You love bourbon. Your brother, spouse, boss, or best friend decidedly does not. What’s an enthusiast who wants to share a passion for all things charred-oak-aged to do?
Well, if a one-size-fits-all curriculum existed, the bourbon industry would have already rolled it out, says Colin Blake, the creator of the Stave & Thief Society’s bourbon certification program at Moonshine University. He answered my plea for tips on how to help my avowed bourbon-hating friend Nicole appreciate our native spirit. Four years after she moved here to Louisville from Chicago, her curious nature drove a desire to shake off the ick at the thought of brown liquor that came courtesy of bad booze decisions a couple of decades ago.
While there’s no pre-determined map to bourbon bliss, finding a path for your own “student” is part of the fun. Spoiler: It wasn’t long before Nicole was clinking boulevardier glasses and willingly sampling bourbon neat, but I also learned some important lessons in the process.
I owe Blake a drink for calling out my misguided initial approach: I’d been trying to “educate” my friend, reciting bourbon facts and rules at her. This tendency to “assault people with knowledge,” Blake says, has seeped over from sommelier culture and can turn people off before they give bourbon a chance. So instead, I followed his advice that it’s “about showing them what’s amazing, what they’re missing.”
Think like bourbon brands, he says. “They want to tell the story, the history, what makes it unique. People gravitate toward storytelling. It activates more parts of the brain and makes the experience more emotional.” And nobody says you need to be a bourbon expert. “If you don’t have the knowledge yourself, lean on other people, particularly if you already have a relationship with a bartender or there’s a good bourbon shop nearby.”
Granted, we live in Bourbon City, so there’s no shortage of knowledgeable folks around, but you can steal this playbook with bourbon experiences in your striking distance. Just remember Blake’s wisdom: “Approach their conversion as ‘How can I help them on the journey they want to go on?’ instead of ‘How do I get them to my destination?’”
The mix of art and science that goes into distilling was a big part of what initially drew me to bourbon, and I trusted that would work with Nicole, too. The first step was to get her into the heart of bourbon country and let her see firsthand how the magic happens. I booked a private tour and tasting at James B. Beam Distilling Co. in nearby Clermont, where Donald Palmquist, a seasoned industry pro, piqued her interest in the alchemy of distilling. By the end, when we sat down to sample neat pours, she was even able to notice some differences—quite a leap from her blanket “I don’t like bourbon” going into this grand experiment.
Palmquist’s amiable soliloquy on yeast—explaining that this single-cell fungus has to be kept happy above all else—prompted a conversation on the way home about whether yeast is what’s actually in charge here. That’s when I knew something had clicked for Nicole. She was beginning to understand all the variables at play.
While it can be hard for bourbon aficionados to remember our early days, none of us sprang up fully formed experts discerning mash bills, and it’s a marvelous thing to discover something previously unsuspected. Nicole realized that day, she said later, that bourbons could actually be different from one another. And the idea took hold that perhaps there could be one for her.
With that seed planted, I wanted Nicole to soak up Louisville bourbon history, so we headed to Old Forester’s historic home on Whiskey Row. My secret weapon: getting her in front of a barrel firing. Behind the reflection of the leaping flames in her eyes, I could see the curiosity spark. She hadn’t realized the craftsmanship at every step, she told me after.
The guides of course regaled us with bourbon lore and brand histories. It was dawning on Nicole that if people are this passionate about the spirit, maybe she was missing something.
Once a psych major, always a psych major: I also wanted to rewrite her negative bourbon association with better memories, so I took to sliding cocktails into evenings out. Handing her an old-fashioned at the Whirling Tiger while she cheered on her husband playing guitar onstage and seeing her sip like it was the most natural thing in the world was my pièce de résistance if I do say so.
By now it was time to put ourselves in the hands of iconic bartender Susie Hoyt, the owner of the Pearl of Germantown and general manager at Garage Bar. As we settled in at Garage Bar, Hoyt’s approach echoed another piece of wisdom from Blake: Find out what else someone likes, whether that’s a spirit, wine, beer, or even coffee or food. A good bartender can translate those preferences into a starting point with bourbon. After chatting with Nicole—whose go-to drink is a tequila and soda with lime and who avoids anything too sweet or with an overwhelming nose—Hoyt created a cocktail flight: a bourbon riff on a French 75; a bourbon tonic; and the loveliest pale ruby boulevardier you can imagine, built with classic Wild Turkey 101.
Watching Nicole’s face light up with each drink warmed this Louisvillian’s heart. And it wasn’t just that she genuinely liked the cocktails, or that I felt I’d accomplished my mission. I recognized—and remembered—the exhilaration of a new world opening up, and at that moment, I was right there with her.
Fast forward: I brought Nicole a bottle of 101 to celebrate her successful graduation from bourbon 101. We gathered around her kitchen on a Friday evening with our husbands and with boulevardiers made in the Hoyt fashion (that’s a shy pour of Campari, fat pour of vermouth). And we drank to the spirit of discovery.
Dana McMahan is a Kentucky Colonel, certified Executive Bourbon Steward, duly sworn-in (one-time) KCBS barbecue judge, and longtime former Louisville Courier Journal dining and drinks columnist. Her writing has also appeared in Real Simple, Condé Nast Traveler, the Washington Post, and Esquire. Though her wanderer’s heart is as likely to land her in Kathmandu befriending street dogs as in the Arctic playing with sled dogs, she always comes home to the very best dog, her own Cassius Thunderpaws, in Louisville. Follow her @elleferafera.
