When I arrive in the new bourbon tasting room at the historic Beaumont Inn, there are already set-ups of four bottles of bourbon with empty glasses in front of each. Master Blender Dixon Dedman, who with his parents own the inn which has been in their family since 1917, is famed for his bourbon tastings as well as his revival of the bourbon his great great grandfather, Charles Dedman, who in 1880 started up what would become one of the largest distilleries in the state, until before Prohibition shut it down.
In other words, Dedman is a bourbon expert and I am someone who in my college days mixed the spirit with diet cola. But not this evening. Dedman is going to teach me how to taste the “terroir” of bourbon meaning the type of land here—limestone rock and natural springs that give a special flavor to the wheat, corn and rye used to make bourbon. There is, I note, no diet cola anywhere in sight.
“When they char the barrel it releases the sugars and caramelizes it,” Dedman says as he pours Pappy Van Winkle, a 20-year old bourbon named in tribute to Julius Van Winkle by his grandson and great grandson who are carrying on the family tradition.
That’s important because Pappy Van Winkle is a wheated bourbon which means it contains no rye and thus gets its flavor from the interaction with the barrel.
“Focus on where you’re tasting it,” he says. “That’s how you build your palate.”
Because it’s wheated, which means, Dedman tells me, you can taste it in the front of your mouth.
Pappy Van Winkle has almost a cult like following says Dedman.
“When they’re going to release it, people sit in their cars in front of liquor stores for two days to get a bottle,” he says.
At this point, I know I can’t ask for a can of diet cola.
The next taste is a sip of Four Roses Al Young 50th Anniversary. Now I remember Four Roses as a cheap bourbon—the kind you do mix with soda pop particularly at college dorm parties but its roots go back 130 years. The brand was allowed to languish and almost disappeared until Al Young, Senior Brand manager with 50 years of experience in the bourbon biz, was allowed to bring it back to its glory. He has several blends which are based on patented yeast strains he’s developed. The taste of this bourbon comes from the yeast strains and rye and Dixon says to pay attention to its finish on the back on the mouth.
When Dixon was working on developing Kentucky Owl he wanted to emulate the complexity of Four Roses. Later this month, he’ll be releasing his Kentucky Owl Batch # 7, the seventh of his limited release bourbons.
“It’s an 11-year old Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey and it’s exactly what a Rye Whiskey should be,” Dixon writes on Kentucky Owl’s Facebook page. “I put this blend together and bottled it at 110.6 proof. It’s a full-flavored rye perfect for the coming fall weather.”
Barrel aging can produce bourbons with a high proof count but then before they’re bottled, they’re watered down to around 80 proof. But Dixon wasn’t about to do that to Kentucky Owl.
“It’s full flavored,” he said about this batch of Kentucky Owl and it sure was. “You can’t hide anything in barrel proofed whiskeys.”
Later, when I’m in the dining room ordering dinner—the Classic Beaumont Inn fried yellow leg chicken, beaten biscuits, country ham—I glance at the bourbon list. I read that Dixon’s Batch #6 costs $40 a glass and am glad I didn’t ask for a diet cola. Not just because I would have looked stupid but also because I had begun to get a sense of how to appreciate a great bourbon.
But the Beaumont Inn is about more than Kentucky Owl. It was built in 1845 as a girl’s school and was bought by Dixon’s great great grandmother in 1917. Two years later she turned it into an inn. Many of the recipes on the menu and in their cookbook have been favorites since they first opened including, fried green tomatoes, house made pimento cheese, traditional Kentucky Hot Brown, corn meal batter cakes with brown sugar syrup and the General E. Lee Orange Lemon Cake.
The latter, my waiter told me, was such a favorite of the general that he carried the recipe in his breast pocket. I guess that was in case anyone asked if they could bake a cake for him. I, of course, had to order that despite being a northern girl, and it was delicious—very light with a distinct sugary citrus taste. The lightness I discovered later was because the cake flour used in the recipe is sifted eight times.
The food at the Beaumont Inn is so good that a few years ago they won the James Beard America’s Classic Award which is given to “restaurants with timeless appeal, each beloved in its region for quality food that reflects the character of its community. Establishments must have been in existence for at least ten years and be locally owned.”
The inn itself is beautiful, all polished wood and thick carpets, antique furniture and the timeless grace of a wonderfully kept three-story historic mansion with an exterior of red brick and tall white columns. Located in Harrodsburg, the oldest city in Kentucky, it sits on a rise on several rolling, beautifully landscaped acres. I mentioned Duncan Hines a few weeks ago when I was writing about Claudia Sanders Dinner House in Shelbyville, Kentucky well, Duncan was here quite a bit too and I can see why.
“Now write this down for the people in Kentucky,” he told a reporter back in 1949. “[Say] I’ll be happy to get home and eat two-year-old ham, cornbread, beaten biscuits, pound cake, yellow-leg fried chicken, and corn pudding. And you can say what I think is the best eating place in Kentucky: Beaumont Inn at Harrodsburg.”
The food here is real Kentucky fare–Weisenberger meal from a seventh generation mill not far from here, Meacham hams which the Dedmans bring to maturation in their own aging house—a process that takes several years and, of course, Great Great Grandpappy’s Kentucky Owl.
The following recipes are courtesy of the Beaumont Inn Special Recipes, their cookbook now in its sixth edition.
Corn Pudding
2 cups white whole kernel corn, or fresh corn cut off the cob
4 eggs
8 level tablespoons flour
1 quart milk
4 rounded teaspoons sugar
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
Stir into the corn, the flour, salt, sugar, and butter. Beat the eggs well; put them into the milk, then stir into the corn and put into a pan or Pyrex dish. Bake in oven at 450 degrees for about 40-45 minutes.
Stir vigorously with long prong fork three times, approximately 10 minutes apart while baking, disturbing the top as little as possible.
Country Ham Salad
6 cups chopped aged country ham
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 cup chopped purple onion
1.5 cups chopped sweet pickle
2 chopped hard boiled eggs
2 tablespoons of whole grain mustard
Hellman’s Mayonnaise to your liking.
Note: This is great on crackers, finger sandwiches with a thin slice of homegrown tomato, toasted open faced sandwiches with tomato and a melted slice of your favorite cheese or as an appetizer – toasted crostini, ham spread, thin slice of homegrown tomato topped with shredded parmesan cheese run under the broiler.
Corn Meal Batter Cakes
1 cup corn meal
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons bacon drippings or shortening
Sift meal, soda and salt together. Add beaten eggs, then buttermilk. Beat until smooth. Dip a tablespoon of batter (or a bit more) onto a greased hot griddle. Let brown on bottom, then turn quickly and lightly to brown on other side. Serve with Brown Sugar syrup.
Makes about 10-12 good-sized cakes.
Brown Sugar Syrup
2 pounds light brown sugar
3 cups cold water
Mix sugar and water well. Bring to a hard boil for 10 minutes. Do not stir after placing over heating element as stirring or agitating will cause syrup to go to sugar
General Robert E. Lee Orange-Lemon Cake
9 Eggs, separated
a few grains salt
2 cups cake flour, sifted twice before measuring
2 cups white sugar, sift 6 times
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 lemon, juice
Grated rind (yellow part only)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Beat egg yolks to creamy texture; beat egg whites until stiff. Add baking powder and tartar to flour and sift six times. Mix all ingredients together. Divide batter into four greased 9-inch cake pans. Bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes. Turn cakes upside down on a rack until cool.
Spread Orange-Lemon Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Store in refrigerator until serving time. Garnish with orange slices and fresh mint leaves if desired.
Orange-Lemon Frosting
¼ pound butter, softened
3 egg yolks
2 (16 ounce) packages powdered sugar, sifted
4 oranges, rind of, grated
2 lemons, rind of, grated
4 tablespoons lemon juice
6-8 tablespoons orange juice
Cream butter; add egg yolks and beat well. Add powdered sugar and grated rind alternately with juices, beating well.
Original “Robert E. Lee” Cake
Twelve eggs, their full weight in sugar, a half-weight in flour. Bake it in pans the thickness of jelly cakes. Take two pounds of nice “A” sugar, squeeze into it the juice of five oranges and three lemons together with the pulp; stir it in the sugar until perfectly smooth; then spread it on the cakes, as you would do jelly, putting one above another till the whole of the sugar is used up. spread a layer of it on top and on sides.
638 Beaumont Inn Drive, Harrodsburg, KY. (859) 734-3381; beaumontinn.com
