The Bust-Head and Beyond

Remembering Booker Noe, Who Helped Shape Bourbon’s Bold History

Two decades ago, the burly bourbon baron of Bardstown, Kentucky, clocked out of this earthly saloon for the last time. His name was Booker Noe, and he wasn’t just Jim Beam’s grandson, he was a spirited colossus straddling whiskey’s wild frontier. Booker left us exactly 40 years after Congress dubbed bourbon a “distinctive product of the United States,” …