“There have always been women in the industry,” said Andrea Wilson, master of maturation at Michter’s, a distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. In his book “Whiskey Women,” Fred Minnick writes that women in medieval Europe used their distilling acumen to make medicine, but also were persecuted when those same skills were denounced as black magic. Both Pam Heilmann, master distiller emerita at Michter’s, and Holmes, of Milam & Greene, spent decades working at Jim Beam. “In moving to the whiskey industry, I’ve experienced the best and the worst,” she said. (Two other women have followed her in top spots at Brown-Forman: Elizabeth McCall, assistant master distiller at Woodford Reserve, and Jackie Zykan, master taster for Old Forester.)

Source: bd News24 July 03, 2021 05:15 UTC