In Mark Twain’s imagination, Huckleberry Finn and Jim passed through “the confluence” in a fog, missing the turn that led to Cairo, Illinois, and possible freedom. Instead, they headed south, past the Ballard County location where Hank Ingram, some 160 years later, ages his O.H. Ingram River Aged Whiskey.
“We’re located near where these two mighty rivers—the Ohio and Mississippi—come together, and the river is at the center of what we do and who we are,” Ingram said. He has bet his future on the unpredictable elements of nature to shape his product into something worthwhile. “The river brings its own elements to this enterprise.”
Ingram knows something of the river. His family has been in the barge business for five generations, and his floating rickhouse is housed in one of his family’s barges. What makes his whiskey—and eventually bourbon—unique is that it is constantly agitated by the Mighty Mississippi. The river level rises from 14.4 feet in the winter to more than 40 feet in the spring—this happens again and again and again.
“The whiskey inside our barrels is constantly churning, exposing more liquid to the surface of the barrel, where it extracts more flavor from the wood,” Ingram explained.
The dramatic swing in temperature is vital. During the day, the heat inside the rickhouse can easily reach 120 degrees. At night, it can drop into the 40s. The heat causes the wood to expand, and overnight, it contracts, squeezing flavor out of the wood and into the barrel. Couple that with the humidity, which Ingram believes cuts down on evaporation and builds a consistency some might compare to molasses.
“Our whiskey barrels are exposed to the constant rise and fall of the river. When coupled with the river’s climate of humidity and its temperature swings, our whiskey literally never stops working,” Ingram said. “We call it barrel-aged and river raised.”
Based in Nashville, the Ingram entrepreneurial dynasty began with the Empire Lumber Company founded by Hank’s third great-great-grandfather, Orrin Henry Ingram. In 1946, Hank’s great-grandfather started the Ingram Barge Company, which morphed into a distribution company, which, at one point, handled Kentucky Monthly magazine and other periodicals and books across the South.
Hank’s corporate identity, Brown Water Spirits, brings together five generations of the family business into one enterprise—an idea he came up with while earning his master of business administration degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Hank, a fan of fine whiskey, is not a distiller. He leaves that part of the business to Owensboro’s Green River Distilling. The aging and distribution network, which stretches across Kentucky and Tennessee, is where he focuses his efforts.
“Our success is built on an affinity for the river and river traffic,” said Ingram. His next target market is Louisiana—where barges strike a romanticized reaction similar to trains in the Midwest.
People have harnessed the immense power of the Mississippi as it flows down to the Gulf of Mexico for centuries. “The river is the lifeblood of its people and how many provide for their families,” Ingram said. “Simply put, it’s a way of life here.”
For more information, visit ingramwhiskey.com.
Barrels on Board
Jefferson’s Ocean bourbon, produced at Kentucky Artisan Distillery in Crestwood, has traveled the world before it ends up in your on-the-rocks glass. Instead of aging gracefully in one of the giant rickhouses that can be seen dotting Kentucky’s landscape, these barrels are strapped in for an ocean voyage that few people ever experience.
Andrew Kung Group
Of the 21 varieties of spirits the Jefferson’s brand offers, founder and chief strategist Trey Zoeller said that 19 are produced using methods not employed in the usual bourbon-making process.
“What is typically done with bourbon is you distill it, age it, cut it to proof, and bottle it. Somewhere in the maturation process, I manipulate it or massage it one way or another to create different types of flavors,” he said. “I always say that Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors for a reason.”
For example, there are versions of Jefferson’s that are finished in rum or cognac casks or even wine barrels.
“For the wine barrel finish, we take Cabernet Sauvignon barrels that have just dumped their wine from Napa or Bordeaux, and we fill them up with bourbon that has aged in rickhouses,” Zoeller said. “Then, we put them in shipping containers, which I call ‘hot boxes’ because when it is 95 degrees outside, it is 125 degrees in those. That heat will sweat the wine into the bourbon for the next nine to 15 months.”
All of the Jefferson’s expressions—as Zoeller refers to the varieties—begin aging in rickhouses. Currently, about half of the brand’s 80,000 barrels are aging a quarter-mile from the Oldham County distillery. The barrels are rolled into the wooden barn-like structures and experience years of hot, humid summers and freezing cold winters, as well as those in-between times when Kentucky seems to experience several seasons all in one day.
But it is the Jefferson’s Ocean label that earns its sea legs riding the waves.
The idea for an aged-at-sea bourbon came about in 2012. Zoeller landed some space for a few barrels on a friend’s ship and put a twist on the familiar aging process. It wasn’t just any ship, but an at-sea laboratory for OCEARCH, an organization focused on collecting scientific data from the ocean. OCEARCH collaborates with scientists and research organizations studying marine life, traveling all over the globe in pursuit of answers. But the organization made room on deck for some barrels of Jefferson’s.
The barrels that contain what will become Jefferson’s Ocean are aged for six to eight years in the rickhouses and then carefully placed into shipping containers that set sail in Savannah, Georgia. Zoeller explained that most voyages follow the same route—traveling through the Panama Canal, around New Zealand and Australia, then to China and Japan and back through the canal before sailing to Europe. In all, the ship hits more than 25 ports on five continents, crossing the equator at least twice.
“Depending on the time of year we take off, whether it is July or January, we can have very different temperature swings,” Zoeller said. “If the voyage is turbulent, then everything is amplified.”
He explained that the sloshing around of the bourbon in the barrel allows it to get more contact with the wood, giving it more color and flavor. The wood also acts as a filter, taking away the astringency of the alcohol.
Crossing the equator brings extreme heat that caramelizes the sugars, resulting in a strong caramel flavor. Another factor in ocean aging is the salty air, which permeates the barrel and gives the bourbon a briny flavor. The more turbulent the voyage, the more bourbon is lost to evaporation, which condenses the liquid and makes it saltier.
“People say it tastes like salted caramel popcorn,” Zoeller said.
Not everyone is immediately sold on the idea of bourbon aging at sea.
“When people first hear about this process, they think it is just a marketing gimmick,” he said. “But then they taste it and realize the ocean really changes the complexity of the bourbon and gives it great flavors.”
For more information on Jefferson’s Ocean, visit jeffersonsbourbon.com.