A Day with Bunghole

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A Day with Bunghole

Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Jun 10, 2007 10:27 am

I spent yesterday showing Linn around the city of Louisville. Linn stayed at the Galt House hotel and on Friday night we had a burger and bourbons at the Jockey Silks bar. We were later joined by Brenda who had the Hot Brown. We then went up to the 25th floor to see the re-model of the restaurant. It is done very nice with lots of glitz. They have tore the old D Maries out completely and turned it into a banquet hall. It looked very nice and upscale. I am sure it is a nice place to eat, but I still prefer the Old D' Marie's with great bourbons and a great view. We then went down to the third floor and had a drink at the bar in the walkway over Fourth Street, connecting the Galt House West with the Galt House East. The bar there doubles as an aquarium with fish swimming under your drinks. After that we called it a night and everybody went home leaving the Galt House to Linn. I was not sure it would be completely safe to leave Linn alone there since the contestants for the Mrs. Kentucky Pagent were also staying there as well as some type of convention with people taking cases of beer to their rooms, but I did not see anything in the paper the next morning about a Virginian showing the beer guzzling conventioneers how to party, so I went on down to pick Linn up the next morning for some touring.

I started the day fairly early and took the top off the Jeep to give us a better view as we toured the city. The day was nice and sunny and warm. We started the morning with a tour of Cave Hill Cemetery. On the way to Cave Hill I took Linn by to see the last building, the main office, of the Stitzel Distillery on Story Avenue and then to Distillery Commons at Lexington and Payne Streets. Cave Hill is a very Old Cemetery in Louisville dating to the 1840's and designed by Grove, who was famous at the time for designing landscape architecture and cemetery's across the nation (at that time). It has been about 5 years since I had been to Cave Hill and my memory for where the grave sites are was more than a little fuzzy and we ended up in the office getting maps and grave sites looked up and marked on the maps. Cave Hill is a very beautiful place with several small lakes, very old trees that are labeled so the amature gardfener can determine the type of tree and its best habitat. Geese and ducks floating on the lakes and gravestones and monument everywhere, as far as the eye can see in the hilly surrounds, makes Cave Hill a peacefull place to take a walk and get away from it all for a few hours. Our trip included visiting and photographing the gravesites for Paul Jones, William LaRue Weller, Owsely Brown, George Garvin Brown and J. P Van Winkle and His son J P Van Winkle Jr. Linn also stopped to photograph the grave of Nicola Marschall, the German artist that came to the United States in the 1850's and became a portrait painter here in Louisville after the Civil War. I have a portrait of J C Breckinridge painted by Marschall next to my desk at work. His other claim to fame was that he designed the Confederate "Stars and Bars" flag and the Grey dress Uniforms for the Confederate Army, while living in Alabama.

We left Cave Hill we went west on Broadway to 16th Street and I took Linn to see the backside of Bernheim's warehouses andf then over to 17th to see the main office building and the distillery. We then went over a block to 18th Street (Dixie Highway) to Brown-Forman's Headquaters and the Old Forester Bottle water tower. Next we went to Shively to the O'Charlies for salad lunch before visiting the dead distilleries of Shively.

We started the tour on Cane Run Road with old Glencoe Distillery at the Corner of Cane Run and Miller's Lane. Not much to see anymore with only a couple of the brick warehouses left standing, but there was a view of the backside of Stitzel-Weller. We left there and down Millers to Fitzgerald Avenue where Linn got a look at the enterance to the Stitzel-Weller distillery before going around to the truck enterance off Ralph Avenue. I know the guard at the enterance and we were allowed to go in and drive around the distillery and let Linn take several photographs. We psent about 30-45 minutes driving around the distillery and shooting photographs. Leaveing there we headed toward Dixie on Ralph and on the east side of Dixie accross from Ralph are the remaining warehouses for Four Roses, Louisville. Up Dixie I pointed out the enterence to the Brown-Forman distillery, Early Times, on our way past Wathen to Bernheim Lane. East on Bernheim I pointed out the remaining brick warehouses from Hill and Hill, the original Bernheim distillery and the Hill and Hill distillery. From there we went east on Bernheim to 7th street and then south on 7th to the old Seagram's Louisville Distillery and finally to the old Yellowstone distillery.

After spending several hours in the sun with the top off the Jeep, we needed some cool shade and refreshments. We went to my house where we set under the shade tree with a pitcher of Ice water, some cigars and bourbon, I brought out last year's Old Forester Birthday Bourbon, Woodford Reserve VIP batch One, Kentucky Spirit and the last bottling of the Four Grain. We spent about 3 hours smoking, drinking and relaxing in the shade with a nice breeze blowing. At about 5:30 we left my house and went to the Bourbon's Bistro. I had the Ribeye and Linn had the Filet and we drank some Elmer T Lee and some Old Bardstown 90 proof. I then quit since I was driving but Linn had an additional Old Charter 13yo. We each had a cigar and Brenda turned up for a while and had some Fried Green Tomatoes and some Old Bardstown. At about 9:30 we called it quits, I took Linn back to the hotel and that ended a very good day.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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Unread postby bunghole » Mon Jun 11, 2007 2:46 pm

I had a very good time. My trip started out with a days drive to Pittsburgh, PA. My good friend Ralph Wilps and I went to "Whiskey Point" on the Monongahela river at small town of the same name. We also went to Large, PA where Henry Large built a distillery that no longer exists. The bar at the old Large Hotel had an old photo of this distillery in flames and the handwritten date on the photo was 1907.

On Wednesday another days travel to Cincinnatti, Ohio to visit with John & Linda Lipman. Lots of tasting going on in their well stocked underground bunker. Plenty of eating also took place with John being the chef. A river cruise, and a visit to the Cincinnatti muesem rounded out the visit.

Friday it was on to Louisville. Sorry that I missed meeting the many fine folks from Bourbon Enthusiast while I was there.

I shot about 140 frames total for the trip, but haven't as yet downloaded them into my computer.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who made this trip possible.

Linn
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Unread postby Mike » Mon Jun 11, 2007 6:09 pm

Mike Veach, you are what all parents want their son to become.......a true friend, generous, and doing what he was born to do!

Bunghole.........well, let me think about this..............ok, ok, you are a saint..............in your own way...............but how else could it be with you?
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas
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Unread postby gillmang » Mon Jun 11, 2007 8:19 pm

Linn, John's bunker is an amazing place.

Please report any specific bourbonic high points or other special moments there.

Gary
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Unread postby bunghole » Mon Jun 11, 2007 8:27 pm

gillmang wrote:Linn, John's bunker is an amazing place.

Please report any specific bourbonic high points or other special moments there.

Gary


Gary,

John & I sat down with a 'hand-picked' Party Source Four Roses Single Barrel and wrote tasting notes together.

That's right folks! Tasting notes from John. We just discussed the various qualities of the bourbon back and forth and the notes just wrote themselves. Pretty painless. It was the first bourbon of the evening, and it was a really good one too!

Linn
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Unread postby gillmang » Tue Jun 12, 2007 7:26 am

A great way to begin a fine bourbon tasting! I think John slowly is becoming accustomed to writing and speaking in this way, i.e., using taste notes or metaphor description.

By the way, John's joke about "black olive" in the palate of some whiskey resonated recently when I was reading some taste notes on beer in a U.K. beer magazine.

The beer was Cooper's Stout from Adelaide, Australia. Cooper's beers are one of the better-known imports and I am sure its Stout is available at Party Source or the other large Kentucky wine and spirits stores. Well, the taste notes included "black olive". So, the analogy works for some tasters and hey, beverage beer and whiskey (even American whiskey) are certainly not unrelated in taste! So, John, if you wish to see what the taste is like, go over to Party Source. I know this beer and can highly recommend it, black olive or no. :)

Gary
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