Bourbon Empire (30 page)

Angus is a jovial man in his fifties with a gravelly voice and a graying beard. He wears overalls and work boots while standing in the middle of an old warehouse in West Park, New York, tucked into the Hudson Valley’s Ulster County, the name a reminder of America’s most storied early distillers. The warehouse was a printing shop for the Holy Cross Monastery across the street years before Angus and his partners started Coppersea Distilling there in 2012. Before then, the warehouse stood abandoned. When Coppersea moved in, Angus and his tiny cohort swept out the cobwebs and set up their distilling equipment. The space is pretty rough. The bathroom is a toilet poking out of the concrete floor with a washbasin rigged up next to it. Plywood boards serve as makeshift walls. There’s no mirror in the bathroom, but Angus has helpfully solved this problem by posting a sign over the basin that reads, “You Look Great Today.”

Appearances aside, Coppersea is another kind of “liquid arts studio,” albeit very different from the one at the Beam Global Innovation Center. Whereas Beam’s facility presents a very modern vision of the future, Coppersea’s idea of the future is inspired by the past. It uses “heritage distilling” techniques—a term they coined for their unique process of resurrecting long-forgotten methods—to make whiskey. This includes processes such as green malting, a method mostly used about two hundred years ago. By not drying malted grains before they are ground up, you can introduce clean fruit notes to the drink. At Coppersea, pot stills are used and spirits are often barreled at around 100 proof, which is far lower than most producers barrel at today, but helps preserve the flavor of the ingredients. Coppersea grows their own grain nearby and their stills are direct-fired, a method akin to using a blazing-hot masonry oven to cook bread. Direct firing a still is rare today because it is fickle and can scorch the ingredients (think of the dark crust on a loaf of bread baked in a masonry oven). It requires close supervision and careful
timing, but can bring additional nuance and complexity to spirits. Coppersea’s approach is “incredibly primitive,” Angus explains.

But Coppersea isn’t just simply reintroducing old methods in an effort to mimeograph the whiskey of yesteryear. Its nod to the past is accompanied by the revelation that American history is really just a series of new beginnings. Coppersea’s resurrection of old methods is done with a distinct spirit of innovation. The distillery utilizes modern technology when it makes sense and can still achieve the end result of an old method. Angus shows me a 1921 Hobart food chopper and a 1936 A&P coffee grinder that are sturdy as battleships, built with the chunky permanence of an era that had a less disposable view of such equipment. These tools grind the malt more consistently than other pieces of equipment—antique or modern—that Angus and the distillery manager, Christopher Williams, have encountered thus far, which gives Coppersea more control over the fermentation process. Sitting nearby is an electrified chiller that the men built themselves, which also gives them precise control over production. This mishmash of methods from different eras proves that the distillery isn’t limited by a sense of historical purism that could limit the quality of the final product.

This hybrid mind-set is important. Christopher isn’t duped by sentimental nostalgia, and recognizes that much of history’s whiskey was probably unpleasant, but not necessarily because the methods used to make it didn’t work. In the era before brand names existed, when whiskey was mainly sold as a bulk commodity, distillers had little incentive to swing for the fences. Some of the old methods, however, held the ability to produce a superb product, but just weren’t economically feasible on the large scale the whiskey industry would grow to achieve. Coppersea’s goal is to graft a modern culinary mind-set to old methods that truly have something unique to offer.

Angus and Christopher use the term “folk” instead of “craft” to describe their approach to whiskey, wary of the way the latter expression is often appropriated within the food world. Christopher elaborates by drawing a comparison to the folk musician John Fahey, who had training in classical music theory, but spent his career prowling rural
America to learn unconventional but brilliant playing methods devised by self-taught musicians. Decades ago, Angus spent time with a fading subculture of rural American distillers—those whose legacy was most rooted in the era before the Civil War’s whiskey tax—who made their own liquor as a matter of self-sufficiency. They took pride in their craftsmanship, oftentimes devising creative but contrarian distilling methods akin to the unique musical methodology of folk musicians.

Some of the folk distilling methods Angus learned worked wonders, while others were “extremely questionable,” he explains. For instance, some distillers would implement a sweet mash only under moonlight, letting wild yeast spores at night infiltrate the mash tub (it’s an alternative definition for the term “moonshine”). There’s also a scientific logic behind it that researchers would later discover: ultraviolet rays from the sun can apparently alter wild yeast. Sweet mashes like this occasionally did strange and wonderful things to the whiskey, but the wildly fickle and unpredictable nature of the process ultimately renders it unpractical for commercial distillers.

“We are to whiskey what, say, alt-country bands like Wilco or the Old 97’s or the Jayhawks are to American country music,” Christopher explains. “Those guys aren’t trying to sound like Hank Williams or Roy Acuff, but what they do is the natural extension of that aesthetic: small, twangy, perplexing, weird.” Nirvana was another comparison: “People don’t think about how steeped Cobain was in old-time American music like Leadbelly and Dock Boggs, as well as the deep-catalog punk and garage bands of his own youth,” Christopher says. These two musical comparisons paint a hybrid picture of what Coppersea is attempting to accomplish. The reference to Roy Acuff is a nod to the distillery’s attempt to revive the lost world that cultural critic Greil Marcus once called “the old, weird America.” Nirvana, on the other hand, highlights an antiestablishment vibe apparent in many of America’s craft food endeavors, albeit one that, like the band, can be a huge commercial success if packaged appropriately. Christopher is a fan of many big whiskey brands, particularly Four Roses, but he can’t help contrasting his whiskey to some of the industry’s more ubiquitous
crowd pleasers: “Jim Beam, Jack Daniel’s, etcetera. Those guys are like Brooks & Dunn or Taylor Swift: huge, bland, obvious, familiar.”

Whereas most distilleries understandably let you taste only at the end of your visit, giving them the time to tell you stories and set the mood, Coppersea let me sample its whiskey first thing. This way, the rest of my visit would help inform what I already knew about the product. This wasn’t a calculated move. The distillery is tiny, isolated, and visited by appointment only—shortly after I arrived, it became clear that Angus was struggling a little to determine how a tour guide is supposed to behave. Instead, he acted more like a host, and the first thing a good host does is offer his guest a drink.

We started with Coppersea’s “Raw Rye,” an unaged whiskey made with rye the distillery grows down the street. We taste through distillate made from grains harvested during different seasons. As starch and sugar levels evolve over the course of months, the whiskey transforms accordingly. The tight, green notes of the spring distillate were followed by summer, which carried strong honey notes. The spirits made in autumn had a nose that was floral and delicate, melting into a palate of ripe cantaloupe. Unaged whiskey is admittedly a hard sell. The harsh vegetative notes spur most knowledgeable drinkers to ask of the whiskey’s “potential,” and the gimmicky way it’s usually marketed is an immediate turnoff. But drinkable unaged whiskies do exist, and are best acknowledged as a kind of fleeting miracle, akin to spotting a rare species on the verge of extinction—finding one is like a birdwatcher scouring the forests for a decade in order to catch a quick glimpse of a scarlet tanager. Coppersea’s autumn expression of its Raw Rye is one of the rarities. It can fairly be called “exquisite,” harboring layered complexities missing from many superlative aged whiskies.

Notes of fresh, ripe fruit are rare in white dogs, but Coppersea’s bourbon distillate (made with 53 percent corn) is also full of them. Angus then hands me a sample of whiskey that had been aging in the barrels. It had already achieved a rich complexity even though it was young. The finish was eternal, constantly morphing the way light does during a sunset. In many ways, Coppersea’s whiskies were the
equivalent of funky cheeses—unexpected and complex, but always managing to achieve their own kind of harmony. None of the unique flavors was a mere novelty—lesser distillers will sometimes try to spin obvious flaws as being the same kind of weird nuance that Coppersea very deliberately cultivates.

There are no gimmicks at Coppersea. The distillery’s labels are simple: there is no fabricated backstory and the space on the label is instead filled with the kind of information that whiskey geeks covet but that some brands hide: mash bills, ingredients, methods used, age statements. A few small barrels lie around for the purpose of experimentation, but much of the whiskey they plan on selling is aged in large barrels. “We’re not bullish on small barrels. There’s a difference between flavoring and maturing whiskey,” Angus explains, immediately distancing Coppersea from a method used by many small distillers that has left many critics skeptical. No corners are cut. To borrow the words of Bill Samuels Jr., Angus and Christopher are “product guys.”
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So what else has been erased from American whiskey as the industry has consolidated? Compared to the past, many of today’s most famous brands are the same in name only. They all used to be made by different distilleries that all did things a little differently: ground the grains to different levels of coarseness, used a wider array of yeast strains, malted differently, seasoned barrel wood in different fashions or had barrels customized. As brands got bought out, flocks of labels increasingly migrated to a fewer number of larger distilleries. Processes were streamlined and standardized approaches were implemented: yeast strains and recipes shared, cooking processes batched. Other parts of the industry, such as the cooperages that make the barrels, also consolidated, meaning even more of the little variations among brands would inevitably be lost. Much as different parts of America have lost their distinct dialects, America’s regional whiskey
styles—whiskey
terroir,
if you will—faded. Bourbon edged out rye to become the nation’s norm, and then Kentucky edged out other states to largely define that style. The product was still good, although it admittedly began to fall within an increasingly narrow range.

The eight companies making the vast majority of America’s whiskey do a great job—their relatively few individual expressions all represent winning formulas—but it’s hard not to sense that some good things have been lost. America’s economic history has always been a struggle to balance different systems, like those reflected in the policies of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Each offers its own unique benefits, but also its own disadvantages. In 1952, John Steinbeck addressed this balancing act when he wrote, “A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform.” But Steinbeck also acknowledged a flip side to such advantages: “When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking.” Coppersea is a part of new distilling trends that promise to restore balance. “At this point in American culture, the pendulum has swung so far in one direction,” Christopher explains. “We’re pushing back.”

The Coppersea Distillery is almost entirely bereft of marketing. In an age of gratuitous self-promotion, its rough edges carry a welcome vitality. But as refreshing as Coppersea’s apparent disdain for crass commerciality might be, it’s admittedly problematic when you’re running a commercial endeavor. Angus winces when I ask him how business has been in the two years since Coppersea opened in 2012. Despite the distillery’s closeness to the New York City food media stronghold, coverage had been scant. There’s an almost cosmic injustice to this—Coppersea’s whiskey is far more interesting and nuanced than most other spirits made in the state. As some of Coppersea’s more successful neighbors prove, marketing matters, even if it doesn’t result in the best whiskey.

Angus simply shrugs at the notion that success should be measured by whether or not you can create an empire, which is the model that
many of America’s whiskey producers, big and small alike, seem determined to follow. This well-blazed path echoes Bill Samuels’s comment that “they’re all being built to sell out,” suggesting that there’s only one true model for an American business to pursue.

But Christopher disagrees. “There’s an element that’s decidedly un-American in the way we’re doing this,” he acknowledges. His goal is to keep his scale at a manageable level that might not make him fantastically wealthy, but will allow him to do well enough, taking care of his needs, paying for his kids to go to college, and living a comfortable life. It will never grow to a size where he loses complete control. He can take absolute pride in his product and never have to apologize for what it became after a franchise took it over and the accountants began poking their heads through the doorway every quarter.

Coppersea carries many contradictions: it rejects tradition and embraces it at the same time, breaking some rules while strictly following others. The story of bourbon has been told a lot of different ways, a curious pastiche of charming truths and strange little lies. In the end, it might not matter which are which because the myth has already been created, and that tells the ultimate truth. But then again, why not rewrite the rules and rethink things, because really, who made up the rules and the stories in the first place?

Before I departed Coppersea for the day, Angus reflected on the history of American whiskey, how that story has been told by the industry that dominates it, and how it’s always open to change. His comment spoke not just to bourbon, but to the nation that invented the spirit: “If you can come up with a plausible lie, with a set of logical reasons why that would be the truth, you might actually be right. And who’s to say whether or not the last person to tell the ‘real truth’ about how it really was before somebody forgot didn’t do the same thing?”