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Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Category: Musing (Page 15 of 31)

Finding the Bourbon Trail

09/13/2013 /

In 2008, on a trip to Chicago, we came across a small sign along the side of the road, the kind the government puts up to let you know about what’s ahead. The sign read: The Bourbon Trail.distillers assoc Now, who can resist a sign like that? Growing up in California I was familiar with wine tours through Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino. But bourbon? It took another five years before we could make that happen, but we did. We highly recommend the trip. Kentucky is a beautiful state.

Wine, while interesting, is fermented grapes, almost as old as mankind. Or is that mead?  But whiskey? Legend has it that St. Patrick introduced Ireland to the distilling process, learning the process in Spain or France. The process takes a bit of science so the initial product was probably either quite potent or not good at all! By the seventeen hundreds distilling became a viable illicit business and was inevitably made legal by taxing, that is a law that imposed taxes. In America, the illicit part was a grand tradition of the frontier. And in the 1700’s Kentucky was the frontier.

Whiskey, sometimes called the water of life,  is distilled grain. Distilled grain in Scotland is called Scotch. In Ireland it’s Irish Whiskey. In America we call it Bourbon.  Started in 1998 by the Kentucky Distillers’ Association, the Bourbon Trail is one of those marketing ploys that brings together the combination of IMG_0053 buffalo traceinformation both current and historical, touring and tasting. What’s not to love? Distilleries are pretty small, workforce-wise. The seven on the trail for the most part had between one hundred to one hundred twenty employees, red wax dipthat included the distilling, warehousing and bottling crews and I guess, tour guides. Not a lot of employment, but a lot of product making a lot of money. Don’t you just love free market enterprises? From Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, to Maker’s Mark, where you can dip your own bottle in the famous red wax,wild Turkey to Wild Turkey where you can get a bottle with a mistake on the label, to Woodford Reserve where you can see the building that used to house thethe revenurers government T-men [for Treasury], to the still house at Jim BeamJim Beam and the tasting room at Heaven Hill Heaven Hillthat’s shaped like the inside of a oak barrel, not to mention Four Rosesthe charming and understated Four Roses where we found copper mint julep cups, and the newest of bourbon labels, Town Branch, Town Branchthe trail was enlightening and entertaining. And, you want the finish to be as good as the endthe trip. So, cheers, or, in honor of St. Patrick, Slainté, to our new collection of bourbons!

Touring

09/04/2013 /

I should have pictures, but I don’t. I was having so much fun, enjoying myself, it was like the last ten or so years were just erased, that I forgot to memorialize the time together. I think FaceBook and Twitter make us think we have to do this. I’m sure before there was Social Media, not as many people took pictures, candid yet posed, to show off to family and friends. But now, I guess, you’re supposed to remember to do that. LOL, it was like the time I came in by boat to the White Cliffs of Dover and I watched and forgot to take pictures. Just like that.

So it was a great weekend, time with friends we could have lost and thankfully have not! So today we proceeded to the event that was our raison d’être for this week in Kentucky–the Bourbon Trail. Is it a gimmick? Yes. Is it hokey? Well, sort of. But still, marketing aside, how many people know exactly how and why the spirit [alcoholic drink]  known as Bourbon, is the national American drink? IMG_0053 buffalo traceDid you know it’s regulated by law? Just like champagne must be grown in Champagne France, or like the coffee beans must be grown in a twenty mile by two mile side of the hill in Hawaii to be called Kona, in order for a whiskey to be called Bourbon it must meet several requirements. It must be made in the US. It must be made from a grain mixture that is at least 51% corn. It must be aged in new charred oak barrels. It must be no more than 160 proof or 80% alcohol by volume. It must enter the barrel for aging at no more than 125 proof or 62.5% alcohol by volume. And it must be bottled at 80 proof or more (40% alcohol by volume. We started with the distillery that is the oldest, longest running [yes, even through the thirteen years of Prohibition] in the entire United States.

As a side note, Bushmills, operating in County Antrim, [yes, part of the UK] was already over two hundred years old when the distillery that is Buffalo Trace was begun. But I digress. While we tend to think of Kentucky as the only place to make bourbon, that’s not true. It’s made in Tennessee, Michigan, California, Illinois, lots of places. That’s not to say it’s good, just that it’s made.

So, before I toddle off to sleep.. Bourbon is named after a county that is named after the French royal family, house of. It can be aged four years or twenty four years. It ages more aggressively in the heat and actually has a hot after taste. And, it’s bright amber golden color comes from the charred oak. By law, nothing can be added to the mixture, if they do, they can’t call it bourbon, it is just plain old whiskey!

 

 

A New View

09/03/2013 /

Okay, so vacation. A new view. Things to see, places to go, people to meet. Well, yes, and no. When the girls were little and we planned vacations there was little wiggly room in the planning. I mean, come on, there were four of us, clothes, food, travel, not a lot you can leave to chance, not if you’re a Type A like me. Now is different. All the same stuff goes on, things, places, people but there’s a lot more wiggly room.

We were headed across I 40 toward Knoxville to turn right toward Kentucky when we passed Gatlinburg. You know, home of Pigeon Forge and Dollywood. We were making spectacular time and we had no one waiting for us at the other end of the trip, that would be the next day, but not that day. Well, by the time I thought of it, we were past the exit. Tom, my trusty cartographer and guide [who sometimes needs to be reminded that he has not been replaced by the GPS], pulled out the map and said take exit X, and so I did. We’re driving down this backroad that is so proud of itself for having a Route number it was twisting and tuning in every direction.  Let me set the stage, here, there was nothing on this road, a few small cottages, lots of trees, and woods, that’s about all. Well, we drive around this bend and there’s this huge white long airplane hanger type building sort of nestled up against the mountain. IMG_0050 BushNext to this building is another and another and soon the entire side of the road is nothing but big white plant buildings. And, we’re trying to figure out what it is when we past this very neat white house opposite a huge parking lot and a general store and it dawns on me, this has something to do with Bush’s Baked Beans.

My mom had a two gallon brown ceramic pot she bought in La Jolla California, well, I can’t remember when, she always had it. And she would buy white navy beans, soak them for twenty four hours. She’d buy bacon, and brown sugar and molasses and I don’t know what else and make this sauce. After the beans had soaked she’d bake them overnight for eight hours then pull the pot out of the oven and mix in the sauce and back for another eight hours. And you could smell those beans! Oh my! She didn’t do it often, not often enough for me, anyway. When they cooled, she’s put them in glass jars and we’d have homemade baked beans.

So we there we are driving down this road, rounding the corner, heading for Pigeon Forge and I pulled off the road. I have no idea what Pigeon Forge is like. I’m sure it’s charming. But the whole point of being on vacation is to do something you couldn’t or wouldn’t do in a regular day. I backed up into a ditch, well, almost, turned around and pulled into the parking lot.

Sometimes you just need a new view.

 

Multi-tasking…Not

08/27/2013 /

Somewhere along the line, how cliché of me, I left my ability to multi-task lying by the wayside. Certainly not intentionally, but apparently it is gone, disappeared, either walked away for lack of usage or just got angry at being misused and left. But it is certainly not here, or anywhere in my house.

And, now that I think about it, why is multi-tasking such a prized quality? Was it because I accomplished more, or was it because it looked impressive or because in the 70s and 80s, like the hurried child and the ‘having it all’, what you did was multi-task. Really, did I multi-task or did I just get a lot done in the day because I was so very focused? And even more than that, why was I so focused? Well, yes, I’ve got this one.  My brain had not been Googled, there was nothing for me to do but to accomplish, to get it done, to finish what I started and to do it well.

Computers were not so ubiquitous, not so accessible, and certainly not so portable. Today when I go anywhere I take, at the very least, my iPhone and my iPad.  With those two I can waste more time than I ever imagined back in college when my dorm room was the headquarters for Procrastination Inc. Even this, this blogging, this web logging, is a time suck in many ways. Yes, yes, lots of great things about it, but mostly, lol, I’m writing this to myself.

I can understand how you can become so enamored of your words and what you do. I am under no illusion, I doubt many read my musings. But it does amuse me, and forces me to think clearly about my sentence structure, phrasing, word usage, and voice. Ha! Is this mine or have I made this up?

So, no, I’m not multi-tasking, not at all, and happily, not even thinking about going there!

Middle is Mine

08/19/2013 /

I don’t share well, really, I share hardly at all. Mine is mine! When I was in college I bought a Wilson aluminum racquet, which damaged my elbow something fierce. I had my name engraved on the racquet handle, even tho it almost killed me, it was mine. Look at any of my books and my name is written inside, usually with the date [being precise is a good quality]. Glory be, I even have my own bottle of Bushmills at the club! Yes, mine is definitely mine.

Call it the middle child syndrome, which was a staple of my conversations with my mom, especially through the teen years. I blame a lot on middle-childhood. Middle-childhood was a boon and a curse at the same time. A boon actually, but more on that later. It is a cliché to say that something is vastly overrated, but think of middle-childhood as more a universal truth than a passé statement. Just as a name can have a lot to do with how you see yourself, therefore how you look back out at the world, your birth order can create a not quite false view of mankind overall. As a middle you have to put up with all those overbearing eldest children and less than helpful youngest children, regardless of age.

As a middle child I was loved and cared for. I knew that. Absolutely. But. Oh, and, that is huge, I also knew I wasn’t the baby of the family and I wasn’t the oldest. My standing in between my sisters was implicit, but not quickly identifiable. Oldest is one word. Baby is one word, as is youngest. But middle child comes with baggage from all those one-word siblings going back to the beginning of humanity. I’ll just bet, in some prehistoric cave in the bowels of deepest Africa, an oldest chiseled a picture off the cave wall of a middle child just trying to get some attention.

Growing up I had to work harder than my siblings. Three girls we, but I wasn’t the first to go out into the big world, so I didn’t blaze any trails. According to Mom, I was to learn from my older sister. And, I had to be brave and honest and truthful so that my younger sister could see those qualities in action, ergo, I had to act older sister. Sigh. That’s like being given a new job with all the responsibilities and none of the perks or salary increases.

My dad was an oldest. He told me ‘stand tall, walk tall’, he closed all the letters he sent to me while I was in college with that closing line. My mom was an oldest. I didn’t know that growing up, Lucyle admitted only to being youngest, her ability to tell the truth was always compromised in favor of a better story. And, as part of those stories, she gave me a boon, ‘a thing that is helpful or beneficial’, she told me I stood right in the middle. And when you stand in the middle all you have to do is stretch out your arms and push the sides away. Then, well, you’re not in the middle anymore, you are standing alone! Maybe that’s why I don’t share.

 

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