WASHINGTON — At 80, Jimmy Russell finds his knees are not quite what they used to be. So he enjoys a comfortable chair where his admirers — millennial mixologists, their arms covered in tattoos; moneyed moms who have jettisoned their cosmopolitans for Manhattans; and random professionals toting rare bottles of Wild Turkey — may approach to greet him.
Mr. Russell, the master distiller at Wild Turkey, ensconced himself earlier this month at the Jack Rose Dining Salon, a popular bourbon bar here, and held impromptu court, smiling with the sweetness of an Old Fashioned at everyone who came to pay respect. “There is only one of you in the world,” said Lindsy Lee, 35, a lawyer and bourbon lover who came to meet him.
For decades, Mr. Russell toiled among the barrels and yeast in the quiet of the horse country of Kentucky all but unnoticed, as his father and his grandfather did. But the resurgence in whiskey has turned Mr. Russell, one of the last remaining original master distillers broadly responsible for the development and growth of the modern-era bourbon business, into an octogenarian cult figure.
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As the small batch movement took off, and so did the role of the distillers, who became brand managers in their own right, promoting bourbon to liquor stores and bars around the country and eventually, overseas, doing “education seminars” and signing bottles the way authors sign books.
“People love to say, ‘I talked to Jim Beam’s great-grandson and he told me how this bourbon was made,’ ” Mr. Noe said. “People who come into bars are looking for more than a drink these days, they want the stories. It’s entertainment.”
