✨Artistry of the Maker: Inside Maker’s Mark & the Secrets of Star Hill Farm

Deep in the Kentucky Hills sits a distillery that has changed American whiskey forever. Here we are at the world famous Maker's Mark distillery started years ago by Bill and Margie Samuels. This is the legendary campus Star Hill Farm and today we're going to learn the ins and outs of how they make that beautiful weeded bourbon. I am excited. I hope you're excited. Let's go check it out. At Maker's, the art isn't just in the bourbon, it's in everything they touch. The appreciation for the craft runs deep. With so much history and artistry around every corner here at Maker's, we needed someone who could help us make sense of it all. So this piece here is called Amber and New. My name is Chet Johnson and I'm the trade and VIP experience lead here at Maker's Mark at Star Hill Farm. Maker's Mark distillery was founded in 1953 by Bill Samuel Sr. and his wife Margie Samuels. Our founder came from a long line of whiskey distillers. He wasn't particularly fond of the whiskey that the family had made for generations and he wanted to create a well-balanced, approachable, top shelf bourbon unlike the world has never seen. Bill Samuels didn't just revise the family recipe, he burned it and that spark became Maker's Mark. So he purchased this property right here in Loretta, Kentucky that was formerly known as the Burke Spring Distillery. The Burks family, they established a water-powered grist mill here in the early 1800s, got into whiskey distillation and they milled grain and made whiskey here for four generations in 116 years until Prohibition put the Burks family out of business here. This place changed hands a few different times and in 1953 was rechristened Maker's Mark Distillery. Behind every choice Bill made, Margie made one of her own. The whiskey was his craft but the identity of Maker's was hers. She was in love with the historic character of the property and she wanted to preserve all that and as a result of the Samuels family's historic preservation efforts here, Maker's Mark is actually listed as the first operational bourbon distillery on the Just beyond the distillery, Maker's keeps this working garden. There's herbs, there's produce and botanicals that they use in their cocktail and culinary creations. We believe firmly that bourbon is a product of nature and agriculture which kind of underscores our emphasis of taking good care of Mother Nature so she could take good care of us by providing us those resources that we need to craft the whiskey. If you want to grab that orange one there, you can just pick it off, yeah. Not spicy. I'm not pranking you, I promise. I think it's now time to take you guys out onto Star Hill Farm. Maker's Mark begins long before the stills. It begins at Star Hill Farm. There's acres of woods, water and farmland that have shaped the character of this bourbon for generations. Star Hill Farms is more than a distillery campus. It's a working ecosystem. There's wagyu cattle, goats, orchards, native fields and even a white oak nursery where they're cultivating the next generation of barrel trees. Everything here feeds back into the land and the bourbon. We practice the principles of regenerative agriculture which is a more holistic and sustainable way to work the land. Three years ago we became a B Corp certified distillery. As a certified B Corp, Maker's commits to doing business in a way that supports people, the planet and the place this bourbon comes from. From the farm fields to the forest, we are going hiking. We actually partner with the University of Kentucky and the Independent Stave Company to have the genetic sequence of the American white oak tree mapped out for the very first time. Capturing this on camera just does not do this tree justice. So we thought that this tree, since it has survived so long, would be the perfect specimen to map the genetic sequence of American white oak. What you guys are looking at is the water source for Maker's Mark. All of the water that goes into Maker's Mark comes from this very lake. Underneath that scaffolding is where the intake pipe is that goes underground and pops out in our still house to give a direct feed so we can begin production process of Maker's Mark. Now it's time to head to the distillery to see how it all comes to life. Here we are in front of our historic still house. This is where we're going to take grains, water and yeast and transform that into the good stuff. Every single drop has come from under the roof of this building since the very beginning. Let's start with the recipe. Maker's uses one mash built for every expression they make. 70 percent corn, 16 percent soft red winter wheat and 14 percent malted barley. First step, prepping the grains for cooking. This is what the grains look like coming off the trucks. This is what the grains look like after being ran through the roller mill. So that roller mill is just going to gently crack those grains open and the larger particles we believe allow us to extract more flavor. All right, time to get cooking. That thing is a huge crockpot. 10,000 gallon atmospheric cooker. We don't want to cook our grains under any pressure. We're going to cook those grains low and slow for about three and a half hours. Wet water from our lake and back set from the previous batch and that's where enzymes in the malted barley convert starches from the corn and wheat into fermentable sugars that are needed for fermentation. Cooking the grain prepares the mash. Fermentation transforms it. This is where the yeast steps in and the real magic starts. Where we are now is the original fermentation room for the old distillery that was here when our founders purchased the property. There have been eight cypress wood fermenters in this room for a very long time. Old school distillers used cypress wood before stainless steel technology was even developed. It's very resilient and it's neutral. It does not impart flavor into what it's holding and it doesn't rot when it gets wet. Now we also have newer stainless steel fermenters that we utilize as well but we still utilize these to preserve the traditions, the history and heritage of whiskey distillation on this property. After you cook the grains you're going to put that mash into these fermenters. Then you're going to add the proprietary strain of yeast. Fermentation is a three-day process. On day one it tastes a little bit like a sweet cereal. Second day of fermentation it tastes like a Hefeweizen beer. Day three most of that bubbling stops. The activity ceases. You're going to see a crust that develops over the surface of the mash. After days of fermentation the mash is ready for the next step, distillation, where heat and copper refine everything down to pure spirit. So after we ferment the grain mash we're going to do a series of two distillations. First distillation yields what we call low wine and it's coming off of the columns at 120 proof. We're going to take that low wine and distill it again to further refine flavor. What comes off of the doublers is something that we call high wine and then we're going to take that high wine at water proof it down to 110 proof and that's what's going to go inside the barrel to mature to eventually become Maker's Mark. Not every bourbon gets a second run through the still. Maker's does and it helps deliver that gentle polished style people love. There you go. There you go. The whiskey may be born in the still but this is only the beginning. Now it's time for the spirit to meet the barrel. To the warehouse. To the warehouse. Welcome. It's great stagecraft during the month of October. Here's a creepy warehouse. Here's a creaky gate leading into it. Okay so remember that giant tree we saw earlier? Well it's now been reshaped. Our barrels are made by the Independent Stave Company. We will utilize an American white oak barrel, 53 gallon barrel. In these warehouses there's no steam cycling or anything, no man-made heating or cooling. There's different micro climates or hot and cool zones all throughout the building that will affect the way the whiskey ages and tastes in the barrel depending on the location. Initially we start aging the barrels at one of the top floors of our warehouses and the barrels will stay at the top for about the first three years. That middle cut will stay in the same place but the upper floors will get rotated down to the bottom floors after three years and they will age at the bottom for another three to five years. Rotating barrels takes a lot of effort and most distilleries just pass on it all together. Maker's actually does the opposite because moving every barrel means that they have more control, more balance, more flavor, and more consistency. You don't see age statements traditionally on Maker's Mark products. We're not looking for an age of the whiskey as much as we're looking for a flavor profile that we believe fulfills the taste vision that our founders had and that sweet spot of flavor that we're looking for just so happens to occur between six to eight years of aging. After being asleep in the oak for about six to eight years the whiskey normally is between 108 to 114 proof. That is the basis of how we produce all the different expressions of Maker's Mark. Out of one bourbon comes many. How do you determine what gets proofed down and what stays kester? It's just really up to the production schedule and uh you know demand for for those products. You don't get many chances to taste Maker's like this right from the source. Cask strength unfiltered still in the rickhouse. It does not get any more honest than that. Time to leave the barrels do their work. They've got some aging to do. See ya. Consistency defines Maker's Mark but finishing is where the creativity really kicks in. This is where tradition meets innovation. Our founder Bill Senior he retired in the mid-70s and passed torch to Bill Jr. When Bill Jr. was looking at retirement he kind of felt like a man with no legacy of his own. Bill Jr. wanted to finally put his own unique stamp on the company in creating the first new type of Maker's Mark ever. He didn't want to change the mash bill, didn't want to change the yeast, didn't want to change how the barrels are aged. Now you may ask how in the world can you make a new bourbon if you can't pull any of the normal levers that people pull? We came up with the wood finishing technique that takes traditional makers and transforms that into what we now call Maker's 46. Turning Maker's Mark into the international icon we're known as today. So Maker's 46 was our first finished bourbon, our first innovation. After that came the private selection program and the wood finishing series. That is done in this building here. It's our limestone whiskey finishing cellar. It's a LEED certified building. If you see the plant life on the roof that helps to regulate temperature inside the building because that finishing process requires a unique environment. Regardless of what finished bourbon that we're producing this is the starting point, it's the coopering room. So we're going to take barrels of what you guys just tasted, six to eight year old fully matured Maker's Mark and then we're going to empty the bourbon in huge metal tanks. Maker's 46 finishing staves are virgin french oak finishing staves that come from the Vosges forests in northeastern France. So what we're going to do is get 10 of these staves into the barrel and the barrel will be refilled and then the barrel goes into the cellar for nine weeks for finishing. And voila, Classic Makers is transformed into Maker's 46. So whether we're making Maker's 46, private selection, wood finishing series, the process is roughly the same. The only difference are the different types of staves that will go into the barrel for finishing. Where do we get the name 46? The particular stave profile that we use for that is known as stave profile number 46 from ISC. Sometimes we're not as good as we should be in Yeah. This is our limestone whiskey finishing cellar. It stays approximately 50 degrees ambient temperature in this room year round. That temperature is maintained by using the green roof I showed you outside. The back wall of this room is a natural limestone. It's a living wall that is part of the hillside behind this building. This temperature, this environment is necessary to get the flavors we want off of the finishing staves and we don't want the whiskey penetrating too deeply into the wood. The 10 staves that go in a private selection barrel can be a combination of these five different finishing staves leading to a thousand and one different stave combinations possible in the private selection program. Once they find a combination they want to go with for their barrel, we're going to put the 10 staves on a stainless steel hoop and put it inside of a barrel. Fill it up with Maker's Mark cask strength and the barrel finishes on the floor for nine weeks. Margie Samuels was here in the painting holding in her hands a piece of fine English pewter and here's a lot of her original pewter collection on display. If you know anything about pewter or collecting it, a piece of pewter can be identified by the mark of its maker. Margie thought that her husband's whiskey should have a symbol to kind of connect the quality and the craftsmanship into the final product itself and the mark of our maker is embossed into every single bottle of Maker's Mark. The circle and star represent Star Hill Farm. The S stands for Samuels, Roman numeral four because Bill Sr. was the fourth generation of commercial whiskey makers in his family lineage. Margie did not stop there. She designed the entire Maker's Mark look. The bottle shape, the hand-torn label, and of course that iconic red wax. She never considered herself a designer but she created one of the most recognizable brands and bottle designs in all of whiskey. With the packaging set, the final step is bringing it all together on the bottling line. Normally on that platform there is where people stand and they put empty bottles of Maker's Mark on the line. Bottles get rinsed out here. We rinse our bottles out with a little bit of Maker's Mark. I don't know if you knew that. Bottles get dipped. Fans and blowers make sure the wax is cured before it reaches the end of the line. Pack them up and then they get sent through that hole in the wall. Further back is shipping. Cases get palletized, shipped all over the globe. Our people who work the bottling line, they rotate to different stations every 30 minutes. They dip between 23 to 27 bottles per minute per person. About 65 to 85,000 bottles a day. How much we're filling, I think last year we dipped and shipped a little bit under three million cases all coming out of Loretta, Kentucky. The amazing thing that I think our founders have left us with, you can't find Loretta, Kentucky on a map to save your life but people all around the world know of Loretta, Kentucky because of this distillery and this great brand that our founders created here. You're burning your hands off. Ready to operate. Let's go. Looking good. Here we go. Okay now bring it up and lay it over. Now twist it two times. One, now set it down. Scott's still working on his wax dipping form but hey, it's the effort that counts, right? Oh yeah, look at that. What a great, great experience from Maker's Mark. Thank you to the Maker's Mark team and cheers y'all. Until next time, enjoy responsibly. If you enjoyed this experience or found it helpful, hit that like button and subscribe for more Artfully bourbon content and tell us, where should we go next? Drop us a comment below.