[upbeat folk music]
- Inga: For generations, the Henry family
has been running a successful seed corn business
on their farm in the town of Dane.
Now, they've found a unique way to involve the next generation
in the family business:
by turning their corn into delicious, high-quality bourbon.
I'm here at J. Henry & Sons.
I wanted to pick up some bourbon for our cowboy campfire,
but most importantly, I wanted to find out
how bourbon is made right here in Wisconsin.
[upbeat country music]
Hey, Liz.
- Hi, Inga, welcome to the farm.
- Thank you, thanks for having me.
I'm really interested to learn about the corn,
how it's made into bourbon, and just the whole farm history.
- Joe's out in the field; would you like to go?
- Absolutely.
[upbeat country music]
- Hi, Joe. - Hi, Inga, how are you?
- Nice to see you. - Nice to meet you.
- Thanks for having us out here. - Absolutely, yeah.
- So I wanted to find out from you,
about the history of this family farm.
- Well, my father purchased this farm in 1946,
and we've been farming here ever since.
He came and started out as a hybrid seed corn farmer.
At that time, it was kind of the new technology in its day.
Hybrid seed corn was, you know, the thing.
So he was one of the first ones,
among a number of other small family farms
that kinda picked it up as well.
- Was this a good corn area down here?
- Oh, it's great; this is called Arlington Prairie,
great deep black soil, Plano soil, clay subsoil,
so great water-holding capacity.
Perfect for raising hybrid seed corn
and any kinda corn and grains and soybeans.
- You're very unique because you're doing this,
is it the red corn, for the bourbon, is that right?
- Right. - Tell me about that.
- So this was a hybrid that was very popular in its day.
It was developed by the University of Wisconsin
about the 1940s, and my father was,
this was one of the first hybrids that he produced
and sold as, to farmers for them to plant.
- Inga: Was this for cow feed, or was this...
- You know, the great thing about this hybrid
was that it made a great grain, but it was also great
because you could make silage out of it as well.
- Okay.
- So it gets very tall and makes great silage corn,
but if you have enough silage,
you can let it go and harvest it as grain.
But today, it's not a very good hybrid.
In comparison, a very low-yielding hybrid,
maybe if you're lucky a hundred-bushel maker,
and it doesn't stand very well, unfortunately.
- But it makes good bourbon, right?
- Joe: Makes great bourbon. [all laughing]
It's the best thing, yeah.
- And this is one of the main ingredients in the bourbon.
- Right, so bourbon has to be made of a minimum 51% corn.
Our mash bill happens to be about 65% corn,
and then we have about 14% wheat and 14% rye,
and then we use barley malt as well,
which we purchase from Briess in Chilton, Wisconsin.
But all the corn, the wheat, and the rye are all raised here.
- I always thought bourbon was more of like,
a Southern thing,
I thought it had to be grown in a certain region
to be considered bourbon; is that not true?
- No, so the Kentucky boys would like you to believe that,
but we're proving that we can make great bourbon
in Wisconsin.
The law, federal law, is that bourbon has to be made
in the United States.
90% of the bourbon in the world is made in Kentucky,
so we visited a number of distilleries down there,
and just kind of caught the bug, and of course,
because bourbon has to be made from at least 51% corn,
it just kind of made sense, I thought,
to give it a, give it a try.
- Well, I'm so inspired by people doing value-added
on their farms; I think nowadays,
it's a great way to keep the family on the farm
and continue with that legacy, and I'm all about it.
And I had never thought about turning corn into bourbon,
and this is just so neat
that we could do it here in Wisconsin.
- Yeah, great.
- Liquid gold. - Liquid gold.
- You want to see where the magic happens?
- I absolutely do.
- Our sons are out in the rickhouse.
- All righty, well, Joe, good to see you.
- Yeah, absolutely. - Bye.
[upbeat country music]
- So this is our rickhouse,
and this is where we age and mature all of our bourbon.
- It smells delicious in here.
- Oh, good, we always hope people notice that.
That's because once the bourbon is distilled,
it's put into a new charred oak barrel
and it is set in here on its side.
We call this racking or a rickhouse,
so that the air can circulate around it,
the barrels can breathe, and what happens is
the barrels work with the weather,
and bourbon is evaporating out of the barrels.
Over 5 years, we lose 15% to 20% to that evaporation,
and that's called the "angel's share."
And that is what you may have noticed
when we walked up to the building,
there's a little distiller's shadow on the building.
- Inga: Yeah, I saw it. - Little dark, murkiness,
and the guys on the farm always wanted to clean that off.
They didn't want people to see our buildings being dirty.
They're not dirty; that's a growth
that comes from feeding on the angel's share,
so it's a really important part of showing
that we have a healthy rickhouse.
- And that's something you're only gonna see
in a rickhouse.
- Yep, because the alcohol is evaporating,
and this rickhouse doesn't have electricity in it
or lights, so it's just breathing
and working with the great outdoors.
- And you don't have to worry
when we have these really tough Wisconsin winters that any--
I suppose alcohol doesn't freeze.
- We came in during the polar vortex, we wanted to be sure,
but alcohol doesn't freeze; it's a very, very,
nearly impossible thing, even in that cold of weather.
- What else happens in this room,
what's part of the aging process in here?
- Well, we should go talk to the boys.
They can explain a couple of things,
we can do a sample, and we can look at a barrel stave
and see what's really happening. - Okay.
[midtempo country music]
So Jack, what've you got going on here,
what's this in your hand?
- Hi, so this is actually one of the staves from the barrel,
and I know my mom was telling you
just about how all the flavor
and all the color comes from this barrel.
So as you can see here,
this is a new charred oak stave here.
So right here is where all the char is.
That almost acts as a filter between the wood
and the bourbon, and then if you look closely here,
you can see this, we call this the red line,
so that's actually how far the bourbon has made it
into the wood over the course of its life.
- So that's how far it's seeped in and then seeped back out.
- And then seeped back out, exactly.
And so here in Wisconsin,
we have those wild temperature swings,
so just like this past winter was negative 50
and this summer was 120 degrees.
So all that's doing is helping expand the wood
and contract it when it gets cold,
and pulling that bourbon in and out of the wood,
so we really think our climate here in Wisconsin
helps us make a really quality bourbon.
- I'm glad it's good for that. [all laughing]
So how do you guys, how do you know if it's,
when to bottle it and when it's ready to go?
- So we actually sample every single one of our barrels.
- Okay. - As they're becoming of age,
so I'm gonna use this whiskey thief
and just pull some samples out.
- And this is done once a year, right?
- This is done once a year,
kind of towards the end of the summer.
- Okay.
- Where we taste through all the barrels
that are gonna be coming to maturity in that next season,
so that we can taste the individuality,
the uniqueness of each barrel,
and using those different flavor profiles,
we can then build blends on top of one another
and create really complex blends,
that are also very approachable.
- So when you're tasting a bourbon,
what are you looking for,
what are those flavors that you're looking for?
- A lot of, for our products specifically
has a lot of caramels, a lot of vanilla,
a lot of really, like, dark stone fruits,
so think of plums, pears, dark figs,
apricots, cinnamon, and brown sugar.
So really a dense, very sweet flavor profile
that has a lot of good fruity flavors to it as well.
- It's really good.
So how long do you age it before you know it's ready?
- Five years is our minimum. - Really?
- For our youngest product, yes,
but now, the barrel that we're trying right here
is actually about seven to eight years old,
and we're hoping it makes it to a 10-year product.
- Wow, it's delicious right now. - Joe: Yeah, thank you.
- So how did you guys learn how to do this?
- A lot of trial and error, honestly.
We actually work with a consultant.
Her name is Nancy Fraley.
She has been training both my brother and I
to do a lot of the blending and warehouse management
so that we can really have those complex flavor profiles
and blends put together in a really, really easy way
for you to enjoy.
- Well, this is really fun; cheers, guys,
thanks for having me. - Cheers.
[midtempo country music]
- Inga: This has just been really fun
spending some time with you
and getting to know how bourbon is produced
here in Wisconsin, and it's lovely to be here
and see everything. - Thank you.
- I wanna know, what is it like for you,
to be able to work with your family,
to be able to see your sons as a part of the business
and working with your husband?
- It's been one of the most meaningful
and exciting parts of our business.
Neither of the boys was especially keen
to take over the seed corn business,
but now they are both firmly entrenched in our future
and our legacy of both the seed corn
and the bourbon business.
So we're very excited to see what's coming next,
and we're letting them make all the hard decisions.
- Well, hopefully, here's to many more generations
at J. Henry. - Thanks.
- I'm gonna grab a bottle of bourbon for our cowboy campfire,
and I'll see you guys right on down the road.
[upbeat folk music]