Editors Note: For Bourbon Heritage Month 2023, we asked Murphy Quint from Cedar Ridge to provide reflections on bourbon. Enjoy!
What do you love about Bourbon and what makes is special to you?
As an Iowan, this one is easy. Bourbon is special to me because it is primarily made from the grain that my family has been growing for several generations: corn. Both of my Grandpa’s were life-long corn farmers. I spent a lot of my summers staying at their houses and exploring their farms as a kid. My cousins and I would use the corn for all sorts of games. We’d play hide-and-seek in it; it worked as our home run fence when we played baseball; the fields became our driving range when we wanted to work our golf swings. Those memories are very special to me now, and I’m honored to make bourbon from the grain that my ancestors dedicated their lives to growing.
Please share a story of how bourbon brought people together in your social circle as an example of how it is the fabric of society.
A couple of years ago I was at the Louder Than Life Festival in Louisville, Kentucky to help promote our collaboration project with the band Slipknot. After the concert, a couple of us returned to our hotel and decided to have a nightcap in the hotel lobby. The hotel bar was closed, so we busted out a couple of our own bottles (perks of working in the industry!). Within a couple minutes of opening the bottles, two other hotel guests asked if they could join us. A couple more strangers joined shortly after. And before you knew it, we were scooting tables together so that we could accommodate a group of twenty-some people, whom we had never met before, to share drinks, stories and laughs together. It was a remarkable evening and it all started with a bottle of bourbon.
