In the Sixties, Tennessee whiskey was on the rocks, viewed as an old man's drink. It's ironic then, that this very image has been its salvation, writes Victoria Harper. Photographs by Cristian Barnett.
There is a favourite saying among writers: "When the legend conflicts with the facts, print the legend," or, put another way, "Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story." The history of bourbon is so packed with mythology, wrapped in mystique and dressed up in misty-eyed romanticism that the truth about a product that is as American as the Marlboro Man seems almost irrelevant.
Well, Morgan Steelman thinks so anyway. You would recognise him from the Jack Daniel's posters that use real people to market the product. A rugged fiftysomething who has worked for the company all his life, he looks as if he's come straight out of Central Casting. Before he gives his tour, he warns: "Y'all have to listen carefully... I don't talk American, I talk Tennessee." For the next hour, he tells us that the bottles are square "so they won't roll off your car seat"; that Jack Daniel's No7 is so called because "Mr Jack liked the ladies and had one for every night of the week"; and that most of the moonshiners now prefer to grow 'weed'. But, this is Middle America, where signs saying "Nice people dancing to good country music" are about as wild as it gets. The slightest mention of drink-driving or promiscuity - let alone drug-taking - is enough to cause a rowdy bout of bible-bashing among the Baptists who dominate this area.
The fact that Lynchburg, Tennessee, where Jack Daniel's is made, remains 'dry' to this day means that residents have to drive over the county line to buy a product that is made on their doorstep. In Kentucky, to the north, where 95 per cent of America's bourbon is produced, it still can't be sold legally in any of the counties where it is made. In 1998, Kentucky saw the first vote in 37 years to repeal the dry laws in Mercer County. Many feared that these laws - the result of Prohibition, which had ended 66 years before - were driving away tourists who might want a drink in their hotel bar. However, even in the Nineties, the Baptists won two to one, and God help you if want a late-night tipple there today.
With attitudes such as these, it's a miracle that the industry exists at all. That it does is a testimony to the product and hints that there is more to bourbon than the 'old Southern boy on the porch' image that has been peddled for years. Look closely and you'll find there are more twists and turns in the story than in the great Ohio River.
Elmer T Lee knows this more than most. An 80-year-old former distiller for the Buffalo Trace distillery of Frankfort in Kentucky, he ranks alongside Booker Noe from Jim Beam and Jimmy Russell from Wild Turkey as one of bourbon's living legends. Officially in retirement, he still comes to the distillery every week to oversee the bottles that carry his name. For a man with such a big reputation, he cuts a small figure as he crosses the Buffalo forecourt to recall one of the worst periods in bourbon history. It wasn't the whiskey wars of the 1700s, when Scottish and Irish settlers protested against the tax levied on the their crops, which were being sold to make whiskey. Nor Prohibition, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, when bourbon survived despite being all but closed down as an industry. No, it was the Sixties that nearly saw bourbon off for good.
"Bourbon's heyday was in the Fifties," Lee relates in his slow, bluegrass twang. "Trouble was, by the Sixties it was seen as a parents' drink. The young people didn't want to know. They didn't want to drink bourbon, when they could be seen drinking vodka."
It is a cruel irony that the drink at the forefront of so many rebellions was itself shunned at a time of social and political upheaval, for being too Establishment. The only whiskey that wasn't affected during this time was Jack Daniel's, which was quickly becoming the preferred mouthwash of rock stars. To qualify as a bourbon, a spirit has to be at least 51 per cent corn (the other parts being rye, wheat or barley) and kept in a newly charred oak barrel for at least two years. While Jack Daniel's meets these criteria, the fact that it is filtered over charcoal, the very step that gives the drink its distinctive smoky taste, is seen as tampering with the strict, all-natural process. It is for this reason that the most famous bourbon in the world is actually not a bourbon at all, but a Tennessee whiskey.
While Jack Daniel's rattled out bottles at a rate of knots, some of its competitors struggled to survive these harsh times. Large corporations moved in and began to take over distilleries that had been in families for generations. (Despite bourbon's homely image, there is only one distillery that remains family-owned.) The fact that Elmer T Lee, the very face of all that is old and quaint about this industry, now regularly flies off to the South Pacific for promotional tours and has books on Japanese business etiquette in his tasting room, is certainly a sign of the times.
But, against the odds, the product is beginning to enjoy a revival - and one that the industry has got a lot to thank Elmer for. The magic of bourbon lies in the range of tastes that the master distillers work hard to achieve. The alcohol that is poured into the newly charred oak barrels is as clear as water but, over time, contact with the wood imbues it with its distinctive honey-brown colour. Depending on how many summers it is left in the barrel-houses and how much limestone water is added, bourbon can either melt in your mouth like caramel or spike your taste-buds with hot pepper. But such subtleties of taste were lost for a long time on Americans who preferred the rough and ready tastes of big brands such as Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam and Old Barton, which could be easily mixed with coke.
Securing bourbon's future was not a matter of reversing this trend - it was more a case of starting a new one. "We were looking to do something different around 1983 when our sales were really sliding," Elmer recalls. "Every master distiller in Kentucky knows exactly where the best barrels of bourbon are in the warehouse. I remembered Colonel Blanton, who was the master distiller before me, would always keep one of the best to one side for his private entertaining. He didn't market this idea himself, but two years after we came up with the idea to market single-barrel bourbon, most other distillers started to do the same."
Like single-malt scotch, single-barrel bourbon is meant to be the cream of distilleries' crop, marketed to the more discerning drinker at a higher price. For companies such as Maker's Mark of Louisville, Kentucky, and Labrot and Graham of Versailles, Kentucky, the emphasis is on quality, not quantity. This latter is the perfect example of the resurgence that the new approach has brought to the industry. Labrot and Graham had closed in the Seventies, but, four years ago, was bought and restored by Brown-Forman, the owner's of Jack Daniel's, to produce the small-batch bourbon, Woodford Reserve. The whole operation cost $13 million and, today, the distillery is proud to boast that, as the slowest and smallest in the area, it makes less bourbon in a week than Jack Daniel's spills.
In the topsy-turvy world of bourbon, where you can't buy the drink in the places where it is made and corporations are investing millions to make the industry appear small-scale and quaint, it is strangely fitting that its romantic past is now securing its future. The signs are that it's only a matter of time before the 'old-fashioned' bourbon drinkers become fashionable again thanks to the new trend for small-batch bourbons catching on among the self-same baby boomers who nearly ended the industry 30 years ago.
Given bourbon's colourful history, this latest ironic twist in the tale seems unlikely to be the last. Where the next chapter lies in the story of this great American survivor is anybody's guess. When it comes to bourbon, as Morgan would say: "Y'all just have to walk slow and breathe deep and let the magic do the rest."