Homeplace History: The Untold Story of Elmer T. Lee and Blanton's Bourbon

1984 was when Blanton was born. At that time, Elmer T. Lee would have been the plant manager, so he was running the place on behalf of the New York investors. And the interesting thing is that Elmer actually isn't really the creator. The reason it's called Blanton's is because Albert Blanton, when he was the plant manager here all the way up until he died, actually in this building in 1959, he liked the idea of a single barrel. So he would go down to Warehouse H, which is unusual here because it's the only metal-sided warehouse that we have. Most of our warehouses are brick. That's one of the nice features of this site, is that we've got great diversity in our warehouses and it allows us to make different whiskeys. So in a metal-sided warehouse, the whiskey is going to age more rapidly because the metal sides don't do a lot for insulation and the temperature goes up and down a lot faster. In our brick warehouses, that temperature moves up and down much more. And then in the brick-built Korean war warehouses, they actually have concrete floors. So if you go into Warehouse R, you can't look up. There's a concrete floor. So that actually makes for a very intense aging environment. In K, which is brick-built, you can look all the way up to the ceiling. So the airflow is completely different. In Warehouse H, there were metal sides that aged a lot faster and Albert was passionate about that. So he would go down and he would pick out a barrel and he would have that barrel for himself. Typically, he was picking out a honey barrel. What is a honey barrel? Well, if you go into Warehouse H and as you're walking down the south-facing aisle, there are windows. The barrels that are not in front of the windows are a different color than the barrels that are in the windows because of sunlight. He was passionate to honey barrels which have a different color. They have kind of a honey color that was sitting in front of the windows. And then he would bottle that barrel for himself. Elmer thought this would be a great idea. That is how Blanton's single barrel came about. That was how it was invented. And then, oddly enough, the only market in the world that took a shine to it was so all of the Blanton's single barrel that was being made actually ended up going to Japan. In 1997, I remember looking at the sales figures and was astonished how little Blanton's we were selling in the United States. We actually worked for a decade before we got an ounce of traction on Blanton's. We sat in this room tearing our hair out for a decade trying to figure out how to get Blanton's moving. But eventually, between public relations and awards and a lot of tastings and a lot of storytelling, we started to get traction. Now we cannot make it fast enough. I think we could easily sell ten times more Blanton's than we have available. But it is six to eight years of age. So that decision was made back in 2014, 2013. And when we were doing the planning back then we just had no earthly idea that the demand today would be like it is. That's the problem. One of the challenges of the whiskey business is when we launched Buffalo Trace in 1998 we made a forecast for 2006. When we got to 2006, we looked around and said, well, who made that decision? That is not nearly enough whiskey. So for 2014, what are we going to do? So we said, well, we'll make this number. And at the time, that seemed like a really big number. But we got to 2014 and we're looking around the same room going, well, we made that decision because that's pretty stupid. We didn't make nearly enough whiskey. So what are we going to do for 2022? Well, we're going to make a lot more whiskey. So we did. We're here and we haven't made nearly enough whiskey. So now we're going to make a decision for 2029. And someone said, that's great, but you're going to need more warehouses, more distilling capacity, more everything. We still don't think we're making enough whiskey. So it is just like the dog chasing the car down the road. It is quite something to behold. So that was how Elmer got onto the idea of Blantons. Elmer was an incredible character. I think, quite frankly, if you were scripting what the perfect granddad would look like, that would be Elmer. So, distinguished in World War II, in the Air Force, as a bomb sighter. It's an interesting story that I'll come back to here in a minute. Showed up here after the war and actually could not get a job here and just decided to show up to work. And so they put him to work and then he actually became successful here and eventually became the plant manager and I think Albert Blanton took a shot to Elmer. But remember the story about Japan being the first market for Blantons. Elmer became revered in Japan, but had actually never been there. So eventually he snagged an invite to go to Japan. When he got to Japan and came off the plane, they had the red carpet for Elmer. And the Japanese host said, Mr. Lee, have you ever been to Japan before? And Elmer said, well I have. But at about 10,000 feet. Dropping bombs on you. So his first five minutes in Japan was classic Elmer. Absolutely comical type stuff. But that was Elmer. And so I got to meet Elmer in 1997. And I will tell you he was a lot of the inspiration for what we've been able to accomplish. Why? Because this place in 1997 looked like a prison camp. It had barbed wire all around it. Every last inch. The buildings had been painted with what I can only describe as leftover paint from a bad hospital job. Because it was this frightful pale green color that you would see in a sterile hospital environment. And it was blasted everywhere. I mean it looked miserable. They had old trucks different colors. I mean it was just a really sad sorry place. So here we were with this thing. So I met Marlon and met Gahart and met Elmer. And I said so Elmer you know you look around the place. I said what's the quality of the whiskey like? He said oh it's really good. We win awards with our whiskey. That right there was the immediate sign that we had something here. That this was a Van Gogh painting that someone had covered up with some other frightful painting. And that what we needed to do was peel off the painting and restore it. And Elmer was very helpful along with Harlan and then Ronnie Edens and Leonard Riddle who were in charge of the warehouse complex at the time. And those two with Elmer got us started on the whole experimental program which has also been inspirational because the experimental program has in fact led us to launch brand new whiskies that have never been on the market. Like the H. Taylor Four Grain. So Elmer was a remarkable inspiration even though he was in his 80s and getting on into his 90s for us here and what we've done. Yeah he was a remarkable dry sense of humor. We had him on contract and I always think he was afraid that we were going to dump him. Because he would bring artifacts from his basement about every three months. So instead of saying look I got a ---- load of stuff why don't you come and get it. He just would drip feed it. And they were really good things. So I think he was like if I just keep drip feeding it they'll just never get rid of it. It was the last thing on our mind was to ever get rid of Elmer.