Rolling With It | Cross country saved by country boy

Twenty-nine hours of driving in two-and-a-half days. It's a little nutty. "Wacky", as my mother called it. But we did it, all in the name of dedication to The Project. Taking off from NYC Friday afternoon in our trusty Zipcar Toyota Matrix, Joe and I headed for Loretto, Kentucky, to visit the Maker's Mark Distillery. After a brief layover in Pittsburgh with Kelly and Bill (who generously offered a couple of strangers from CouchSurfing.com a place to sleep amongst their menagerie), we arrived in Kentucky Saturday afternoon.

We expected the distillery to be fairly near a major roadway, given the amount of trucking that must go in and out of their properties.... but no. The Maker's Mark distillery is deep, deep in the heart of blue grass, cattle raising, Confederate flag country, many green-hilled miles from the nearest interstate. Just as we were giving up on the winding one-way narrow cart paths, we rounded a corner to find hundreds of cars pulling up amongst a black-shingled, red-shuttered compound. The mixed emotions felt by actually finding the place and having it swarmed with Maker's fans aside (it was their annual Ambassador's Weekend -- fan club meeting and marketing, really), it was a challenge to get anything more than the anamatronic tours and demonstrations.

When we finally snuck away from the pimento cheese finger sandwiches and headed towards some buildings not on the tour, we found ourselves approaching a tall, burly fellow in a brown MM sweatshirt, work boots, and well-worn cowboy hat. A Godsend.



Jude is a barrel-roller. He is one of about 18 guys who rolls empty barrels off trucks from the warehouse into the cistern, where they are filled with whiskey ready to become bourbon, and then rolls the full barrels back onto another truck to go back to the warehouse. 360 barrels a day, each one 150 pounds empty, 500+ pounds full. But as Jude put it, "It's not so bad, you let the whiskey do the work."

Given that all of the Maker's Mark Bourbon in the world is distilled in Loretto, and that Jude is one of only eighteen people who move these barrels, there's a high likelihood that much of the Maker's I've consumed in bars or at home, and will continue to consume, was aged in barrels he's rolled.