In the background.........................

D Man.................................Ain't Enough Whiskey

 

Today's history lesson............................Part 1

      For farmers, whiskey was the only way to get full value from their crops.  Not everyone had access to markets and distribution methods, so to feed their family and keep their land, a man sought to do something with the surplus of a harvested crop.  The dominate crop at the time was rye.  They were spending time and money carefully planting and growing rye, and saw no point in watching that money rot before their eyes.

     So they turned rye into whiskey.

     What happened next would send ripples into the American future that we're still dealing with today:  it began with a man who'd become the subject of a huge Broadway musical and ended with Jefferson's Republican Party replacing Washington's Federalist Party.  The American Revolution earned the country its freedom but cost incredible amounts of money, most of it paid for by state-financed debt.  Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wanted the federal government to assume that debt and impose a sizable whiskey tax to help pay for it.  He saw it as a sin tax, ignoring the economic realities of rural life that led to whiskey's distillation in the first place.  It wasn't the first time a city dweller didn't understand life in a world different from his or her own.

-Wright Thompson, Pappyland:  A Story Of Family, Fine Bourbon and the Things That Last

An antidote...................................

      Julian almost never complains—few people know, for instance that he's just on the other side of cancer treatment that could have ended very differently.  Normally a private person, he allowed his closest friends to see the fear in his eyes; to share in his vulnerability.  His illness made him newly reflective, which would have a cascade of repercussions in his life.  He'd reached the point when he had to take dying seriously.  Everyone passes through that valley and everyone emerges changed.  His bourbon is passing through a valley, too.  In the coming months, he will taste the new liquor that will fill his bottles.  The whiskey that built his success had run out, and the "new whiskey," distilled and laid up many years ago, is now ready to be tasted and, with luck, bottled.  I would come to appreciate the challenge of dealing with market trends when you product gets made as many as twenty-five years in the past.  When I met Julian, this is what loomed largest;  soon it would be time for him to test the first ever Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve made from whiskey distilled by his partner Buffalo Trace.  Whiskey is marketed as an antidote to change, so the magic is especially vulnerable during times of transition.  That tension ran through my mind during this otherwise carefree day at the nation's most famous racetrack.  Julian was looking far into the future, to see how this brand and whiskey would be passed from one generation to the next.  The Van Winkles have done most things very well, except for that:  the last time the baton pass got seriously fucked up.

The race ended, and Julian pulled a Cohiba out of his pocket and lit it.  "My victory cigar.' he said.  A grin flashed across his face.  "I didn't bet on the race," he said.  "So I won."

-Wright Thompson, two excerpts from Pappyland:  A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon and the Things That Last