As grasp distiller at Milam & Greene Whiskies, Marlene Holmes by no means imagined she’d be ignoring retirement at age 65 to work till who is aware of when in Blanco, Texas. That the Bourbon Ladies Affiliation awarded her Grasp Distiller of the 12 months final August was much more of a shock to a woman who had visions of turning into a catfish farmer within the late Eighties.
That’s proper. Not a cat girl. A catfish girl. However the thought wasn’t all that loopy, actually. On her 32-acre farm was a large pond during which the fish might develop from fingerling to fats cats filleted for restaurant consumption. However right here’s the place the story will get good-crazy.
Someplace alongside the road her musings caught the eye of 1 Booker Noe, then grasp distiller at James B. Beam Distillery’s plant in Boston, Ky. Noe’s ideas about fish farming had been additional alongside than Holmes’s. He had 1,000 fingerlings cats in varied ponds on the Boston plant’s campus, and he wanted somebody to feed them. Happy to seek out one other with aqua-preneurial desires, Noe employed Holmes for a summer time job as pond-side server to the wiggling, whiskered creatures of the murk.
““You knew (Booker) was coming lengthy earlier than you ever noticed him come into the room. That huge, booming voice, it was one thing.”
“The experiment didn’t pan out for him, and I didn’t develop into a catfish farmer,” Holmes laughed. “However going there to feed these fish was the primary time I’d ever been previous the gate on the distillery. … I received to see all that vast gear, and the environment there actually intrigued me.”
On journeys to the distillery to fatten Booker’s fish, the catfish girl made pals with workers on the plant. When one informed her Beam was hiring, she was intrigued. Holmes lived simply 10 minutes away, which might lower about 20 minutes off her drive to UPS in Louisville, the place she was a security supervisor.
She was employed by Beam in 1990 to work the 12 a.m. to eight a.m. shift. Although the plant was previous and in want of some TLC, the work was new, difficult and stimulating.
“I beloved the fermentation room, simply beloved these aromas,” she recalled. (Beam is presently spending $400 million to develop the plant.) “However, boy, that place was previous. There have been cracks within the ground I might step into. Lighting there was poor—particularly on the graveyard shift—so I used to be given a flashlight to have the ability to stroll round and verify all these gauges.”
Throughout her first few years, Noe was one among her bosses earlier than the corporate refocused his whiskey making time to international model constructing with shoppers. Holmes mentioned his fame for top requirements and doing issues his means preceded him, as did his larger-than-life character.
“You knew he was coming lengthy earlier than you ever noticed him come into the room,” she mentioned. “That huge, booming voice, it was one thing. He was a personality and an ideal particular person to work with. I want I’d have gotten to spend extra time with him earlier than he was on the street a lot.”
Jerry Dalton (who, like Noe, is a Kentucky Bourbon Corridor of Famer) changed Noe, and Holmes turned his scholar. She recalled him as one other man of excessive requirements who approached bourbon making strategically.
“He was all in regards to the science behind it, at all times desirous to know what was occurring with fermentation and with the standard of grains coming in,” she mentioned. “And he was an excellent beneficiant soul sort, a coach.”
Including to her listing of well-known instructors, Holmes talked about working for Pam Heilmann, who would develop into Kentucky’s first girl grasp distiller whereas at Michter’s American Whiskies.
“Pam’s one among my mentors, and we labored collectively for about 15 years,” Holmes mentioned. “Pam was a troublesome cookie who did not lower anyone any slack, however she handled all people the identical: pretty. She knew each worker and was very personable. She was fabulous.”
When Holmes was first employed, bourbon’s interminable gross sales stoop was ongoing, and with such low demand, solely a half dozen staff managed the evening shift on the plant. However as its recognition returned within the new millennium, hiring and whiskey making took off. Earlier than, when instances had been good, the Boston plant might produce 700 barrels a day. However by the early 2000s, it crammed 1,400 barrels every day and distilled around the clock.
By 2018, Holmes had logged 28 years at Beam and was searching for a brand new problem in distilling. At age 59, she loved her work, however she’d begun sniffing round alternatives in craft distilling. Paradoxically, it might be one other Beam worker who’d steer her to Milam & Greene.
“Marsha Milam requested him if she knew of anyone who’d have an interest distilling there, and he mentioned, ‘I simply would possibly,’” Holmes recalled. She and Marsha linked, “I favored the chance, and so I packed my baggage, bought my farm, loaded up the truck, and off I went to Texas.”
However there was only one hitch. Whereas Holmes’s Beam expertise taught her loads about working column stills, Milam & Greene’s pot nonetheless was one other animal.
“Studying to run a pot nonetheless? Yeah, it was a giant deal for me,” she mentioned. “The man that I began working with there on the distillery, Jordan was his identify, he’d been there from the start and he was very accustomed to the pot. Jordan walked me by it and, , I simply took off with it after that.”
When at Beam, Holmes imagined like a few of her coworkers, “that having slightly pot nonetheless to run could be enjoyable.” Regardless of inviting a few of “these guys to come back down come and work on the pot with me, none took me up on it. Perhaps they actually weren’t that each one that within the first place, but it surely positive is a deal with for me.”
Holmes will get a column nonetheless repair by proxy at Bardstown Bourbon Firm, the place a lot of M&G’s distillate is made. Save for a single run throughout COVID, she’s by no means missed one in six years. She mentioned among the crew there are, like her, former Beam workers.
“BBC is a good companion of ours,” she mentioned. “I actually take pleasure in working with these guys.”
She’s additionally smitten with Texas life, together with the difficult dry warmth that accelerates the whiskey ageing course of. Pivoting to new meteorological circumstances is enjoyable and simpler “with a small outfit like we have. We will experiment, attempt a couple of barrels of this and that.” What could take two years of ageing to perform in Kentucky can occur in “lower than three months due to Texas ageing. However what’s cool is while you tinker round loads like we do, the flavors you’ll be able to create are simply countless.”
Although folks ask Holmes often when she would possibly retire, her reply is at all times, “I don’t know, actually, as a result of I really like what I do. It hardly looks like work. I suppose I’ll go once they run me off.”
“I imply we’re going to bars—very nice locations and dive bars—speaking about Milam & Greene, and that’s my work! Who wouldn’t take pleasure in doing that?”
Recounting a current two-week tour of M&G California accounts to advertise the model, Holmes made first-time visits to Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Her dream of taking in a live performance on the Hollywood Bowl was made manifest by at least Eric Clapton. Not a foul set of perks for a humble Kentucky lady who all however stumbled right into a distillery job 1 / 4 century in the past.
“I imply we’re going to bars—very nice locations and dive bars—speaking about Milam & Greene,” she mentioned. “And that’s my work! Who wouldn’t take pleasure in doing that?”
