Bernie Lubbers is taking a break from two decades of relentless travel. The long-time brand ambassador has been named whiskey ambassador emeritus for Heaven Hill. 

So, while he isn’t technically “retired,” he’s taking a permanent breather.

“Obviously, the whole reason is so I don’t have to be traveling two, three, four weeks a month,” Lubbers said. “Most people in a brand ambassador role last five years. I’ve been doing it 20.”

Lubbers, who began his career as a stand-up comedian, has become known as an authority on Bottled in Bond bourbon. He even fronts a band called the Bottled in Bond Boys. He’ll get to spend more time going forward playing music and talking about whiskey history, and less time doing training and tastings.

One of Lubbers’ first projects will be to open a satellite Heaven Hill tasting room of sorts at Frazier History Museum in Louisville. The tasting room will feature ongoing performances that intertwine bluegrass music and whiskey-soaked storytelling. The series is set to begin the week after the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. 

“It’s going to put a spotlight on Frazier, and I get to play some bluegrass music,” Lubbers, who is known in the industry as “the Whiskey Professor,” said. “I can finish how I started by entertaining people. The goal is to bring more visibility of Bluegrass to Louisville and add Bluegrass to a bourbon tasting. 

“And if I want to go to Puerto Vallarta for a month in January, I can.”

On the Road

We recently sat down with Lubbers and got him to recount some of his experiences from his years as a brand ambassador. There were stories.

He spoke of the first time he ever traveled with legendary distiller Parker Beam to a whiskey festival in San Francisco. They went to an account to do a tasting and were presented with glasses of water. Beam quickly noticed there was a slice of cucumber in his water. He wasn’t happy. Lubbers told him this was kind of a new trend.

Beam said, “Bernie, I raise hogs. You can put anything in a hog pen, and they’ll eat it. But they won’t eat a cucumber. And I ain’t eating anything a hog won’t eat.”

Another memory Lubbers has of Beam, who died in 2017, involves a public meet and greet. Beam was suffering from ALS at the time, and his motor and communication skills were declining, Lubbers said, but Beam was insistent on signing anything and everything people would bring to him.

“It’s hard to sign a bottle with ALS,” Lubbers said. “It hurt me to watch him do it, but he did them all.”

Lubbers told Beam he wasn’t expected to sign everything. To which Beam replied, “That’s where you’re wrong. I might not be able to sign anything tomorrow, but I can today.” 

“I learned a big lesson that day,” Lubbers said.

A few years ago, Lubbers began working alongside Heaven Hill Master Distiller Connor O’Driscoll, how joined the distillery in 2019, and the two quickly hit it off. He said a running joke is if they have a display of whiskeys and someone asks, “What’s the oldest thing you’ve got?”, O’Driscoll inevitably responds, “Bernie.”

Lubbers also had a stint at Beam Distillery. He and Fred Noe traveled together frequently, and at one point was at a dinner. One course in the dinner was deviled quail eggs.

“Fred knows I’m kind of a finicky eater,” Lubbers said. “I hate mustard, I hate mayonnaise, I don’t like hardboiled eggs.”

Unbeknownst to Lubbers, he and a sales rep had made a $5 bet on whether he would eat the quail egg, with Fred betting he absolutely would not.

The eggs were served, Lubbers said, and his dinner companions “were sitting there like two Cheshire cats. So, I popped that thing in, and he said, ‘God damn it. The one night you’re going to get adventurous, and I’ve got a bet on you.’ I’m kind of glad I did now, because Fred and I have something we can joke about.”

Lubbers said his new bluegrass series will likely happen multiple times weekly during the day. For details, check https://www.fraziermuseum.org/ in the coming weeks.

-Kevin Gibson