Ah yes, Bourbon. The fifth element.
Today I'm going to tell you the story of how I met one of my greatest loves. It's a long read (guys it's a blog, let me have this) but through the next 7.7+ minutes you may laugh, cry, learn something, or perhaps fall asleep - the possibilities are endless. So buckle in, kids... it's time you learn about how I fell for a little bourbon named Blanton's.
First, as with all great love stories, I have to paint the picture. Let me take you way back to 2013 when I was just a young lass of 24. I had just finished grad school and once I was released back into the wild, I figured it was only a matter of time until I landed my dream job and made a bunch of money... obviously. Until then, I figured I would pick up something part time to get a little income coming in while I sent out my resumes. Luckily, I had a dear friend who worked at a wine bar and she said they were looking for some extra help. With that, I moved back to my hometown, walked into the house, greeted my new roommates and said, "Mom, Dad, your little girl is going to be a bartender."
Now I want you to imagine a quiet little village - one traffic light - with a few family owned businesses on its main street. Highlights include a little diner across the street from the fire station, a local pizza place that is always packed with hungry patrons on their outdoor patio in the summer, and a newly opened pub a stones-throw away from the aforementioned businesses. A five minute stroll down one of the side streets is a little park where the community gets together every August to hold their annual Frog Jump competition. This is Valley City, Ohio.
Amy's Arbors is nestled smack dab in the middle of this Bob Ross painting, across the street from the pizza place and next to the VFW. At first glance, one would think this small little house was where the old couple from the movie Up! lived. It has a white railing around the front, a porch that holds a few colorful Adirondack chairs, and what is left of a little antique wood stove - not connected to anything - but serves as a subtle clue that what's inside is quirky and unexpected, but still warm and inviting. Upon entering this 100 year old 700 square foot hidden gem, the original hardwood floors creak underfoot, and if you happen to be there on a cool summer day, the windows are open and freshly picked flowers decorate the few tables inside the small room. Looking up, there is an actual arbor inside that you walk under, and to your left is a purple wall adorned with wine racks - with bottles of white wine on one side and red wine on the other. As your eyes wander the room, you see a narrow wooden staircase in the corner with old wooden crates stacked underneath laying on their sides filled with more wine bottles. The brick hearth for a long gone pot belly stove adorns the wall opposite the front door. A small, stand-alone handmade bar with 4 bar stools sits decorated with a platter of clean tasting glasses.
That was my experience walking into Amy's Arbors for the first time. It felt like I was in a Hallmark movie.
Thus began my career as a "winetender." I'll admit, I knew NOTHING about wine when I first walked in, but thanks to the patience of my wonderful coworkers and Amy (you know, the Amy of Amy's Arbors), I was a quick study and found my rhythm in no time. Amy herself was (and still is) a spitfire of a redhead who continues to be one of the most successful women I have ever met. Wine has clearly been one of her great loves but being born in Kentucky, bourbon is what really runs through her veins. Before I knew it, it had been a full year and I was still a winetender with no leads for a big girl, use the two degrees you just spent six years getting, kind of job. Around this time, two major things happened: 1) I walked into an Air Force Recruiting Station and 2) Amy started to put plans in motion to transform the back room of her establishment into a speakeasy-like bourbon bar.
Okay, we've gotten this far, and no mention of Blanton's. Stay with me a little longer and we will get there. Or you can just scroll past the next few paragraphs. I'm not your mother so I can't tell you what to do.
After jumping through a few hoops, Amy installed a bar made out of reclaimed barn-wood held up by a few bourbon barrels. An antique nickel plated cash register sits on the one end and lighting was installed made out of old glass insulators. There's seating for 7, which makes it feel as if you've just joined an exclusive club. Above the sink are two glass shelves that display the bourbon, naturally lit by the window behind it. It was definitely a labor of love - she put together an atmosphere unlike anything else in the area.
Before the soft opening, we got our first of many bourbon lessons! Amy schooled us in the ways of the force - teaching us how to pick out nuances and flavors, telling us the history of bourbon and how it's made, etc. After all, just like the wine in the front room, we had to know what we were selling. If this was to be the specialty of this establishment, we had to at least act like we knew what we were doing, right?
Here's a little bit of trivia for you - do you know what makes bourbon, well, bourbon? Sure all bourbon is a whiskey, but not all whiskey is a bourbon. Remember these things and impress your friends the next time ya'll are out at a bar:
Bourbon must be made in the United States (95% of the world's bourbon is made in Kentucky)
Corn must make up at least 51% of the grain mixture
It must be aged in brand new, white-oak barrels that have been charred on the inside
Bourbon must be distilled to no more than 160 proof (that equates to 80% alcohol by volume) and bottled no less than 80 proof
You cannot add any coloring or additional flavors to the product
I had never really been a big liquor drinker. In college, like most younguns that age, I'd go for whatever was cheap which, more often than not, was beer or wine. If I did have liquor my go-to was Bacardi and pineapple. So drinking bourbon on a regular basis was a brand new experience for me and honestly, I didn't hate it. BUT it did take a few weeks for my palate to adjust. At first they all tasted the same to me - a big ol mouthful of smoky gasoline - but as time went on, I was able to distinguish some of our staple bourbons without looking at the bottles. About a month before our grand bourbon bar opening, I headed into work around 3:30 for a 4-10pm Thursday shift. I unlocked the back door, walked into the bourbon room and there, perched on the top shelf like a crown jewel was the most peculiar bottle I had ever seen. Here it is, the moment you all have been waiting for... my introduction to Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon.
The bottle itself is its own piece of art. It looks like a glass hand grenade. Each bottle has a wax-sealed stopper sporting the figurine of a racing horse and jockey on the very top. Unbeknownst to me at the time, these stoppers are highly collectible as there are eight different ones, each corresponding to different stages of a horse in the midst of a race, with the last one showing the jockey with one victorious fist in the air. Each of the stoppers have a small letter near the foot of the horse, spelling out "Blanton's" if displayed in order. Obviously, with any new product, we have to taste it so we can describe the bourbon to our customers. There were two new bourbons that day, but I saved the Blanton's for last and I'm glad I did!
After pouring a sip in one of our rocks glasses and allowing the harsh vapors to dissipate, the nose (aka the aroma) hinted at vanilla with subtle spice undertones. This made me hesitate because spice is indicative of a rye bourbon. This means that the secondary type of grain used in the bourbon after corn is rye instead of wheat or something else. I'm not a big fan of rye bourbon - something about the spice puts me off - although I know a ton of people who love the spice. Any who, I went in for the kill, had my first taste, and life changed as I knew it.
As per Amy's guidance, I allowed the bourbon to sit on my tongue a few seconds to try to pick out some of the flavors. Initially, there was the gentle sting of the alcohol and some of the rye on the inside of my lips and the tip of my tongue, but that disappeared within a moment. What took over was a sweet but light caramel with little notes of orange peel and vanilla. After swallowing, the sweetness was gone almost immediately, and some of the spice came back along with a toasted nut and oaky finish. The bourbon is unbelievably smooth as it goes down your throat - warming your body all the way to your gut - but it's not harsh like other whiskeys. Let's just say the full body experience, even after doing a full shot at once (which I don't recommend... seems like such a waste of Blanton's), is a pleasant one. For those non-bourbon drinkers, I can equate the experience to drinking a really perfect cup of quality hot chocolate. One that's at the perfect temperature to warm your body with each sip without burning your throat on the way down. As a beginner bourbon drinker, Blanton's opened my eyes to how enjoyable this drink could be.
Boy did I sell that bourbon that weekend. Unfortunately, that's also when I realized that this wasn't the easiest bourbon to find due to its gaining popularity, so once we ran out, it could take another two to three weeks minimum before we could get our hands on another few bottles. At the time, most liquor stores were lucky if they were able to get a half case of Blanton's every other month. It was to the point that Amy would actually make trips down to Kentucky just to get the Blanton's for Amy's Arbors. Even now, Blanton's isn't normally stocked in most stores outside of Kentucky and the surrounding areas. Some stores don't shelf the bottles but will only give it to customers who ask for it because a lot of people will buy the bottles just for the stoppers. Luckily, Amy's Arbors was on the leading edge of the most recent bourbon boom that started around 2015/2016 and the growing popularity of Blanton's and other affordable "luxury" bourbons was our ticket to success. Our Prohibition-themed grand opening of the bourbon bar was one of my favorite nights working at Amy's Arbors, and at that time I was a pretty seasoned employee... hitting the two and a half year mark. HOWEVER, I did know my time there was coming to a close as I would be leaving for Officer Training School within a year. Until then, I opted to learn all I could.
I got tasked to run Amy's Arbors' first bourbon tasting class a few months after the bourbon bar opened up so I went all in, had multiple sit downs with Amy, and did as much research as I could to make the class legit. While I was researching the four bourbons I chose for the class, I came across the history of Blanton's, which is almost as delicious as the drink itself!
In 1897, 16 year old Albert B. Blanton (his middle name was Bacon... I'm so jealous) started working as an office boy at a distillery in Kentucky that would eventually become Buffalo Trace - one of the most prominent distilleries in the country. Over the next dozen or so years, Albert purportedly worked in every department at the distillery. In 1912 he was promoted to superintendent and 9 years later, became its president. Albert proved to be an incredible leader, as he was able to keep the distillery alive through prohibition by being one of four distilleries in the country to obtain special permission from the government to produce "medicinal whiskey." He grew the business through the next few decades, modernized the production, saw the distillery through WWII, and was able to quickly rebuild after a historic flood decimated the area. He improved the property by building a clubhouse and gardens, and even built his own home on the grounds. All in all, Albert gave 55 years to the distillery, and his contributions completely changed the face of the bourbon industry.
After prohibition ended, Albert had a new rickhouse built that was made of tin instead of the normal brick that all the other rickhouses at the facility were made of. This new rickhouse was labeled as warehouse "H" and because the building was made of metal, the air inside would reach a wider range of temperatures compared to its brick counterparts. Remember, bourbon is aged in burnt white-oak barrels and charring the inside of the barrels caramelizes the wood sugars of the oak. As the bourbon ages in these barrels, bourbon gets absorbed into the wood and those sugars leach into the product to give bourbon its distinct color and flavor. Temperature fluctuations allow the barrels to expand and contract a bit more aggressively in Warehouse H than they would in other warehouses which further allows the sugars to sweat out of the wood to work their magic.. As president of the distillery, Albert had his own special bourbon that he would share with VIPs and dignitaries and that was reserved for his own personal consumption. Ultimately, he preferred the bourbon from barrels in the middle of warehouse H and it is from those barrels that he kept his reserve.
In 1984, the master distiller, Elmer T. Lee, was about to retire and he wanted to create a new brand for the distillery that would commemorate the man who hired him back in 1949 - Albert Blanton. As was fitting, Elmer decided to bottle the very best product from floors 5 and 6 of warehouse H, and Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon was born. The fact that it was labeled as Single Barrel was in itself its own groundbreaking feat. Before then, it was accepted that all the barrels would be poured into a big vat and bottled from that mixture. Elmer didn't do that - he bottled the contents of each individual barrel that he let age for 6-8 years.
Elmer essentially saved a floundering bourbon industry by introducing Blanton's. In the 1970s and 1980s, the bourbon market was in serious decline. With the growing popularity of vodka and gin, whiskey was considered an "old man's" drink, but Blanton's was something new and different just by being simple! Aside from being uncommonly good bourbon for the time, each barrel ran the risk of having a slightly different flavor depending on where it was in the rickhouse and how it was effected by the changing temperatures. This brought the novelty that you and maybe a few dozen other people are the only ones who can ever taste that particular bourbon in that singular barrel. This was fascinating at the time and soon, other distilleries ran with that idea and the bourbon industry was back on it's feet! Now, nearly every brand has a single barrel option.
On the bottle's label, you'll find handwritten information telling you about the bourbon you're drinking. It states the date it was bottled, which barrel it came from, which rick held the barrel, and of course, which warehouse it came from.
If you're new to bourbon, I highly recommend Blanton's Single Barrel because it's a great stepping off point to opening your palate up to deeper, more complex brands. The price isn't horrible - between $50-$65 depending on your location and the market, but honestly a lot of that is to pay for the fancy bottle design. This continues to be my go-to bourbon and there's always an open bottle on our shelf at home.
If you make it to Valley City, Ohio, stop by Amy's Arbors, cozy up to the bourbon bar, and see if they have any in stock for you to try. If you want to learn more, check out another blog - Warehouse H - that deals with all things Blanton's. Also, Hulu just came out with a great documentary, Neat, that entertainingly tells the story of bourbon in the United States.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience and stay tuned for more reviews down the road. Let me know your thoughts if you end up trying Blanton's!
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