Posted on 06/09/2007 6:56:38 AM PDT by RKV
Later this year, an Evansville man hopes Kentucky's finest amber export will win gold for him at national film festivals. Tom Fischer says his documentary film on bourbon is nearly finished and he hopes to enter it in a number of film festivals this summer and fall around the country.
His travels for the film centered on the bourbon distilleries and festivals of central and western Kentucky. "We joked that we did this just to get free samples." Fischer says he originally went to Bardstown, Kentucky to do a podcast for his site, Tripodder.com, but soon found what he calls "American stories" about the people with a passion for making Kentucky's famous alcoholic beverage. "Bourbon is more than just a product. It's a spirit that brings people together."
Good bourbon can take a decade or more to make, but Fischer says it's only taken him about a year and a half of traveling around the country working on the film project. While most of the time was spent in Kentucky, the film locations included such places as Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Fischer says bourbon is making a comeback as a popular drink among younger adults. The annual festivals at the various distilleries feature a number of products you might not expect, such as bourbon syrup, which Fischer says is very popular in Japan.
What amazed the filmmaker most is the easy access that anyone has to the people he calls, "bourbon royalty". Fischer says at any of the festivals you can walk right up and talk with people like Wild Turkey master distiller Jimmy Russell. "It was amazing to me that we could drive two and a half hours and see what the rest of the world drinks every day." He says the documentary has taken on a life of its own. As the project has become more widely known, Fischer says he's had musicians contact him to write special songs for it. One of those is a tune called "Burn the Barrel" by Owensboro musician Rick Miller, in reference to the charred wooden barrels used by distillers to get better bourbon flavor.
The documentary includes Fischer as host and producer. He says Timothy Paul Taylor of Evansville is the principal videographer, with some help in Kentucky from videographer Chris Baggs of Louisville.
Here's the link to the preview http://www.stomfischer.com/tripodder/videoplayer.asp?movie=tribourbonvcast.wmv&item_id=82
My back yard at about 1900 hrs tonite.
You sir are a gentleman.
L
ping!
I’ve bbeen toying with the idea to start a bourbon ping-list. Maybe make it a Saturday evening regular post on chat as well as making notifications of Freep artcles that mention bourbon (good, bad and comical).
Thoughts?
I’ve bbeen toying with the idea to start a bourbon ping-list. Maybe make it a Saturday evening regular post on chat as well as making notifications of Freep artcles that mention bourbon (good, bad and comical).
Thoughts?
nice pic but JB is distilled in Tennessee. It isn’t REAL bourbon.
Sign me up.
If you made it a Whisky/Whiskey ping list then you’d get a lot of back and forth about what’s better.
I don’t know if you want that, though. Either way I’d sign up.
... a little early in the day to be ordering doubles, don'cha think?
I’m thinking it would be bourbon only. I’ve got some FR friends that might be willing to contribute a weekly Americana anecdote, too. Working title: My 2 Fingers Worth.
Like the title. I’d check it out; sign me up.
But, I'm still lookin' for something I like better, if not, maybe I'm just lucky I like a more affordable habit.
I heard a story once that the civil war era campaign maps of a certain Union Army group didn’t make much sense - zig-zagging all over in pell-mell fashion - till you overlay the location of all the distilleries. Then it makes perfect sense. Don’t know if it’s true or not.
Kentucky makes enough bourbon to supply the entire world. And they could make a lot more if the demand called for it.
California is just one state (out of 50) as well but California's economy is big enough to put it well inside the Top 10 largest economies in the world if it were it's own country. Yet even California is mostly depopulated. While nearly 40 million people call California their home, the state is still mostly rural and could easily support one billion people. I've been to the Mojave desert and the northern forests and in both cases, I was so isolated from other humans that it was hard to imagine that in this very state were 40 million others.
Now California makes a lot of wine and could easily support the entire world with wine if the demand called for it. Take all the wine produced in Europe, Australia and South American and California could double that output without even stretching it's resources. And many of the wines produced in California outclass wine produced anywhere else in the world.
So my point is that the United States is massive, incredibly rich in resources, and yet has only realized a tiny fraction of its potential. The United States could easily support a population of 50 billion people within it's borders and still have plenty of rural space left over for recreation.
Also, it is only a matter of time before the provinces of Canada join our union. This will make us even more massive and powerful. And when the last Mexican crosses our borders, why we'll just take over that land as well and make a few states out of that.
L
I’m a convert.
Not ready for straight up (yet)
MM,ginger ale,lemon twisted in.
The single Malts from Scotland and the blended crap that Nazi Joseph Kennedy bootlegged are about the same as Gold and shit.
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