Growing up in Kentucky, at least for my generation, bourbon was sacred. I’m glad to see it’s becoming that way again, not only in Kentucky but all over the country and the world. For example, bourbon is extremely popular in Australia and New Zealand. To say they are nuts about it is an understatement. The largest-sized bottles of bourbon we can sell in the United States is a 1.75 liter (about a half gallon). In Australia and New Zealand, they sell 4.5-liter bottles of bourbon! It’s so big, it comes on a cradle so you can rock and pour it since it’s so big and heavy you can’t lift it up easily. I mean, ya don’t want to run out of your Jim Beam over the weekend, do ya, mate? Just ask my buds and fellow bourbon ambassadors Jared, Jason and Dylan over there about how popular bourbon (especially Jim Beam) is. They are the best of the best over there (and damn near anywhere in the spirits world), and they love bourbon. As they say in Australia, “Happy Days!”
Other places that bourbon is finding an increase in popularity include Germany and some countries in Asia. Even whiskey drinkers in the U.K. are embracing our native spirit. And in the U.S., bars specializing in bourbon tasting are opening up everywhere from San Francisco to New York. A place called Rick House opened up just last year in San Francisco. This place is decorated like a bourbon rick house, and it’s packed. It’s the place to see and be seen, and bourbons flow every day there to a young crowd. Char No. 4 in Brooklyn, New York (196 Smith Street), is a very popular place to be, and it features 150 bourbons and American whiskies. Char 4 is the level to which we fire the barrels for the aging of bourbon. PDT (Please Don’t Tell) is a speakeasy in the Village, and it’s run by my buddy Jim Meehan, who wrote a blurb for my book and who also wrote one of the best cocktail books around, The PDT Cocktail Book. I suggest you buy the book and then go have a bourbon cocktail at PDT ASAP. Big Star in Chicago (N. Damen Avenue between North Wicker Park and West Pierce Avenues) is a new place started by the same folks who own the famous cocktail bar, The Violet Hour, which is right across the street. While you’re in Chicago, you gotta stop by Delilah’s, where Fred Noe, Jimmy Russell, and all us ambassadors and distillers hang out after Whiskey Fest there. Michael Miller owns the joint, and you’ll find the largest whiskey selection in Illinois! It’s a cool, laid-back neighborhood type of place, so go casual, ‘cause Michael and his great staff always are. Bar Sable inside the new Kimpton Palomar property in downtown Chicago (505 N. State Street) is another great cocktail bar run by Mike Ryan, who came from the Violet Hour. Ask him what he thinks about Old Grand Dad, Old Fitz and other great bourbons. Are you getting the idea that bourbon is really in vogue? We are smack at the beginning of the Golden Age of Bourbon, so get your ass out there and start enjoying our country’s native spirit. OK, off my soap box now, back to my story.
Here I am with Michael Miller at Delilah’s in Chicago during Whiskey Fest.
AGE IS MORE THAN JUST A NUMBER
My mom drank a four-year-old bourbon because she enjoyed highballs. My dad claimed he didn’t “trust” a bourbon over six years old. He said that there were too many wood notes from the barrels over six. Pappy Van Winkle of Old Fitzgerald bourbon didn’t sell his bourbon when it was under fifteen years old. It doesn’t make any of them right or wrong, it’s just their opinion and preference. That’s part of what makes bourbons different. Age and proof. Like any rebellious son, I wanted to find my “own” bourbon to claim.
In college and before, I drank beer, and a little bourbon. Well, we were in the business, so my parents knew I was drinking some, and they kept more than a watchful eye on me. As my dad said, “We don’t want the boy to be one of the poor saps to go away to college and never had a sip of liquor in his life, and on his first night on his own, die of alcohol poisoning like those poor Southern Baptist kids do!”
Like most beginning drinkers, I mixed my bourbon. I never had “the talk” from my father that some stricter bourbon parents had with their children about only mixing bourbon with a couple cubes of ice or a little water. I think my parents wanted me to find my own way. So I started out by mixing my bourbon with 7UP and a slice of lemon. Keep in mind, this was before the small-batch and single-barrel bourbon craze of the early ’90s. This was late ’70s and early ’80s. Extra-aged and higher-proof bourbons were rare in the bars, and younger bourbons are fine for highballs.
Soon I was enjoying the flavor of the bourbon, and I was drinking it with either soda water, ginger ale, or a combination of the two. I loved to order the combination because my father told me that drink was called a Presbyterian. I later found out from my friend Chris, who was raised Presbyterian, that it was called that because it looked like a regular ginger ale. If you mix bourbon with ginger ale it becomes dark and looks like you’re drinking bourbon. Adding soda water lightens it back to the color of ginger ale. So a Presbyterian could enjoy a drink without appearing to be drinking. Plus it’s a deliciously refreshing cocktail.
I think I’ll have one right now, since I brought it up. Be right back...
Ahhhhhh, yes indeed, it IS deliciously refreshing. How fun to go to a bar and order a drink named after a religion. Being raised Catholic, I was all over that, and a little jealous to boot! But, back to my story…Eventually, I went from drinking a Presbyterian to just bourbon and soda, and then to just bourbon with ice or water. I had found my way after all. Thanks for trusting me, Dad.
I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year. U. of L. is a commuter school, and it just felt like high school on steroids. So when I visited friends at the University of Kentucky, it seemed more like college life to me. I transferred as a sophomore. It was at UK that I discovered tailgating. “Handles” of Jim Beam and bottles of Old Crow and Old Forester were everywhere before, during and after football games. Now this was big time college! Because you couldn’t major in tailgating, I chose to study marketing because there was little math. I still had statistics and some advanced math to negotiate, but after some summer classes, I graduated on time in four years with a whopping 2.6 cumulative. Actually it was a 2.66, so for résumé purposes, I round it up to a 2.7.
After graduating, I went to work at a local bank as a loan officer (now that will make you drink). It was a small family-owned bank that I called Nepotism Fidelity (that’s a joke that I earned). I learned that the best thing I could say about working at the bank was that you always knew the time and temperature from staring at the sign out the window, wondering if this was what the next 30 years of your professional life was going to be like.
After three open mic nights at a local comedy club, I quit my job and hit the burgeoning comedy circuit for the next 20 years. I had grown up watching Johnny Carson on TV when I should have been asleep, but I thought his monologues were the most unbelievable things to witness. I wanted to make people laugh and write my own routines, and so I did just that.
When you leave Kentucky, you find that some bourbons that are popular in your home state are not even available in other regions of the country…and vise versa. I took this as an opportunity to try different bourbons and local brews. You tend to drink what your parents drink at first. When those brands were hard to find in other places, I branched out.
I will never forget the day I found my favorite bourbon. It wasn’t my dad’s bourbon or my mom’s bourbon, it was my bourbon. That bourbon was Old Grand Dad Bonded, and it’s still one of the best bourbons out there, in my opinion. I found this bourbon in Drew Carey’s stomping grounds in Parma, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. When I tasted it on the rocks, it just spoke to me. To this day, I enjoy 100-proof bourbons. It was also the start of what would put me on the bourbon map, teaching people to read whiskey and bourbon labels 20 years later.
This reminds me of a story that happened after I discovered Old Grand Dad bourbon
My longtime friends Paul Halloran and his wife, Amber (which is my favorite color–it’s the color of bourbon), entertain frequently at their house. Often Paul’s parents would be in attendance, and they were both about 75 years old at the time of this story. B
oth of Paul’s parents, Ryan and Louise, are die-hard bourbon fans and big-time Old Fitzgerald Bonded 100-proof drinkers.
When I got back from working in Cleveland, Ohio, and I enthusiastically shared with Louise the news that I had found “my” bourbon, she calmly and diplomatically informed me that “Old Grand Dad is a fine bourbon, yes, but it’s no Old Fitzgerald.” Now remember, this is a very proper Southern lady who was well into her 70s. She continued as she sipped her Old Fitz, “Ryan and I prefer the bonded 100-proof, but now that we’re older, we drink the 86-proof.”
Overhearing her say this, her son, Paul, who had made her drink, informed her, “Hey Mom, that’s the 100-proof you’re drinking right there.” She looked at her bourbon and then up at me and said, “Oh…well, I thought this tasted especially good.”
Then as she swirled her bourbon with just two small cubes of ice and looked at it, she continued, “Ryan and I used to only drink our bourbon neat, but now that we’ve gotten a little older, we cut it with ice.” (You just have to love her.)
Louise passed away in December of 2009 at the age of 90, and being the “Emily Post of Kentucky” she wore high heels to the end. We all miss Louise, so as you read this, raise an Old Fitzgerald 100-proof to her memory, and if you have to cut it, just two cubes now!
A few years after my Old Grand Dad discovery, the small-batch and single-barrel bourbons hit the market, and I was eager to try them. This was also a time that I learned a very neat trick when it comes to high-end spirits. This is a tip you can use today as it’s still true, so pay attention. I found that the Jim Beams, Evan Williams and Wild Turkeys of the world always had a speed pourer on the bottles at the bar so they could be measured out on what bartenders call “a three count.” You’ve seen a bartender pick up a bottle and just start pouring the spirit into a glass. They turn it upside down and count to three, and that’s an ounce and a quarter every time, if they count right.
I noticed that the small-batch and single-barrel bourbons had a cork on them, not a speed pourer. So if I ordered a Knob Creek or similar high-end bourbon, the bartender pulled the cork out and just glug, glug, glugged it into the glass, and as a result I got a double (or more) for the price of a single. I took note, and even though I paid more for that one drink, it was really two really good ones. Buying this book just paid for itself, so use the information to your benefit!
When I traveled the comedy circuit, my big ending was my routine about my father, who was approaching 90 at the time and drank a quart of bourbon a day. That’s not my guess, by the way, those were his words to his doctor when he was asked how much he drank. I’d always order a bourbon on stage and salute my dad with a toast.
Oh, all right – I know you want to know what it was
MY COMEDY ROUTINE ABOUT MY FATHER
My dad is 90 years old and he’s started having trouble with his vision. He’s seeing double, and in his mind, it couldn’t be the bourbon. Of course it wasn’t the bourbon, but then again, he did drink a lot of it. You never know how much they drink, of course. My dad has the magic cup. He drinks from a 24-ounce Styrofoam cup because it doesn’t sweat or leave a mark, and it never seems to empty. He has a bottle in the fridge in the garage, so he walks out there with an empty cup, and when he gets back to the dining room—bam!—his cup is full again. My dad is also very quick witted and funny. He told me once, “Son, always date someone that’s homeless…that way the next morning, you can just drop them off anywhere.”
My dad is an alcoholic. There it is, I said it. I can tell people that my dad is an alcoholic and it doesn’t bother me for two reasons. Reason # 1, I like how things turned out. I’d be a different person if my dad was different, and I kind of like myself. So if Dad was a different guy raising us, we’d all be different. Reason # 2 that I am comfortable telling you that my dad is an alcoholic, is that everybody has someone in their family, someone they know, who’s an alcoholic, and if you don’t think you know someone or have someone in your family who’s an alcoholic…it’s you!!!
Back to my dad’s vision problem. So my mom took him to the doctor. Actually it was a new doctor of his … his fourth doctor, as a matter of fact. You see, he’d outlived the first three. I joked with Dad that we should call this new doctor to make sure he’s still alive so we didn’t waste a trip!
Now, we all know the questions a new doctor will ask when you get a checkup. How much do you smoke? How much do you drink? And the answers aren’t lies you want to rush in to. You try them out on your friends. You’ll ask them, “Does three drinks a day sound like a lot?” It doesn’t sound like a lot to me, but then again, I’m a whiskey professor.
But for the first time in my dad’s life, instead of lying to his doctor, this time he was going to be totally honest. I mean, he’s 90, so what’s the worse that can happen, he drops over dead? Plus my dad loves to read, so seeing was very important to him. He decided he wasn’t going to lie, he was just going to give succinct truthful answers. So the doctor came in and said he was going to ask a few questions and get down to the root of this vision problem. My dad was seated and ready. My mom was there to hear this exchange, and as they say, you can’t write stuff like this, it’s much funnier when it’s the real deal.
Me and Dad, taken around 2002.
Doctor: “How old are you, Joe?” Boy, my dad had that one nailed.
Dad: “90,” he said loudly and clearly.
Doctor: “Do you smoke?”
Dad: “No.”
Doctor: “Do you drink?”
Dad: “Yes.”
Doctor: “How much do you drink?”
Dad: “Quart.”
Now that made the doctor stop and look up. And that’s hard to do.
Doctor: “Did you say quart?”
Dad: “Quart,” my dad was on a monosyllabic roll!
Doctor: “A quart of what? Beer?”
Dad: “Bourbon.”
Doctor: “In what time frame do you drink a quart of bourbon? A month? A week?”
Dad: “A day.”
My dad drank a quart of bourbon each and every day! That sure connected a lot of dots. Kind of explains why I went to a state college!
I don’t know what’s funnier about that. The fact that my dad drank a quart of bourbon a day or the fact that he still thought we measured bourbon in quarts!
So the doctor left the room and probably went to the nurse’s station and said, “Look at this. The man’s 90, and he drinks a quart of bourbon a day. And he’s breathing … right there in exam room #2.”
When he returned, my mom said he looked at my dad and scolded him like a little kid. He said they were going to give him a few tests and get down to the bottom of this vision problem, but as a man of his age, he really should consider quitting drinking altogether.
Now I ask you, what the hell kind of doctor could this man be? My dad couldn’t, no…no, more like shouldn’t stop drinking just like that. I mean, how long has he been drinking a quart of bourbon a day? 50? 60? 70 years??? You can’t go from a quart to nothing. He’d drop over dead.
You see, my dad’s organs are busy! They’ve been processing and filtering a quart every day for all these years. If my dad did stop drinking, his liver would look at his kidneys and say, “This is the chance we’ve been waiting for!” and then just shut down.
If my dad dies, and I think it’s just an “if,” because I don’t’ think cancer can exist in a bourbon-ridden environment. My dad’s probably had cancer seven times and just shook it off.
“Burrrrrrrrr…..”
“What’s wrong there, Dad? You got a chill?”
Dad: “I think I just had cancer again. Cancer always gives me a headache; I need a drink.”
If my dad dies, the second that embalming fluid hits his liver, he’s going to sit up straight in the casket and say, “Now this is top-shelf shit right here, boys!”
I also wrote a song about my dad and performed it on the popular syndicated morning radio program, “The Bob & Tom Show.” The song is t
itled “He’s My Dad,” and it goes a little something like this:
HE’S MY DAD
He’ll eat the fat off your steak, he don’t like it too lean
He’s outlived three doctors, thanks to ole’ Jim Beam
He eats a pork chop sandwich most days for lunch.
Fries everything in butter or bacon grease
Passes constant gas through his BVDs
He swills Citrucel like its gourmet fruit punch.
He’s my dad. He’s my dad.
94 years old and still walkin’ that ain’t half bad.
Claims he’s older than Santa Claus and that’s a fact.
Graduated with Moses, how ’bout that?
Now that’s old school, that’s my dad.
He’ll do the Sunday crossword without even tryin’
He says, “I can’t see” but he’s still drivin’
But if he hits you, you won’t get hurt, he don’t drive that fast.
Tracks the “Storm Team” all through the day
Then checks his rain gauge after every rain
He’s going cross-eyed readin’ all that crap scribbled on the bottom of CNN.
Bourbon Whiskey Page 2
