Much like fine wine, there’s a lot that goes into good bourbon, and it’s a pretty precise science.

Back in November of 2008 the fine folk at Maker’s Mark flew me to Louisville (Lou-a-vull if you want to pronounce it like the locals) and let me spend about 4 hours with Kevin Smith, the Master Distiller for Maker’s. The Master Maker if you will.

Maker’s Mark has a long and varied history starting shortly after prohibition in 1933.  One thing lead to another, and the Samuels family - the very same that owns Maker’s now - bought the brand in 1943.

In 1954, Bill Samuels Sr. started playing with ways to make the bourbon smoother around the edges, and replaced the rye with red winter wheat. After much trial and error, the formula that is today’s Maker’s Mark was born.

Bill’s wife, Marjorie (and this is one of my favourite parts of the story) has left her mark all over the Maker’s Mark bourbon - she was a fan of classic pewter pieces, which always carried the mark of their maker. This led her to create the SIV symbol, that stands for Samuels, 4th Generation, which is still used today. She also created the type face and was the one to begin hand dipping the corked bottles into red wax, which is something else that continues to this (day and it’s really cool to see).

By the fall of 1959, after a six year maturation, Maker’s Mark is finally available for market. The first bottle was  4 fifths of a quart and sold for $6.79 a bottle. In the first year, Maker’s sold 250 cases all of which happened to be in Kentucky. Too bad those prices aren’t the same today!

Kevin took me through everything there was to know about Maker’s Mark - from trying the neutral spirit, which essentially amounted to moonshine - all the way through dipping my fingers into the ageing bourbon.

We walked into the fermentation room, and all I could see were eight huge, open fermentation tanks, all seething and bubbling under a crust of yeast as the alcohol fermented. Kevin walked up to one of them, gestured for me to join him, and broke the crust of yeast, swishing his fingers around in the tub.

“Come on over here and try this! This one is about four days old.” All in all, I think I tried about 4 or five different ages of bourbon, all from 2 days old up to 6 or seven days old. It freaked me out at first to have him tell me just to shove my hand in there, but it was really freakin’ cool!

We stopped at the small building they print and die cut all of the labels for the bottles, and then onto where they hand dip every single bottle. They work in a team of four, and each person has a pretty distinct style, to the point where you can actually tell (provided you know the people and see the bottles often enough of course) which person has dipped which bottle.

The entire Maker’s Mark operation is - quite honestly - one big family. There’s not a ton of people working there, and everyone is friendly, joking and just plain fun.

If you ever get an opportunity to go to Louavull, make it a point of going to Maker’s Mark. It’s a gorgeous distillery, and you’ll get a tour like no other.

More images from the tour: