Bourbon Barrel Foods in the New York Times

(Matt Jamie of Bourbon Barrel Foods, from the New York Times web site)

An astute member of the LouisvilleHotBytes forum has hipped us to the following article on Bourbon Barrel Foods‘ soy sauce from yesterday’s New York Times:

THE idea of small-batch American soy sauce was born of beer and realized with bourbon.

Matt Jamie and a friend were in a bar, drinking longnecks and eating oysters. The year was 2003. Both were in their early 30s, angling for opportunities.

“Artisanal American olive oils were on the market; small-batch bourbons, too,” said Mr. Jamie, who was a chef at the time. “And it hit us: soy sauce. No one in America was making small-batch soy sauce.”

Mr. Jamie, a native of the Louisville area, spent the next few years researching shoyu, as Japanese-style soy sauce is known. While he was at it, he developed a line of specialty foods, including flavored sorghums and spices perfumed with smoldering staves salvaged from spent bourbon barrels. “I paid for my soy sauce production with bourbon-smoked paprika,” he said.

In August Mr. Jamie released the first batch of Bluegrass Soy Sauce. His product was inspired by the small soy breweries of Japan, which number around 1,600, but it boasts an impeccable Kentucky pedigree.

He buys soybeans that have not been genetically modified and soft red winter wheat from a downstate farmer whose family has been plowing Kentucky land since before the Civil War. Until recently, the farmer sold soybeans to a family of miso makers in Osaka, Japan. Mr. Jamie relies on limestone-filtered water from a nearby spring named after the Samuels family of Maker’s Mark fame.

He boils his beans, roasts his wheat and ferments his sauce in the rear of a converted factory in Louisville. And Mr. Jamie ages that sauce in old whiskey barrels purchased from Buffalo Trace Distillery, down the road in Frankfort, and the Woodford Reserve Distillery, in Versailles.

Edward Lee, the chef and owner of the restaurant 610 Magnolia in Louisville, called Mr. Jamie’s soy sauce “more pungent, more smoky, more flavorful” than the dominant brand in the United States. “Kikkoman is like liquid salt,” he said. “This stuff has more aromatics, more umami. What he’s done is make soy sauce into an American product, something more aggressively flavored. We use it sparingly, but we use it.”

Bluegrass Soy Sauce plays a role in a venison tartare served at 610 Magnolia, but Mr. Lee is not sure that he can distinguish profound effects from the bourbon barrel aging: “Maybe you pick up some tannins,” he said. “Maybe a little smoke from the barrel char. But it’s also about marketing. I mean, Tabasco has been aging their sauce in old bourbon barrels for 100-plus years, but you never hear them selling it that way.”

Kentuckians have long repurposed the barrels, which, by law, distillers of bourbon may use only once. In the 1970s planters made from halved barrels were au courant. So were bar-height captain’s chairs, waxed to a sheen and upholstered with tufted leatherette.

The next generation of bourbon-enhanced products has come to market more recently. Shuckman’s Fish Company and Smokery in Louisville immerses spoonfish in a bourbon brine before smoking it. Browning’s, a Louisville brew pub, casks its imperial stout in bourbon barrels.

Now the list includes a soy sauce, sold, like the finest bourbon, with batch and bottle number hand-lettered on the label. Priced at $5 for a five-ounce bottle, the sauce is available at some Kentucky retailers and through bourbonbarrelfoods.com.

Bluegrass Soy Sauce has also won converts outside the Bluegrass State. Rick Tramonto, the executive chef of Tru in Chicago, uses it in a soy beurre blanc he serves with steamed halibut and minted bok choy.

“I like the touch of wood,” Mr. Tramonto said. “We also reduce his soy down to a syrup and serve it with hamachi. The only question I have is, what took so long? When are our grocery stores going to be stocked with 10 different artisanal American-made soys?”

Pretty cool! We’re big fans of BBF’s bourbon smoked pepper, but haven’t tried the soy sauce yet. Hopefully we’ll get to soon!