With the PGA Championship at Valhalla, golf is certainly the main attraction in the Bluegrass State this week. But as we turn our eyes to Kentucky to watch the best players in the game compete, we also might ponder something that makes this place special the whole year long. That would be its bourbon, and no state in America produces more, with some 95 percent of the barrel-aged, brown liquor coming from Kentucky.
Equally impressive is how that booze, which must be made within the U.S. from at least 51 percent corn and aged in new charred oak barrels to be called bourbon, has become all the rage. To wit, Kentucky is reported to be home to nearly 100 whiskey distilleries, up about fivefold in little more than a decade.
It is also worth noting there are nearly three times as many barrels of bourbon aging in the state (about 12 million) than there are people (4.5 million).
And if those numbers are not evidence enough of the appeal of classic brands such as Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam and Four Roses and their small-batch brethren, consider that this year’s PGA Championship boasts an official bourbon. Called Elijah Craig and made by Heaven Hill Distilleries in Bardstown, less than an hour south of the Valhalla course, it is named after a Baptist preacher from the 18th century who is credited by some with creating true Kentucky bourbon.
Teddy Roosevelt was a big bourbon drinker. Lucille Ball, too. John Wayne not only drank corn whiskey but also assembled an extensive bourbon collection. According to historian David McCullough, Harry Truman fancied a daily dram of Old Grand-Dad or Wild Turkey after his morning walk and rubdown. And columnist Hugh Sidey, who wrote regularly on the presidency for Time magazine, once averred in a piece about the athletic inclinations of some of the men who occupied the Oval Office that Truman’s favorite sports were “poker and bourbon.”
Author Hunter S. Thompson liked his Wild Turkey as well, which may have been the only thing he and the 33rd president had in common.
And though she enjoyed far less fame than the aforementioned, I feel compelled to add that my late mother, Cynthia Means Steinbreder, quite enjoyed her bourbon.
Proving perhaps that the apple does not fall far from the tree, I have also become something of a bourbon aficionado. I’ll take mine neat, or with a bit of branch water. And if I am feeling fancy on a cold winter’s night, I will make my wife (also named Cynthia) and myself a couple of Manhattans.
I may even have a little Elijah Craig on the rocks on Sunday as I watch the final groups come in.
That seems only appropriate, given where they are playing.
John Steinbreder
E-MAIL JOHN
Oak barrel (ALEX RATHS, iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES)
Kentucky bourbon rocks (IVELIN DENEV, iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES)
