How Knob Creek® Set the Standard for Craft Bourbon
Thirty years ago, the landscape of American whiskey was, by today’s high standards, practically unrecognizable.
For better or worse, vodka dominated the spirits industry and Long Island Iced Tea and the Cosmopolitan were the drinks of the day. “In the late ’80s, bourbon wasn’t very cool,” admits Tim Heuisler, American whiskey ambassador for Beam Suntory. Distillers were facing a very grim future with a number of brands on the verge of going out of business. But, thankfully, in rural Kentucky, out of the ashes, the rebirth of American whiskey began to take shape.
It was Jim Beam’s sixth-generation distiller Booker Noe who helped create what we know today as small batch bourbon and for more than two decades was the face of its resurgence.