The Nose Behind Jack Daniel’s

Bourbon tasting? Well, now, that’s not really part of the Bourbon aesthetic. Your classic Bourbon drinker just pours a fistful of Old Antiquity and settles gratefully into its rich vanilla-caramel bouquet. Taking pointed sniffs and sips and making notes, wine-freak fashion, has nothing to do with it.

But Bourbon drinkers are famous for their strong preferences, so Lincoln Henderson, master distiller for Brown-Forman Corp., sniffs and sips Bourbon all the time. He is responsible for the flavor and consistency of Old Forester, Jack Daniels and a number of specialty bottlings.

Henderson uses a special European spirits-tasting utensil called a nosing glass, made in this country to Brown-Forman’s specs. Curved inward at the top to concentrate the bouquet but holding just a few ounces, it looks like a tiny wine glass with a very short stem. Before sniffing the whiskey (1 1/2 ounces, diluted with water to 40 proof), he covers it with a convex glass plate and then swirls the contents to bring up the aroma before removing the plate.

Actually, he tends to shake the nosing glass up and down as well. “I like to get sloppy,” he says wryly. “Nobody wants to taste next to me.”

But they may have to. Henderson--a quiet, silver-haired gentleman, no matter how he describes himself--is known for his acute sense of taste. He’s one of only three North Americans among the judges at the International Wine and Spirits Competition held in London every year.

Apparently, the rank of top spirits taster chooses you, not the other way around. After getting a degree in biology from the University of Louisville, Henderson started working at Brown-Forman simply because he needed a job. “My father told me, ‘If you’re applying for the job, tell them it’s what you’ve always wanted to do,’ so I did,” he says. In time, his tasting talents were discovered and he moved up from grain chemist to, among other posts, manager of sensory evaluation.

In addition to his regular duties, Henderson travels around introducing new Brown-Forman products, such as a couple of new premium Bourbons. Jack Daniels Single Barrel is, as the name indicates, bottlings of unblended single barrels of Jack Daniels, each of which will have a somewhat different flavor profile.

Woodford Reserve, named for Woodford Co., Ky., where Brown-Forman has restored the 1878 Labrot & Graham distillery as a showcase property, is a “small-batch” Bourbon blended from 10 to 12 selected barrels. It has a startlingly sweet nose with something like coconut in it (“That comes from wood lactone,” Henderson says). It’s packaged in a flat, rectangular, antique-looking and altogether handsome bottle which closely resembles the ones Brown-Forman founder George G. Brown used in the 1870s when he introduced the idea of maker-bottled whiskey to a world where whiskey had always been sold from the barrel.

Super-premium Bourbon is relatively new. Cognac has had super-premium bottlings for generations. Single-malt Scotch has conquered the world, and ultra-primo tequilas are becoming the rage today. Bourbon has been a little slow to follow suit, but virtually all the famous distillers have premium versions now. Brown-Forman’s first venture 10 years ago was Gentleman Jack.

“Premium lines are a general tendency in the distilled beverage industry everywhere,” comments Henderson. “People are drinking less these days, so they want better quality when they do.”

On the other hand, he insists that Bourbon has always been a premium product. By Scotch standards, for instance, all Bourbon is single-malt. Under the law, Bourbon has to be the product of a single distillery; otherwise, you can’t sell it as Bourbon, only as blended whiskey.

It doesn’t have to be made in Kentucky. There are Tennessee Bourbons (though they may choose to call themselves Tennessee whiskey instead) and others from Indiana, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Kentucky’s only privilege is that it gets to call its product Kentucky Bourbon. Other states can only label their whiskey Bourbon, without a state name.

To make Bourbon, all you have to do is follow the regulations that make Bourbon unique. It has to be distilled from a grain mix that’s at least 51% corn, and it has to be aged in new white oak barrels that have been charred on the inside. Bourbon is the only whiskey in the world aged in new barrels. (What happens to the barrels once they’ve been used? A lot of them, Henderson says, find their way to Scotland.)

It’s possible to make Bourbon that’s nearly 100% corn, though a percentage will always have to be barley malt just to convert the corn starches to sugar for fermentation purposes. In practice, Bourbon makers tend to use 70% to 80% corn, with the rest made up of rye for spiciness and barley for what Henderson offhandedly calls “a mild, neutral flavor, like Scotch.”

Corn, America’s own grain, gives Bourbon part of its character. Even more comes from the yeast used in fermentation.

“Yeast is critical,” Henderson says. “The yeast you use is responsible for 40% of the final flavor. Every strain gives its own character. We use a different strain of yeast for every line of whiskey.” Yeasts contribute fruit-like flavors--peaches, pears, grapes, even pineapples.

The proof at which the fermented grain is distilled affects the flavor, but the most important element is new oak barrels. Oak aging always gives some vanilla flavor, as winemakers have long known. And forget about charring--just to bend the staves to make barrels, you have to heat them, a process called “toasting.” This caramelizes the sugars in the wood, and the caramel in the new barrels gives Bourbon its distinctive red-amber color (other whiskeys are yellowish unless caramel is added) and candied sweetness.

Finally, the barrels of whiskey are aged in multistory rack houses, where the constant change of temperature matures it. In hot weather, the liquid expands, giving off alcohol--5% a year, which is cutely known as “the angels’ share.” When the weather cools off, the liquid contracts, drawing in a small amount of air, which mellows the flavor. In the process, the whiskey absorbs tannins from the wood, which give it an edge of toughness. Without the astringency of tannins, whiskey tastes gutless and insipid.

Bourbon stands in stark contrast to wine, where the emphasis is on the quality of the raw material. You never hear whiskey makers boast about their barley or complain about the corn harvest. Bourbon’s flavor is 60% wood; it gets more of its character from wood than any other beverage. That woodiness is a heritage from the pioneer days, when toughness and downright stubbornness were essential virtues and one of our presidents gloried in the nickname Old Hickory. Probably it’s no accident Andrew Jackson made his home in Tennessee.