The Tasting Panel magazine

June 2012

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Rob Samuels told the crowd about how his grandparents created Maker's Mark Bourbon. "Our family has been distilling whiskey for four generations, and to be honest, in the beginning the whiskey was rather bad. So in 1952 my grandfather set out to distill the finest small batch whiskey. He finally chose a mash bill that included wheat, which makes it one of only a handful of bourbons to not include rye. It was my grandmother though who created the brand. She selected the bottle we still use to this day, named the whiskey Maker's Mark and decided to seal each bottle with red wax. To further distinguished our whiskey from the rest, she chose to honor our Scottish heritage by dropping the "e" from the word whiskey in our name. We work hard to preserve the family legacy and so far it's been working quite well. The crowd then got a chance to hear from Fred Noe, Jim Beam Master Distiller and great-grandson of Jim Beam. He regaled the audience with a story about his father—Booker Noe—and his summers spent working in and about the Jim Beam Distillery, an experience that ultimately led him to creating Jim Beam's new Devil's Cut Bourbon. "When I was a teen- ager the guys in the warehouse would occa- 56 / the tasting panel / june 2012 sionally slip me a few quarts of whiskey that had been sweated out of the barrels. I shared it with my friends, and I've had few whiskeys that tasting so good. So recently we decided to bottle a bourbon that contained some of that precious barrel-extracted whiskey. To create Devil's Cut, we take empty barrels of extra-aged Jim Beam Bourbon and fill them with water to pull the trapped bourbon and flavors from the barrel wood. That whiskey is later added back to our six-year bourbon to create 90-proof Devil's Cut. It makes for good drinking." Noe went on to explain that the brand name is a twist on the phrase "Angel's Share," which refers to the whiskey lost from the barrel through evaporation. Therefore it stands to reason that the found whiskey extracted from the barrel be called the "Devil's Cut." Dan Tullio, Master Ambassador for Canadian Club Whisky, spoke about how the brand's longevity is due in part to Prohibition in America. "Canadian Club is made across the river from Detroit. During those long dry years, an amazing amount of CC somehow found its way into the United States. That's

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