The Curious Bartender’s Whiskey Road Trip

“The Curious Bartender’s Whiskey Road Trip is the best book in this series so far.”

I’m a big fan of the Curious Bartender series of books by Tristan Stephenson, and have already reviewed his Gin Palace and Rum Revolution titles in the series. His newest one is probably his most ambitious to date, involving a road trip to visit fifty of the USA’s best and most interesting whiskey distilleries. But as well as being the most ambitious, it’s also the best read yet.

Choosing the Distilleries

The fifty distilleries were chosen for a combination of reasons, including names you can’t ignore, like Jack Daniel’s, Maker’s Mark, and Jim Beam, and newer craft distilleries like Wyoming Whiskey and Garrison Brothers in Texas. One thing they do have in common is that they’re all producing exceptionally good whiskies.

Something that made the book even more interesting for me – and made me realise how lucky I am – is that the author’s choice of distilleries includes several that I’ve also visited and written about, including KOVAL in Chicago, Leopold Brothers in Denver, George Dickel in Tennessee, and George Washington’s Distillery at Mount Vernon.

A Whiskey History

Many of the distilleries have been chosen because of their historical significance, like the reconstructed George Washington Distillery, and by placing them in a specific order the author is also cleverly able to tell the history of whiskey in the USA as you make your way through the book.

He starts, for example, at the Reservoir Distillery in Virginia, which allows him to tell the story of Jamestown, of how Thanksgiving came to be, and how the early settlers learned how to make beer from corn, but then discovered it was better used to make whiskey! He also covers the relationship between the early settlers and the indigenous people, which was sometimes amicable, and sometimes not.

Who Was the First Person to Make Whiskey in the USA?

We learn all this, and who was probably the very first person to make whiskey in the USA, before the author’s even reached his first distillery. This approach continues throughout the book, in which each distillery gets its own chapter (see the list of Contents alongside the map), but the first half of each chapter is given over to some aspect of whiskey history or whiskey-making that’s relevant to the distillery. These include such topics as how to taste whiskey, the effect of barrels, the maturation process, the differences between bourbon and whiskey, water sources and, of course, the basics of how whiskey is made.

Elijah Craig

When visiting Heaven Hill, makers of Elijah Craig, we learn all about the original Reverend Elijah Craig, who was maybe the first person to think of charring a whiskey barrel. This wasn’t because he thought it would give a better flavor to the whiskey, but because the barrels had previously held something unpleasant. Some stories say fish, the author points out, while others say it was nails, but whatever the truth, we know the result: charring a barrel imparts more flavors to a whiskey. In the case of bourbon it’s now an essential part of the process, though the charred barrels have to be made of oak and be brand new – no danger of your bourbon tasting fishy these days!

The Curious Bartender’s Whiskey Road Trip

While this isn’t a travel book as such, we do learn something about the trip as he drives to each distillery, like the wide open plains and snowfall as he heads into Wyoming, and the hot weather of Texas, both of which also affect the whiskey-making process in each place. I’d have welcomed more of the travel side, but then there’d have been less space to learn about US whiskey and the way the different distilleries make it. Photographer Addie Chinn also made the trip, and Chinn’s photos really add something to the book, making the whiskies, the distilleries and the landscapes look beautiful.

Other Features

After a distillery tour, each chapter ends with a tasting of some of the distillery’s whiskies, a cocktail recipe using one of their whiskies, and two or three songs from a Road Trip Play List. It’s amazing how many songs there are that have ‘whiskey’ in the title! The cocktail recipes are interesting too, as the author started off as a bartender and mixologist, not a writer. Whiskey and tonic, anyone? Well ,yes, if you choose the right whiskey.

At the end of the book the author chooses his absolute number one favorite US whiskey distillery, but to find out which it is, you’ll have to buy the book. All I can say is that I’ve reviewed several of their spirits (not just whiskey) and they are amazing.

Typos

The only thing that lets the book down, as with some other spirits books I’ve reviewed recently, is that it is littered with typos, and mostly words missing in a sentence. Does no-one proof-read books these days, before they go off to the printer? It would be boring to list them all, but I spotted the first one on page 21 (“The simplest way make smoky whiskey”), and they came thick and fast, with two on page 32 (“… how whiskey making was undertaken on this kind of scale, as well clues as to how…” and “hot mash would need to stirred”). Another error – the name of the Chicago distillery is written KOVAL not Koval.

Fun Facts

To compensate for the typos, the book is also full of fun facts that are woven into the stories:

• US whiskey is the fastest-growing category in the world of spirits today.
• By 2020 there will be more distilleries in New York than in Scotland.
• In 2000 there were no distilleries in Virginia. By 2008 there were six. In 2019 there were over fifty.

And of the 50 whiskey distilleries he visited, which was his favourite? Well, I can’t argue with his choice of St George. I haven’t yet sampled their whiskey but I’ve raved about their Dry Rye Gin and several of their vodkas, especially their Green Chili Vodka, which is outstanding. So, apart from the typos, I can only say that The Curious Bartender’s Whiskey Road Trip is definitely the best book in this series so far.