Come Join Us Part 3: What an offer, but No Thanks
A Short Series by Bob White
Over the past decade of showing off Kentucky’s greatest places, I’ve been asked on many occasions to join guests for dinner, drinks, or both.
Such is quite a compliment, but after a 10 to 12-hour day (or during), I usually passed on such offers; blaming obligations or plans whether I had them or not.
Of course, there were some exceptions, and the following is an example of a time when joining the group seemed like a good idea.
Come Join Us, Part 3: What an Offer, but No Thanks
Okay, so this is not the great time with a great group story, but it does relate to an offer to join a group on a one-of-a-kind dinner experience.
The plan was to begin a multi-day Bourbon & Kentucky adventure with two simple airport pickups and hotel drop-offs. The group would check-in and refresh before an upscale dinner in Midway, later on.
The actual start of the tour would not begin until the day after, but things cannot always go as planned.
This was one of those times.
I was dilly-dallying around the bus garage (I also managed fleet maintenance) when the planner brought me the news. One of the flights could not make it to Louisville.
Instead, the gentlemen on the problemed flight would be flying into Indianapolis. That was as close as they could get to Bourbon Country.
“So, we need you to go pick them up,” I was told. “Another driver will pick up the rest of the group here in Louisville.”
The other half of the group – coming in from Chicago - would still land on time as expected.
Without much time to waste, I prepped the short bus and started the 2-hour drive north from Louisville to Indy. While not terribly lengthy, the drive up I-65 is straight, flat and dull, aside from the poor condition of the road itself.
The trip up and back went fine.
The plane landed on schedule in Indianapolis, but the change in airports meant we wouldn’t have but a few minutes for the guys to get checked in and freshened up, before jumping back on the bus for an hour's drive east to Midway.
Spirits remained good, despite the changes. I could tell the group was upper-class and the planner had mentioned that a few were connected to a successful New York businessman who would later become President.
They seemed fine to me, especially my point of contact, Trey.
We made it to Louisville’s historic Seelbach Hotel in good time from Indy, and the guys changed clothes and freshened up a bit before meeting the other three. I switched vehicles to a gorgeous new custom van that the six occupied fully for the hour drive east to Midway.
The chit-chat was tame between the Seelbach and Holly Hill, one of the best restaurants in Kentucky. It’s among Chef Quita Michael’s list of great eateries in the Blue Grass and is the award-winning chef’s only fine dining venue.
Once there, I ensured the guys were well taken care of. Having taken multiple groups there before, I grew to know the hostess, Donna, quite well. Together we escorted the guys upstairs to the private room they’d arranged.
Trey asked me to join in on the dinner, but I was a little wiped out after a full six hours of driving through Indiana and Kentucky. Besides, these gentlemen were playing ball in a league I was unaccustomed to.
On my way down the stairs, I ran into another old acquaintance of mine, Bourbon Historian and Author Michael Veach heading up the stairs.
What a surprise to see him here.
“Whatcha got there, Mike? “I asked, pointed to the bottle in his hand.
With a quick grin, he explained to me that he was hosting a premium Bourbon tasting for some guests upstairs.
“So, I brought this Eagle Rare from 1985,” he said, turning it to show off the old label.
How awesome was that? People have trouble finding up-to-date Eagle Rare nowadays. To have a 30-year-old bottle is special.
I was a bit jealous and I almost reconsidered my invitation to join the group, but I couldn’t sample any of the bottles as a driver. I sure was hungry, too, but I’d already said no, so I went out to the van to rethink my life.
I didn’t take long for me to remember that I was at one of the top restaurants in the state, where people I knew were running the shows upstairs and down. Why not go in and enjoy something great to eat? So, that’s what I did.
Donna made a nice little table for one for me off to the side of the main dining room. I ordered up a nice steak, medium, that was accompanied with some “dragon” vegetable I’d never heard of.
My meal was great, as expected. It also came with one of the pricier tabs I’ve ever accrued at a restaurant without cocktails involved.
Donna passed on the word that Mike and the group were finishing their dinner and tasting event, so I went to my post at the passenger door of the vehicle and waited.
In less than 10 minutes the gentlemen were departing Holly Hill and headed my way. After getting them loaded up, I took my position behind the wheel.
About the time I put the shifter into drive, Trey, from the seat behind me, started dangling a bottle over my shoulder.
“Here, Bob. We saved a couple pours for you,” Trey announced as he nestled an older bottle of Eagle Rare into a safe and cozy position on the passenger seat beside me. “We couldn’t leave you out of this one.”
How cool was that? Guests thinking of their driver during a high-end dinner & tasting event they’d arranged as a very special part of their very special trip to Kentucky.
It wasn’t until I made it home that I had a good look at the bottle. The glass was obviously older than today’s tall & slender bottle for Eagle Rare. I was told the bottle was filled in 1985, meaning it was distilled in 1975. The taste of the product was different, too - satisfying my palate far more than Eagle Rare 10 year made today at Buffalo Trace.
Perhaps my brain was playing tricks on my mouth, since this bottle was unique for me.
The contents from the 1985 bottle were distilled on different equipment, aged in different warehouses and owned by a different company than bottles of Eagle Rare sold in stores today. It was also a bottle I might never have in my possession again, so maybe that was why it tasted so good.
Sure, my mind could have been playing tricks on my mouth, but I was, and I still am, okay with that.
But I garnered more that night than an opinion of Eagle Rare, then and now.
Focused primarily on the taste profile, color and the nose as I sipped, I played with the little paper tag that dangled from the neck of the bottle.
I was a couple ounces into my then v. now comparison, before I finally looked close enough at the tag to read the text.
“Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45% vol., Old Prentice Distillery, Lawrenceburg, Ky.”
I was unfamiliar with a distillery of that name.
The picture on the tag, however, was of a place I was very familiar with.
There’s no mistaking the Spanish mission-style architecture of Four Roses Distillery with any other whiskey place in Kentucky. It had never dawned on me that the structure, built in 1910, had been associated with any other brand but Four Roses, which was registered in 1888.
Apparently, the place was once referred to as Old Prentice Distillery – where Eagle Rare was born to compete against the other Lawrenceburg BIRD – Wild Turkey.
That little tag launched a long journey into a great many other things I didn’t know about that property, brand and the Bourbon industry.
The great structure, I’ve since learned, was built in 1910 by Louisville’s great whiskey family, the Browns, as an answer to E.H. Taylor’s castle-like still house a few miles away in Millville, now home to Castle & Key Distillery. As one story alleges, a silver-spooned Brown son had grown to love and admire the Spanish mission look of Southern California during his travels, leading to the design of the place Four Roses now calls home.
The Browns also admired a fiery Louisville newspaper editor, George Prentice, so much, the named the distillery after him upon its completion. Hm. Not to say that name stuck for all time.
Noting a legendary pioneer distiller from the Washington County area, the property operated as Old Joe Distillery from National Prohibition to 1942, before ownership changed multiple times before Seagram’s bought it in 1946.
Two World Wars, prohibition, the great depression, Congress’ 1964 Resolution Declaring Bourbon America’s Native Spirit and 84 years would have to pass before that property became known as the Four Roses Distillery.
It’s taken me nearly as long to piece the story of that property together into something simple enough to tell others. And I may be wrong about some facts, but I’ve never been one to let facts stand in the way of a good story.
The main thing is that little tag taught me a lot about what I don’t know.
And for that, I must thank a group of well-off Bourbon tourists, a bottle from Mike Veach’s collection and some writings by the late Four Roses historian Al Young.
It’s so important to know what you don’t know.
For tour guides like myself, who babble on about a topic daily, it’s imperative to know when to take the cotton out of your ears and stuff it into your mouth and dig in and absorb stories and information from others.
