One of the highlights of Kelly and my current road trip through the American South has been the Maker’s Mark distillery tour. We had grand aspirations of covering a majority of the American Whiskey Trail, most of it dotted along the Tennessee and Kentucky borders, but several factors, including time constraints, shitty weather and the impending arrival of Christmas led us to abandon all others and go straight to the king of bourbon.
I had never tasted whiskey until I moved to New York City for college in 2001, after which I tried really hard to get into alcohol. I was going though my Bukowski/Kerouac phase, so I considered it of the utmost importance that I find a suitable drink that matched my riotous and rebellious East Village attitude.
I first came into contact with bourbon at Hi-Fi bar in the East Village. I was with a fellow transfer student and together we were plotting to infiltrate NYU’s Cool Culture. As a French major, she was ahead of me in finding out about cool trends and happenings and a majority of my time was spent dutifully following suit.
At the bar, she asked me to order her a “Makeranginger.”
“What?” I asked. She repeated the drink but in a crowded bar on a Friday night it made no difference.
I walked to the bartender and repeated the drink in my most confident voice.
“A gin and tonic and a Makeranginger, please,” I said.
The bartender, a Cool, impatient hipster who looked like any moment he would finish his shift, jump into a motorcycle and open for the Strokes, stared at me for a few seconds.
Time passed. Suddenly there were people. A line had formed.
“Would you like me to make you a Makers Mark bourbon mixed with ginger ale?” he asked.
On top of his good looks and imaginary fame, he was perhaps the greatest bartender in the world.
“Sure,” I said, taking a sip of my gin and tonic. I played it off as if he just hadn’t heard my initial order over the blaring twang-twang-twang of Is This It?
I went back to our bright red booth with both drinks and my dignity caught in my throat. My friend seemed pleased at the appearance of her drink. But it wasn’t until she took her first sip and smiled that I exhaled.
“Here, try some,” she offered.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” I said, scooting into the booth across from her.
At this point, gin and tonic had been the only drink I was acclimatized to (I even disliked beer) and that was mostly because Liam Gallagher once asked for it in a brilliant song called Supersonic that I had liked since I was 12.
I slid my staple drink aside and took a sip of hers. I consumed mostly soda pop, but a taste lingered. There was a bite. It tickled the back of my throat. The smell of it reminded me of my mother’s nail polish remover, but I could learn to overcome it, I swore up and down to myself. Then, as it went down there was a fire in my stomach. It made me feel like I did something more than pick up a glass and shove its contents inside my mouth. No, it wasn’t that simple. It required effort and will. As the fire spread through my intestines and I gritted my teeth, it made me feel like a man. I no longer cared that I was this close to being ridiculed at a trendy bar in the Coolest city in the known universe, that I had almost lost the approval of my Cool friend and the Cool bartender. But I liked this. Hey, maybe I even loved it. I had no other choice but to love it.
“Hmm,” I said, putting down the glass. “Whaddya call this thing again?”
She looked at me and smiled. We nodded at each other across the long table. We both knew we were on the brink of something.
The first of five songs we had put into the jukebox 45 minutes ago finally came on. The Shins. New Slang. It told us the rest of the night was ours. We owned it.
I gulped down the rest of my gin and tonic with the lingering taste of the new drink still on my mind. Oasis was getting old anyway.
***
A couple of weeks later I was at happy hour with a coworker. I confidently strode to the bar and ordered my new drink of choice.
“Makers and ginger ale,” I proudly ordered.
She smiled and took my money. She might’ve blown me a kiss or slipped me her number, but really, who could remember? Who even cared?
“Ew, why would you do that to a wonderful bourbon like Makers?” My coworker asked.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Have you ever had it straight?”
I shook my head. Just when I thought I was making strides, making somehing of myself…
She waved off the bartender. “Give it to him straight,” she said.
I checked my senses at the door and tried it. Without realizing it, I was holding my breath. Then I let go and breathed. I was already familiar with this new sensation. With the pollutant fizzyness now removed, I tasted real whiskey for the first time in my life. I felt like I was seasick inside a rocky boat in the middle of the Adriatic. Then, eventually things started to settle down. I waited for the burning sensation. Took it like a man. Once more, I saw the horizon.
***
Kelly is new to the whiskey business. She was mostly there for the bourbon balls with walnuts that were served along with the drinks.
Personalized booze.
Kelly dips her own.
Regular bottles of Makers Mark bourbon are dipped in red wax that run a couple of inches down the neck. Occasionally, you may find a bottle that’s been dipped about halfway through. These bottles are extremely rare (about one in every two cases) and the dip is known as a “Slam Dunk.”
We, of course, slam dunked our bottle. Look, a bubble!
We each got to sample two stages of the bourbon in the brewing process. The clear glasses on the left were un-aged grain alcohol known as the “White Dog.” Why? Because it had a bite. It also smelled of yeast because that’s what it mostly was. The normal whiskey-colored glasses (right) contained the finished product after about 6 years of aging.
Each barrel weights about 500 pounds, according to our tour guide, making stealing them quite the challenge. “Hey, if you can figure out a way to break into our warehouse and take these things out of there, well, then maybe you earned it,” our tour guide said.
Is that a challenge?
Seven years since love at first sip, a merry Christmas reunion with an old friend.
Won’t you join us for another round?
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I’ve always wanted to take that tour. Looks like a lot of fun. Awesome photos, too!
Yeah, the distillery itself is pretty fairy tale-esque. They’re a cluster of houses painted black with bright red borders and you can see them sitting atop a hill from far away. Definitely check it out someday.
Now I’m craving Bourbon. Love the shot of the barrels.
My favorite M83 song: Gone, on Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts.