Non Print Format Honorable Mention: Joanna Hay and the Louie B. Nunn Center, University of Kentucky’s documentary, Quest for the Perfect Bourbon: Voices of the Buffalo Trace Distillery
Quest for the Perfect Bourbon: Voices of the Buffalo Trace Distillery is the story of a Kentucky distillery, its people and their quest for the perfect bourbon. Based on the Buffalo Trace Oral History Project, developed by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries, this documentary presents the history and the people of the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky.
Viewers hear the voices of people who have been making bourbon for over half a century: master distillers, warehouse supervisors, processors, members of the Buffalo Trace family, and descendants of iconic figures like Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr., Colonel Albert Blanton and Pappy Van Winkle. In addition to producing award-winning bourbon, this is one of the oldest distilling sites in the country and it has a remarkably rich history. Viewers are given an insider’s look at life in the distillery and how world-class bourbon is made.
Directed by filmmaker/oral historian Joanna Hay, and produced by professional oral historians at the Nunn Center, Quest for the Perfect Bourbon premiered at the historic Grand Theatre in Frankfort, Kentucky to a packed audience and Kentucky Educational Television (KET) began airing the documentary in June 2011.
To see the full documentary, go to: https://www.nunncenter.org/buffalotrace/quest/
Oral history was central in the production of this documentary. Over forty hours of oral history interviews were conducted by bourbon expert Dr. Thomas Troland, a faculty member at the University of Kentucky, and archived at the Nunn Center.
The oral history project website is located at: https://www.nunncenter.org/buffalotrace. The interviews in their entirety can be accessed online on the Kentuckiana Digital Library (KDL). On the KDL we host the video recordings of the interviews in our OHMS system which makes the transcripts searchable and connects users from the transcript to the corresponding moment in the interview.
