Homophobia at Bulleit

WHY I DON'T BUY BULLEIT BOURBON ANYMORE

I was on the Bulleit train from almost the beginning. I love their rye and their bourbon and drank them often, as I'm addicted to Manhattans for half the year, and I don't mind a Boulevardier when I'm feeling saucy. But now I've officially disembarked.

For better or worse, America went with capitalism, and the only way for that to work is for consumers to vote for the world they want with their dollars.

That's why I'll never go to a Hobby Lobby and why I haven't drunk a drop of Bulleit Bourbon for almost six months now. 

The story goes that Tom Bulleit's daughter Hollis Bulleit made the brand the powerhouse it is through dogged ambassadorship but was pushed out when her sexual orientation became public. I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that a Kentucky-based family's patriarch is a homophobe; homophobia and racism are rampant down south unfortunately. But I don't care that I'm not surprised, and I'm not going to support a brand that I know is anti-gay.

There are other great bourbons at the same price point anyway.

There's a Slate article about how family businesses are more susceptible to such problems. It makes me think of Marxist notions to abolish the family unit. I don't understand how people spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with racist/homophobic family members. If the world is going to be a better place tomorrow, eye-rolling isn't enough; pillory your grandparents if you have to.

Diageo owns Bulleit and Johnnie Walker and countless other brands. As a consumer, it's hard to pillory Diageo. Remember when Dove was running ads about all women being beautiful while Axe was running ads about all women being sex toys? Unilever owns both brands and didn't care how anyone felt about that if you kept buying their products. That's just how branding works and why Diageo is so powerful (and also dangerous).

For now I'm drinking Buffalo Trace and Gentleman Jack, owned by Sazerac and Brown-Forman, respectively, both of whom have probably had similar issues in their histories. . . but what else am I supposed to do?

---

When I was living in Virginia, my ex-in-laws were horribly racist, sexist, and homophobic. The father of the family would proudly declare himself one from time to time. When his daughter was dating a black dude Big Daddy announced his intention to "tie him to the back of his truck and drive down a dirt road." When his daughter pointed out that her father had expected her brother to marry a Chinese girl, he proclaimed "I'm a racist and a sexist."

When you talk like that you deserve to lose your brand—you're a nazi. Nazi's, contrary to Trump's view, are the enemy because they threaten peace and hinder progress toward equality.

My ex-wife often sided with her parents. That drove a rift in our relationship. It was the thing we fought about the most, and it eventually tore apart our marriage. I thought I had to tolerate it until we had the chance to move far away from her ancestral home. But when that became a real possibility, it became clear she would never be out from under their influence.

And I'll never take that train again.

Which Bourbon Should I Buy My Pool Shark?

Reflections on 3am, The Hustler, and J.T.S. Brown
Guest Blog by Kevin Kunundrum

Sometimes there are surprises on the bottom shelf.

I’ve been thinking of the Paul Newman movie, The Hustler. Early 1960s—glorious black and white. The seedy stark monochromatic reality of life on the other side of the tracks. The anti-hero who gets so close but then self-destructs.

And then it’s that trip through the Underworld anyone who tries for something more must face: A landscape of fire and shadows and clouds of smoke.

And from one of those clouds, Paul Newman’s character Fast Eddie Felson says to the bartender “J.T.S. Brown.”

Time is out of joint. Civilized society is fast asleep or just waking up while Eddie lives a parallel life in a penumbral Purgatory. And sometimes he can see their world, he can almost touch it, but he can never break through. He’ll always be a part of life after dark and smoke-filled rooms and plaintive jazz by Negroes who still feel slavery and pool halls and prostitutes and 3am bars and men who swim about like sharks in the shadows looking for that next meal.

And there’s that hollowness they all share, that they feel but never stand still long enough to face.

They’re sharks after all. And they pull another Lucky from the pack shaped by their pocket and motion to the bartender with the tip of a lit cigarette, “J.T.S. Brown.” The poetry of this place, the economy of words as the drink appears, straight, no chaser.

And Fast Eddie gazes into the glass like temporary absolution. The hollowness is still there. The wound that never heals, what men feel for being alive, for being men. And Eddie looks at the bartender and once in a great while he’ll say,

“I’m feelin’ it pretty bad tonight, Joe.”

And the bartender offers a nod and pours another round. And now and then he’ll say, “On the house.”

And Eddie nods back as if he’s been given a reprieve. The promise of sunrise, straining, bleeding through the smoke-stained glass. Maybe today…

All this was on the bottom shelf in the liquor store in that bottle tucked away. This time traveler from 1960. J.T.S. Brown. Kentucky bourbon that’s smooth and strong and better with each glass. This companion to the hollowness. This poetry of shadows that somehow holds us together.

Kevin's homepage»
Check out Kevin's amazing cocktails here »
Or buy his fantastic book: 

What Should I Buy for My Bourbon Drinker

If you watch the video above, you might get why I like this bourbon so much. Anyone who thinks Tito's is handmade should take a look. I don't have a personal romantic story to go along with this except I drink it a lot with friends. This bourbon comes with its own story. This is the real deal. This is old-school American craftsmanship at its best, but you get to put it in your mouth and consume it! You can't say that about fancy cars, Jerry Seinfeld!

First up, you see. You see the barrel-shaped bottle with its parchment like wrapping. On closer look, you can see where someone has handwritten where the juice in this thing comes from. And there's a little horse on top with letter by its back leg.

Next is the smell. You can smell that barrel. You can smell Kentucky! You can smell the bluegrass on the morning after a thunderstorm. There's a tiny bit of smoke from where lightning struck the night before.

Then the taste. You can taste the summer humidity. You can taste the sweating pipes in old barns. You can taste the dust settling at dusk as the fireflies start their nightly fandango. The freshly cut trees.

It's a magical drink, and it's not the same for everyone. You see, a single barrel means each batch is slightly different and will never happen exactly the same way again. Now, there's something to be said about the incredible talent some masters possess to create the same bottle over and over again, year in and year out, but there's also something worthwhile knowing that after you're done with some Blanton's bottles, that's it: a unique experience you'll never track back down.

If you're at a bar, if they have it, a dram of this will run you between $23 and $55. I knew a bar that sold it at $15, and I drank all they had. I know a cigar lounge that sells it at $23 here in Vegas, and when they see me coming, they pour it before I sit down. I go there a lot for the bourbon.

A colleague asked me before Christmas what he should get for his friend who is a bourbon-drinker, and this is what I suggested. He went with the easier-to-find Angel's Envy, which is a fine bourbon. But if you want to make someone feel special. . . or better yet, make yourself feel special, buy a bottle of Blanton's.

---

A short word about the horses:

When I worked at MGM Grand, I helped work a bar called Whiskey Down. Some bartenders there collected the stoppers because they spell BLANTON'S when you collect them all. You can even buy barrel staves with pre-carved holes into which collectors might insert and display these stoppers.

I'm not a big collector of things, but I have a few of these stoppers, and now I feel like a schmuck not having collected them. I've got a couple N's that are different from one another, which means to me they change these horses fairly frequently, adding to that uniqueness. They're small and easy to forget about in a drawer. Maybe when I get a few more, I'll buy one of those staves. I just found one on Amazon I want:

The Boulevardier

I met a delightful person today who claimed to love bourbon. Favorite bourbon? Bulleit Rye. "How do you like it?" "In a shot glass next to my beer or in a Boulevardier."

I adored this answer partly because it sounded honest and true, and partly because I had not heard of anyone drinking a Boulevardier in ages. It's one of those Negroni bastards you unfortunately don't see around very often, but it's a delicious cocktail and one worth exploring. Also, documented references to this drink predate the Negroni, which I find mildly interesting.

Here's a history of the drink »
Here's a recipe »
Here's a very slightly different recipe »

I have had it in a cocktail glass, but I prefer brown spirits in a rocks/old-fashioned glass for purely aesthetic reasons.

So, this person and I are going to get dressed up in the middle of the night, go to a whiskey bar, and order Boulevardiers. I'll take pictures.

Also, there's some controversy regarding Campari. So here's a link to that if you care about controversy. My personal take is I'd rather eat as few bug butts as possible. I mean, there's an acceptable amount of insect parts in everything we eat, but yeah, I prefer not to jump in and eat them on purpose. I don't see it as a betrayal that a company might change its recipe ever so slightly every hundred or so years either. Times, tastes, and what's acceptable to stick in one's mouth change, people.

Obligatory literary rye reference.