

And while bourbon has been around a long time,

people are enjoying bourbon in many different ways

and I think we're being more responsible,

as a new generation of bourbon drinkers.

I take it very seriously as a first-responder, as a father,

and just as a citizen.

As alcohol education has improved in this country

over the course of the last 40 years,

you're finding more responsible drinkers, for the more part.

Particularly in Kentucky when it comes to bourbon.

Bourbon industry right now in on a big incline.

We're still growing worldwide.

It's not gonna die anytime soon,

it's not gonna ever die, I don't think.

This century, so far, it's been unbelievable growth.

'Cause people overseas are just discovering bourbon.

And so, they're just on the very beginning.

Bourbon industry is on fire.

Not only domestically but globally.

So, think about the world's population, it's significantly larger.

Especially, people that can afford a drink.

And them bourbon's market share compared to scotch is still quite small.

So, the future for bourbon is quite bright.

I think, the industry is gonna continue to grow.

It's growing greater than... than we've anticipated.

And I'm not talking about a business, so much it is, the emotional stand point

of bourbon as an entity in the state.

I think there's a lot of upward growth in terms of the numbers of people

that are gonna visit Louisville.

Visit Kentucky and go to distilleries.

I honestly don't think that the bubble will burst.

I think this is a legitimate trend. I don't think it's a fad.

You always wonder when's it gonna, you know, end.

I don't see it ending any way soon.

I think the bourbon industry is definitely here to stay.

We've been around for long and I know we're not going anywhere. I don't think.

We're sitting on more bourbon barrels right now.

Over 5.3 million.

That's the largest inventory since 1977.

We filled 1.2 million barrels last year,

which was our highest production since 1970.

We're, literally, making it as fast as it is selling.

I mean there's some distilleries that are have shortages.

Even temporary shortages because the demand is so great.

So, we're all, kind of, racing right now to

invest in double operations and capacity and build new warehouses

It's kind of chaotic but that's part of the uniqueness about bourbon.

You can't just make this stuff overnight.

We've got more bourbon stored in the state of Kentucky than we do people now.

There's gonna be a lot of great whisky to be tasting in the next ten years.

There's gonna be a lot of cool bottles coming out.

And the industry will stay true to its values of quality and authenticity,

in this unique american heritage.

It's a unique American product and we embrace that, we love it.

We love the role that it plays in our social lives.

I just think it's a tradition, you know, people love that around here,

they're very proud of things like that.

So, I think, it's just a thing that binds...

binds this area together.

That makes me, sort of, proud that there's an industry that has really come back

from the death now

to the popularity that it has today.

Bourbon and whisky is truly an American drink.

And being in Kentucky, where it was founded,

bourbon was founded and everything,

is just a great, fantastic thing for the state.

Bourbon for Kentucky is just...

it's part of the soul of the state.

It came with statehood and it's been here ever since.

It's impossible to imagine Kentucky without bourbon.

It wouldn't be Kentucky.

You wouldn't even be able to call it that. We'd have to call it something else.

I mean, it's impossible to imagine.

Bourbon is a part of our history and our heritage.

And who we are as a state.

And that's mainly because of the people in the industry

and the people who have come up and helped

make bourbon what it is since our inception.

A lot of people that are here have

moms that have worked here, dads that have worked here,

grandfathers that have worked here.

And are just, kind of, carrying on their tradition.

And I think people feel that when they're here

and they understand the kind of weight,

the fact that the things that you're doing today

are for products from 10, 12, 15 years from now.

It's something that withstood the test of time. It'll be here.

Been here forever since the United States,

and it's gonna be here, it's not going anywhere.

You enjoy your bourbon. You eat and you relax.

You know, it's many things to many different people.

Bourbon is a... bourbon adds grace to your life.

I don't understand people who drink...

vodka or the neutral spirits. I don't want the neutral.

I want the spirit to have some character

that I get to borrow for a little bit.

There is no bad bourbon, you know, there's just a difference of opinion.

There's so much to learn and so much to find out.

And I think we're actually in the frontier

of what bourbon is and what it can be.

It's a proud time to be a Kentuckian.

There's nothing quite like Kentucky bourbon.

Kentucky bourbon built Kentucky and Kentucky built bourbon.

Bourbon is for all seasons and for all the people.

To me, bourbon can be described in two words.

Uniquely Kentucky.

Bourbon's American.

And I think it's something that's been there forever

but people are re-discovering how great it is.

I'm glad we didn't cave.

The mountain came to Muhammad, they all came to us.

Welcome.

♪ Brent Pappy made whisky

♪ Way out on the hue with corn mash and sugar

♪ In an old copper steal

♪ He made his living outside the law

♪ Only three days Man, that stuff was raw

♪ Times have changed and the old stillers gone

♪ We're still making whisky but it's bottled and bought

♪ Now it's much smoother and no longer wrong

♪ Aged in on barrels and the price is really low

♪ It's a family tradition 200 years old

♪ You call it whisky we call it gold

♪ It's always been good but it's finer each year

♪ Good ol' Kentucky bourbon sweet angel tears

♪ Good ol' Kentucky bourbon sweet angel tears

♪ Sweet angel tears like cold walking high

♪ Drink pappy's whisky from days gone by

♪ It's covered in taxes but still made for you

♪ Call it what you like it's good ol mountain dew

♪ It's a family tradition 200 years old

♪ You call it whisky we call it gold

♪ It's always been good but it's finer each year

♪ Good ol' Kentucky bourbon sweet angel tears

♪ Good ol' Kentucky bourbon sweet angel tears ♪