A ROAD TRIP PLUS

What to do when you have to drive 1,533 km just to get to the starting line of an epic road trip like MINI Takes the States? And what if your route takes you through Kentucky and the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee? The answer is obvious, take your time and enjoy what those places have to offer. So my wife and I booked some extra time off before the start of MTTS 2016 so that we could meander around Bourbon country and the Tail of the Dragon at Deals Gap. I’m a young guy, but I’ve been tasting and collecting whiskey’s since I graduated college and landed a job that paid well enough to support the habit. So to make the most of our time in Kentucky we got up early and blitzed the 1000 km drive from Toronto to Lexington in time to enjoy some southern cooking and cocktails at Chatham’s on High in downtown Lexington. My wife and I had agreed before we left that we would take turns during the trip being each other’s designated driver, tomorrow would be her day to drive. We set out the next morning with our tummies full of ‘Hot Brown’ (official breakfast of Kentucky) and rolled down the drive into Buffalo Trace Distillery for a tour. If you can make it there for 10 AM, Freddie Johnson is a third generation Buffalo Trace man and the best tour guide I have had for anything ever. Freddie has his script down, “When my grandfather came here,

this warehouse was full of whiskey. When he left, it was still full of whiskey. When my father came here, this warehouse was full of whiskey. When he left, it was still full of whiskey. When I came here, this warehouse was full of whiskey. And when I leave, this warehouse will still be full of whiskey.” It’s a compelling story for something as time intensive as whiskey making, especially when you’re standing in a barrel

warehouse surrounded by whiskies that would be old enough to vote if they were people. The tour, like most, ended with a tasting. The expressions on offer were the softer, sweeter and younger Buffalo Trace, Blanton’s Original with it’s refined vanilla, sweet toffee and spicy rye, and the more complex Eagle Rare 10 Year Old. Of the three I have to say I’d take the Eagle Rare because I’m a sucker for any product that manifests flavours of cherries, chocolate, vanilla and spice. For dessert, Freddie poured us a float of craft root beer topped with Buffalo Trace Bourbon Cream. Before he sent us on our way, I asked him if I could take some pictures of the car around the distillery grounds and he said “Sure, just stay on the service roads and if anyone asks, tell em Freddie Johnson sent you.” Great guy that Freddie. From here, my wife took the wheel and motored over to the oftoverlooked Wild Turkey Distillery where literally everything they make is on offer, but you’re restricted to three samples,, so choose wisely. I chose the Russell’s Reserve Small Batch, Rare Breed, and after the tour bus crowd had gone, I coaxed the girl behind the bar into letting me sample the Wild Turkey Diamond Anniversary. Rich vanilla and buttery popcorn greet the nose alongside peanut brittle, pipe tobacco and flares of rye spice. Dry oaky vanilla leaps out at first taste before being joined by clove, cinnamon, dried orange

peel and wood char. The finish is dry, but doesn’t fade as abruptly as other dry whiskies, instead the spice notes fade away leaving vanilla and caramel while the char mellows into pipe smoke and leather. This is not a sweet bourbon; instead, the corn takes a backseat to the rye grain and the barrel. It’s pretty well established from the interviews that he’s given that Jimmy Russell doesn’t like old bourbon. This is made pretty obvious by a lineup of where the oldest spirits have spent 12 years in single use oak and the majority are 7-9 years old and proofs ranging from 101 to cask strength. So I’m not sure why Eddie Russell would hand pick thirteen and sixteen year casks to honour his father’s 60th year making bourbon, but it sure is a classy spirit. So I left with a bottle. Despite its Spanish mission-style architecture dating to 1910, I found the Four Roses distillery to be the most modern facility of the three. At the distillery, Four Roses sell a limited run barrel proof release which lets you try a hand selected example of one of the ten Four Roses whiskey recipes before it is blended. It is called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Four Roses Single Barrel Private Selection and the bottle I wound up with uses recipe OBSK (60% corn, 35% rye, 5% malted barley), aged for 8 years and 6 months. This rye heavy whiskey is dominated by oak, spice and rye bread; it’s sweetness manifests more akin to maple than caramel or molasses. Also, when they heard that my wife was my designated driver, they gave her four red roses. It was our plan to be on US-129 well before dark, but a storm had rolled in and it took us so long to get to Maryville that night had fallen and I had long since sobered up. We decided over dinner that I would be the one facing the prospect of slaying The Dragon in the dark during a thunderstorm. What followed was one of the most epic drives of my entire life. The road was empty, and the radio was off, the only soundtrack I needed was the one provided by the rain, the

thunder, the engine, and my copilot calling out the direction and the difficulty of the turns ahead. The twists and turns prevented any standing water from gathering but, but the JCW just clung to the road in a way that gave me the confidence to attack the bends. In any other car it would have been a white knuckle drive, but the MINI got us to our lodge safely. The next morning was perfect, the rain had given way to the sun and the smoky mountains lived up to their name. We cruised the national forests on the Great Smoky Mountain Loop and the Cherohala Loop, driving the The Tail of the Dragon twice more before finally heading to the MTTS starting line in Atlanta, Georgia. It was an epic road trip, but that stormy night in Deal’s Gap was the drive of a lifetime.