From its earliest days as America's homegrown whiskey elixir, Kentucky Bourbon has been traveling on boats.
In fact, boats were a key reason why Kentucky became the king of bourbon. In the late 1700s, trade depended on rivers, and distillers in the state had a big advantage: the Ohio River. They'd load their barrels onto flatboats on the Ohio, which flowed into the Mississippi, taking their golden liquor as far down as New Orleans.
Back then, placing barrels on boats was a necessity. These days, it's become a novelty: Eighth-generation Kentucky bourbon distiller Trey Zoeller is using the motion of the ocean to produce bottles worth $200 each.
"We're going back to how bourbon was initially aged," Zoeller tells The Salt. "The color and flavor came from the rocking on the water. Bourbon was loaded on to ships in Kentucky, and by the time it travelled to the people buying it, the flavor improved."
Bourbon is a family legacy for Zoeller. His great-great-great grandmother was among the first female distillers and his father, Chet, is a bourbon scholar. Zoeller has been in the artisanal whiskey business since the 1990s with his Jefferson's Bourbon. Five years ago, Zoeller was celebrating his birthday on a friend's boat off the coast of Costa Rica. As two Kentucky boys are wont to do, they were raising glasses full of bourbon. That's when Zoeller got the idea to send barrels of bourbon out to sea.
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