30 Years (And One Night) Of The Small Batch Bourbon Collection
Yours truly flanked by Fred Noe (L) and his son Freddie (R). That’s the late Booker Noe, Fred’s father, looking over Freddie’s shoulder.
If you got in the wayback machine and set the dials to 1991, and then got out and went to a liquor store or bar in search of some small batch bourbon, you’d come up empty, and you’d get a lot of confused looks from anyone you’d asked for help. It wasn’t until the following year — 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected president and MC Hammer was the most popular rapper in America — that Booker Noe, master distiller at Jim Beam (and grandson of Jim Beam himself), unleashed the Small Batch Bourbon Collection into what was, at the time, a moribund category. Bourbon had been in decline for decades by then, eclipsed by vodka and scorned by old-timers who didn’t like the new, “light,” 80-proof bourbons launched to compete with it.
To this day, “small batch” is an undefined term. Booker’s Noe’s son, seventh-generation master distiller Fred Noe, explained it best when he told me, “Do you usually distill a thousand barrels at a time? Well then ‘small batch’ could mean you’re distilling 999!” But the idea behind the Small Batch Collection was to select the best, most perfectly aged barrels in the distillery, and then combine them, in comparatively small batches compared to other mass-produced whiskeys, to create a high quality finished product. Booker Noe wasn’t operating in a vacuum. Elmer T. Lee, Jimmy Russell, Parker Beam and others were all innovating and taking bourbon back to the future, as it were, with varying degrees of success, mostly in Japan. But the Small Batch Collection can arguably be seen as the tipping point, certainly in the States, that kickstarted a slow but steady industry-wide return to quality.
The Collection consists of a quartet of bourbons, each one distinct from the others. There’s the spicy, high-rye Basil Hayden’s, bottled at 80 proof and designed to be a more sophisticated “starter whiskey” for novices, as well as a lower-proof alternative for more seasoned drinkers. There’s Baker’s, a 7 year old, 107-proof beauty that in the last few years became a single-barrel expression. There’s Booker’s Bourbon, a cask-strength behemoth released a few times a year. Booker Noe created it in 1987, solely for his own enjoyment and to gift to friends — barrel-proof bourbon was hardly a thing at the time — but decided to make it the cornerstone of the Small Batch Collection.
And then there’s Knob Creek, the 9 year old, 100-proof, “pre-Prohibition style” bourbon, which is where my story and that of the Small Batch Collection intersect. I started drinking Knob Creek in the late '90s, after several years of being a Jack Daniel's man (yes, I know JD is technically a Tennessee sipping whiskey, so sue me). Hey, I figured if Jack was good enough for Frank Sinatra, it was good enough for me too. But Knob Creek's powerful, sweet and robust flavors liberated my palate, and I never thought of bourbon the same way again. It didn't cross my mind at the time to wonder how long it had been around -- I think I assumed that whiskeys were a fixed canon, and all of them had existed for generations. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it had only existed for a few years; that it was produced in a style virtually unique at the time; and that it had played a big role in spawning an entire subcategory of small-batch bourbons.
I’ve been an unabashed Knob Creek fan for decades now, and it’s still one of my go-tos for cocktails both at home and at bars. A decade ago I talked with Fred Noe about what makes it so special. "That was one of dad's deals,” he said, “where he played with it and played with it to get that big vanilla note.... Aging bourbon is like adding seasoning to a dish when you're cooking. You know, a little more salt, a little more pepper, it gets better. But the old law of diminishing returns comes in. It gets better, better, better, then all of a sudden you've added too much. His palate — nine years was as long as he liked aging." Today, there are countless variations of Knob Creek, aged as long as 18 years. Booker, who died in 2004, may not have approved, and even Fred still calls the 9-year-old his favorite. But the older expressions all still retain their essential Knob Creek-ness, and just about all of them are pretty wonderful in their own right.
Not too long ago I got to join Fred and his son, heir apparent Freddie Noe (who’s helping to bring blended American whiskey back from the bottom shelf with his Little Book series), for a small celebration of the Small Batch Collection’s anniversary. I’ve gotten to know Fred pretty well over the years, and he’s one of the most delightful, warm, and funny people in an industry that’s got its share of them. I hadn’t seen the Noes in person since before Covid — during which time Fred had a kidney transplant, which has enabled him to keep drinking — and neither had most of the other writers in attendance, so it really did feel like a family reunion. Fred talked about his early days working under his father, after years of raising hell, first at military school and then during an 8-year stint in college. “You know where [Booker] started me?” Fred said. “Night shift bottling line supervisor. And if I’d fucked up, he’d have fired me just like anybody else. And he sent me everywhere to learn the business. If he needed somebody in the warehouse, he sent me to the warehouse. If he needed somebody to watch the guys cut grass with the weed eaters, I went out and watched the guys cut grass. That was his way of teaching — do every god damned job and you’ll know what the hell is going on.”
When the Small Batch Collection launched, Booker put Fred in charge of getting Knob Creek into bars and retail outlets around the country. “I went out on the road — he sent me out there and gave me Knob Creek and said, ‘Get out there, boy.’ I started traveling, and I started seeing what he saw. Dad went to Miami one time, and seven people showed up. That was back when seven people wasn’t bad. And five of ‘em were on the god damned payroll! But I went back a few years later with Freddie, when he was a little guy, and 200 showed up. So seeing the growth, and passing the torch, I think that’s when I realized that Dad knew what he was talking about.”
From left: Amanda Schuster, Fred Noe, me, Kathleen DiBenedetto (who helped Booker Noe launch Booker’s Bourbon), John McCarthy, Freddie Noe.
We all went around the table telling our own stories — here’s mine. A few years ago I got invited to Atlantis, the resort in the Bahamas, to cover what was going to be the first bourbon festival on the islands. The details were pretty vague, but Fred was going to be there, and hell, who would turn down a free weekend in the Bahamas with Fred Noe? So I went, and it turned out there really wasn’t much worth reporting. The high point of the festivities was a dinner where people drank a lot of bourbon and Fred led a tasting and bantered with the crowd. Most of the attendees were more interested in drinking bourbon than learning about it, but Fred gamely persevered. Towards the end of the night, there was some sort of trivia quiz, with the prize being a bottle of Knob Creek… and I wound up winning. Fred couldn’t stop laughing. “You came all the way to the Bahamas for a bottle of Knob Creek!” But I got him to sign it for me, and it occupies a place of honor in my home to this day.
Fred got emotional at times during the night — “I get all tore up sometimes” — and at the end of the night, he offered a benediction of sorts that got us emotional as well: “We’re all one big family at Beam, and that’s the way it’s always been. I had no brothers and sisters. Freddie’s the same way, an only child. But when you get down there, you got more brothers and sisters… because you can’t do it all by yourself. You have to have help. Even my [kidney] donor, she’s a longtime 25 year employee, she gave me a kidney. It freaks people out that a colleague from work would give you an organ, but we’re one big family, and that’s what it’s about.
“Watching Dad all those years, and then watching Freddie come up behind me, hell, I’m lucky. To be watching your son really follow in your footsteps, and really take the business forward… I’m sure Dad’s looking down: ‘I knew that god damned boy was gonna be alright.’
Anyway, this is all to say that the whiskeys Booker Noe launched three decades ago have altered the trajectory of my life in ways I never could have imagined back when I sat down with my first Knob Creek Manhattan. I could ramble on ad nauseam, but I’ll let Booker, by way of Fred, have the last word: “[Booker] wanted you to enjoy it responsibly, but have a good time. Turn a meal into a celebration, turn a conversation into a party, telling stories, that’s what it’s all about. Camaraderie. Hanging out with your buddies, Make new friends. That’s what life’s all about.”