| American
Whiskey
February 18, 1999 -- The West End of Bourbon Country |
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We meet Charles Medley in his office, where the tall fellow with the silver hair of a middle-aged statesman and the impish smile and bright eyes of a young kid shows us another view of today’s bourbon man. From a large family of brothers and sisters, all of whom have had a shared interest in this small but inactive whiskey empire, Charles, along with his son Sam, have managed to bring at least part of it back to life and actually release a product.
A
very good product, as a matter of fact. Charles bottles his Wathen’s
Single-Barrel Bourbon himself,
hand-signing each label and carefully packing the cases. He takes us
on a long, rambling walk through the cold remains of the distillery rooms.
Excitedly, he talks almost as if the equipment were still in use, as if he really did personally run the still, and as if he really did replace the original stainless steel doubler with the current all-copper one, because that's how you make better whiskey. And as if he really did make the bourbon that he is bottling. And that's because it's true; he really did do those things.
But that was years ago, when Glenmore (the large distillery
on the other side of Owensboro) owned and operated the place, or at least
purchased the whiskey made here.
Anyway, as best as we can understand it, when Barton purchased the Glenmore property, it also purchased Glenmore’s brands. But it didn’t purchase the existing stock. So the whiskey now found in bottles of Yellowstone, Kentucky Tavern, or Ezra Brooks isn’t the whiskey that was originally made to go in those bottles – it’s whiskey that Barton Brands made (and which would have ended up as Very Old Barton, or Colonel Lee, or Kentucky Gentleman). Somehow, Charles obtained possession of some of the old Glenmore stock (which he’d made himself, you recall) and this is what he’s now bottling as Wathen’s Bourbon.
This was certainly a special visit for us. We had discovered Wathen’s
Bourbon as part of our quest to ensure that there be no American whiskey
we
haven’t tasted, and immediately (and jointly) declared it to be one of
our absolute
favorites. That it also represents the rebirth of an historic distillery
and is the lone example of bourbon produced in the once-major whiskey
area of Owensboro made it even more attractive. The challenge of locating
and contacting the owner/distiller and arranging a visit made it truly
fascinating. And even if all that weren’t already true, five minutes
with Charles Medley certainly would have made it so. Of course our visits
to distilleries and the Kentucky Bourbon Festival have given us the chance
to speak with other important figures in the world of American whiskey. But
we always talked with them about whiskey, usually their own.
So we all take off, Charles in his car and us in ours. Charles drives the
way he talks – every which way and back, changing direction in the middle
of the road, making left turns from the right lane. Following him, we feel
like we're performing a scene from "It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". But we
manage to get to
the restaurant without a collision, and what a place that is!
We leave from the Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn and head home, crossing the Ohio river at Owensboro into Indiana and driving north and east to Louisville, then crossing the river again back into Kentucky. Along the way we stop at several liquor stores hunting for rare items. We find some, too. At one we discover a bottle of Mellow Mash, a bourbon made by Yellowstone (Glenmore? United?). Mellow Mash was never re-released, so it was the original product (Charles might have made that whiskey, too). And we find several examples of Old Taylor made by National Distillers gathering dust on the shelves. Well, they gather dust no more. We arrive home this evening at around 8:00, to a cheering four-cat welcoming committee who mostly want to know if they can go outside now. Update: June, 2007 -- The Beat Goes On... Sam Wathens recently wrote to tell us how the brand is progressing, and to re-introduce us to their newly-relaunched web page (www.wathens.com). Sam and his father are now working with a new national distributor (the Frank-Lin Company of San Jose, CA) as part of renewed national market penetration efforts. Currently they are concentrating on making Wathen's Kentucky Bourbon more readily available in Southern California and Colorado and, although it's a daunting task, they're having some great success with that. More regions will follow.
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his
morning we visited the 
The
Medley family have been part of Kentucky bourbonmaking for generations. When
combined with the Wathen family (which, indeed, they have been several times)
they go back even further. Although the Reverend Elijah Craig is commonly
credited with having produced the first bourbon whiskey at his fulling mill
in Lebanon in 1789, Henry Hudson Wathen was known to have been operating
a distillery in the same town a year earlier. The Wathens later acquired
the Old Grand Dad label and produced that bourbon for some time. The Medleys
were just as important in the western part of the Bourbon area. At one point,
they owned and operated three distilleries all in a row along the western
side of Owensboro. The middle one of these is the current Charles Medley
site.
It's
quite eerie seeing the beer still, the doubler, the mash cookers and all, just
fading silently into the rust and gloom.
Charles
was the master distiller for them then (in fact, except for the years between
1991 and 1996, a Medley has been a master distiller somewhere continuously
since 1812!), and his work would originally have been destined to become
Ezra Brooks or Yellowstone, or Kentucky Tavern, or sold by the barrel to
private individuals. Charles’ whiskey got as far as into the barrels,
and then Glenmore was purchased by United Distillers, or maybe it was just before that,
or maybe it was right before the stock was all bought by Barton Brands. Or
was it only the facilities that Barton took over? It’s all so confusing,
and Charles covers it all so thoroughly. And at such a rapid, rambling, and
non-stop pace.
The
bottles of Wathen's now available are probably the last that will actually
come from here, though. Charles explains that he’s negotiating with a
company in St. Louis to have the barrels shipped to them for bottling
and distribution. That's because the promotional work Charles and Sam have
been doing is beginning to pay off and demand has increased beyond their
capacity to fill bottles at the current plant. What's really exciting is
that it may not be long before this equipment is back to distilling new whiskey
again.
Charles allows us (insists,
actually) to see many other sides of himself, some of which have nothing at
all to do with Wathen’s Bourbon. He seats us in a sparsely-furnished
display room and spends several minutes setting up a slide projector.
After hurrying
thorough some pictures of the opening of his minuscule bottling line, close-ups
of hand-labeling, and a few quick shots of the distillery, he gets to
what he really wants to show us... pictures of his recent trip to the Fiji
Islands. Both Charles and his son Sam are avid scuba divers and they took
a trip designed especially for scuba divers. There were world-class, award-winning
professional photographers (also divers) on the trip and Charles has some
really beautiful underwater photos to show. But his real pride, and it seems like
the high point of the trip for him, was the opportunity to attend a wedding
on the island. The detail with which he describes the islanders and the ways
their ancient culture has mingled and blended with "western" life
is extraordinary. He shows more pictures of the wedding than of the whole
rest of the trip. Charles seems to have a deep appreciation for cultural
differences and a desire to extend that feeling to others. The quality of
his narrative would have been quite acceptable in a Discovery Channel or
PBS documentary. And we can easily see that he’d had the time of his
life.
The
Medleys have lived for generations in Owensboro, and Charles is also very
keen on his town and its history. He knows a lot about it (heck, the Medleys
and the Wathens are a lot about it), and he’s very proud of it.
After turning down lunch offers from at least two phone callers during the
slide show, he suggests we all go to lunch at a favorite place of his, the
The Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn was started by the Bosley
family in Owensboro, over 35 years ago. It was then a thirty-seat restaurant and
it served Kentucky barbecue. Over the years, the building has spread out
in a rambling fashion as room after room has been added on, until it now
seats over 300. It still serves Kentucky barbecue, but now it serves it on
a much grander scale. In fact, via mail order, people the world over can
enjoy Kentucky barbecue from the Moonlite. The feature attraction is the
enormous buffet, with both sliced and shredded versions of barbecued beef,
pork, and mutton. We’d never eaten mutton before (barbecued or any other
way). Linda thinks it a bit too strong, but I like it a lot – at least
in a barbecue. Mutton is adult sheep, and is as different from lamb as beef
is from veal. You don’t find it everywhere, but you find it here.
While we stuff ourselves silly, Charles tells us
stories of his travels to Japan promoting Wathen’s. He talks about
people he works with and goes to dinner with, without any real emphasis on
what their social position might be. And then later, as he gets further into
his story, you begin to realize that he’s talking about ambassadors
and senators and ministers of governments and such. Or maybe he’s
talking about the waiter, or the stock clerk. It doesn’t seem to make
any difference to Charles – he can find something fascinating about
anyone. We kind of think the most fascinating of all, though, is Charles
W. Medley himself.
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Story and original photography copyright © 1999 and 2007 by John F. Lipman. All rights reserved. |
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