another era over

about seven years ago as i was driving across the county, heading back to san francisco, i stopped for a few months and visited in louisville, ky. i had lived and worked there for about year, and was pretty close to the gentleman i worked for, david, and also had my unlce gene in the area. david was pretty passionate about bourbon, and got me into it as well, so much so that one day he drove me out to claremont for a tour of the jim beam distillery. along with the usual copius amounts of jim beam, the distillery produced a small batch, 125 proof bourbon called 'bookers,' named for it creator, booker noe, a beam family member and master distiller. after our trip to the distellery, david took me to the next town over, where we found bookers house, knocked on his door, and sat our on his front stoop with the large bald man, where we smoked cigars and he told us about the fishing trip he was about to go on. when we asked if we should put out our cigars he replied in booming southern drawl, "Na, Smoke the hell out of 'em!"

booker died yesterday at the ripe old age of 74. i remember taking the tour of the distillery, and then talking about how there is about 10% of the bourbon in the barrell lost over the 7 year aging period to evaporation, and they jokingly called it the 'angels share.' maybe they were just storing it until booker got there?