iconic bourbons around the world.

And a lot of their success comes

from the drinkability of their product.

"Sweet, smooth, no bitterness," they say,

it's sort of a bourbon that everyone can enjoy.

What I didn't realize about the operation was

just the amount of manual labor that goes

into handling all these barrels

and the insane amount of real estate

they need to produce the bourbon.

So today I'm heading to Loretto, Kentucky

to see how Maker's Mark have kept their product

consistent for more than 60 years.

First up, I'm heading to the Independent Stave Company

to see how they make custom barrels for Maker's Mark.

One of the rules of bourbon making

is that you have to use a brand new

white oak barrel every time.

So that means a lot of barrels.

- So in terms of the cooperage's process,

kinda what we're looking at here,

this is really the first step.

This is called seasoning or air drying.

Maker's Mark barrels, they're gonna be

a little bit different, right?

So they're gonna have like that nine months,

10, 11, 12 months of seasoning, right?

- Okay.

- Essentially, we want to put it in a nutshell,

you're gonna get a sweeter mellower,

a little bit of a thicker whiskey out of it.

Every single one of Maker's Mark barrels comes right here.

Actually this yard that you see right here,

this is all built specifically

for Maker's Mark to house their longer seasoning.

- What happens then to this wood from here?

- So what's gonna happen here,

we'll process this wood, it'll be dried,

and then it'll go into the cooperage.

We'll actually form each stave,

we'll form them into a barrel, we'll char it,

we'll send them on down the road.

He's got all these staves being fed to him,

one of the thing's he gotta' do,

he's gonna pick out the widest stave that he can find,

that's gonna be the bunk stave.

Then he's gonna proceed in the narrow wide,

narrow wide pattern all the way around, right?

So not as easy as it looks,

it takes about six months to get really,

really proficient at this job.

So this is pretty much the first time

you're gonna see somewhat of a barrel shape.

It'll go down to the steam tunnel.

We'll steam in the barrel for a little bit.

It'll soften those wood fibers,

and then we'll actually bend the barrel into its shape.

- [Daniel] After the barrels are steamed and shaped,

ISC slides on their hoops, logos them up,

and then sends them to the char machine where they are

blasted up to char level three of four,

which is how Maker's likes 'em.

From here, ISC stores them for a while,

and then sends them over to Maker's Mark,

where they will be filled with White Dog,

or clear bourbon that has yet to see a barrel.

To start the bourbon making process,

Makers' Mark gets eight trucks a day

of corn, barley and wheat,

which they will combine with water

from their lake and turn into one

of the world's most famous bourbons.

- [Denny] You know, the first step of making whiskey,

once you've sourced the grains from the local farmers

is you got to grind that grain up.

- [Daniel] Okay.

- [Denny] Right, you can't just use a whole kernel,

you have to grind it up.

- [Daniel] Right.

- [Denny] So all the grain that we're gonna process,

- [Daniel] All the grain, all of it, okay.

- [Denny] To the distillery, corn, wheat, malted barley,

- [Daniel] Right.

- Will all get ground up in a roller mill.

And then we're gonna prep it for mashing,

which is where the batch process starts,

which are these tanks right behind us here.

The job of the mash cooker basically

is to release the flavor that's in the grain

and convert all that starch

to fermentable sugar.

- [Daniel] In your time here, have you changed any element

of that, or has it been the exact same forever?

- It's been the exact same.

- [Daniel] Once the mash is cooked

and all the sugars are released,

the mixture is piped to a giant open fermentor

and combined with yeast.

- [Denny] This is a fermentor that was just filled.

We've added the yeast.

Well, typically it takes two to four hours

for that yeast to get acclimated

to the new environment

- [Daniel] Right.

- [Denny] To where it'll start eating the sugar

and converting it into alcohol.

- [Daniel] From here, the mixture will bubble away

for about three days or until

the yeast has eaten all the sugar

and turned it into alcohol.

- [Denny] So this is one that is probably

about two to four hours away from distillation.

What you can see is one, it's got a very heavy grain cap.

- [Daniel] So is it really as simple as

the second the bubbling stops, you want to drain it?

- For the most part, yeah.

I mean with fermentation, it's pretty easy to tell

just by sight where it is in the process

and whether or not things are close to being completed.

- [Daniel] Next, the fermentors are drained

and sent to one of the distilleries copper stills,

which use a series of plates and steam at about 216 degrees

to carry the alcohol up as vapor

and drop all of the solids down below.

From here, the alcohol vapor

is cooled back down into a liquid state

forming what is called white dog

or a high proof distillate,

ready to be aged in a barrel.

So this is Maker's Mark.

- Yeah, this is Maker's distillate

- [Daniel] High proof.

- Yup, 130 proof.

- [Daniel] 130 proof.

- [Denny] 65%. All distilled spirits are

gonna come off distilled looking just like vodka, right?

So it's the barrel that's gonna give it all of its color

and then obviously a lot of its flavors as well.

- Right, at the cooperage they said

that the secret to Maker's Mark flavor was the barrel.

- Yeah. I know Andrew very well.

And that's exactly something Andrew would say.

He'd like to believe that

he has that much impact on Maker's.

- Right

- Andrew's a good friend of mine.

Everybody's always asking, you know,

what's the percent impact from the barrel.

I don't know that that could truly be quantified.

Cause there's so many things that go into it.

- Well we can know because we can taste it right now.

- Yeah, you can taste it, yeah.

- All right well cheers.

- Yeah, cheers.

- [Daniel] It's kind of good.

It's got like a lot of vanilla and grain.

- Right, so this will get cut to 110 proof

and then put in one of those brand new oak barrels.

- [Daniel] What do those barrels cost you?

- I don't want to get too much into that, but I mean,

they're gonna be upwards a hundred, $200 easy for them.

- Oh my God, so like when you buy a bottle of Maker's,

there's, you're buying some stuff.

- Yeah, it's not, it's not cheap making good whiskey.

I can tell you that.

- [Daniel] Next it's time to head to the filling line

to see our freshly distilled white dog get put into barrels.

- So this truck is coming from

Independent Stave in Lebanon, Kentucky.

These are the new white oak barrels

that they produce for us.

- [Daniel] So these are the ones we just saw get made.

- [Shawn] Yes sir.

- [Daniel] Cool.

- [Shawn] And so from there,

what we're gonna do is visually inspect

these barrels for any quality defects.

So you can see here from that visual inspection,

I told you about,

- Yeah.

- This barrel has a cracked head here.

- Okay.

- [Daniel] See that crack down through there.

It's at the very bottom of the barrel.

- Right.

- [Shawn] This is gonna open all the liquid,

it's gonna leak.

- Oh, wow.

- So I'm not gonna put liquid in it,

I'm gonna send it back for the, to replace that.

- This is the kind of thing you wouldn't even notice

just looking at the barrel now.

- [Shawn] That grain's gonna be, have a nod in it.

you could lose your liquid.

So anything we're not gonna chance, right.

- Yeah.

- We want a good quality barrel and ISC always.

- It's a big investment, it's real estate, it's time,

- Absolutely

- It's a lot of whiskey.

Now it's finally time to fill the barrels with white dog.

All right you wanna let me.

- Sure.

- Do some of your work there.

- Do you want to fill or you want to bottle?

- I'll f*****...let me at 'em.

- You do it all, all right.

- What's the worst that can happen, you know,

- You can get soaked.

- Okay.

- That would be the worst.

- You were very quick to say that.

- Yeah, you can get soaked.

- That's okay, I mean a little.

- I don't know if you got like

a change of clothes or something.

You're gonna hit your foot pedal.

- [Daniel] Yep.

- [Shawn] You're gonna row.

You want the bung to be like that.

- Yep.

- You're gonna hit start one time.

It's gonna start bringing it down.

You're gonna hit start again, it starts it.

Might want to get out of here,

we'll take off from you.

There you go.

- [Daniel] Uh-oh, all right.

- [Shawn] There it comes.

(hammering)

- Foot pedal?

- You keep your pedal away to release it.

Now you can roll it on.

Peace, bro.

You got it.

- Is this all of the Maker's Mark in the world

is going out through these two pumps?

- [Shawn] Yep.

- [Daniel] All right, let's roll.

From here, the barrels are trucked off

to one of Maker's 46 giant warehouses.

Shawn says they actually have over 1 million barrels

in storage at any given time.

And I'm kind of blown away thinking about

the constant investment and organization

that goes into managing an inventory like that.

Also schlepping the barrels around the warehouse

is definitely the most physical aspect of the operation.

Shawn can anything go wrong?

- [Shawn] No, I mean, you just, yeah.

Stop.

The biggest risk that we have in the warehouse,

oddly is gonna be your hands.

Look at all these pinch points.