Callaway grew up in a musical family and even studied music in college. Before moving to Kentucky he was playing the French horn in the orchestra in New Orleans and would also play in the Hollywood Concert Orchestra in China every year during the winter break. He met his wife, who is from Kentucky, on one of those winter tours and eventually moved to Kentucky. He was working at Decca, a NuLu restaurant, honing his wine and cocktail skills when Copper & Kings founder Joe Herron introduced him to the founders of Bardstown Bourbon Company. That’s when he pivoted into the bourbon world, though he still plays music frequently, including sometimes with the Louisville Orchestra.

“Every now and then, I’ll have my French horn in my car, so I’ve taken it up to the top of the rickhouse before,” Callaway says. “I’ve taken it all over just for something fun to do, no sonic aging on the barrels, just having fun and seeing what it sounds like and something I enjoy. The acoustics in the rickhouse are awesome. I was up on the top floor and there was actually a tour going on on the first floor not too long ago, so I think that was a little interesting for them. But it sounds really great.”

Adam Edwards, Heaven Hill’s whiskey educator and brand ambassador, is also known to drag his tuba into a distillery or rickhouse — in fact, his Instagram handle is @bourbontuba, where you can sometimes see photos or videos of his musical escapades mixed in with bourbon education. Edwards also majored in tuba performance in college and has frequently been involved with various community bands throughout the years.

Before Edwards, Bernie Lubbers — former Heaven Hill national whiskey ambassador — often used his unique storytelling and musical abilities to create songs about bourbon history for his audiences. Lubbers’ tenure as a brand ambassador in the bourbon industry lasted for more than two decades, first at Jim Beam and then, most recently, at Heaven Hill. Before that, he was a comedian for more than 20 years, giving him a unique and engaging performing style. Today he’s still Heaven Hill’s brand ambassador emeritus and he still plays with his band, the Bottled In Bond Boys, around the Kentucky area.

“I think the people who get into bourbon tend to embrace complexity and tradition, but also, in many cases, innovation,” says bourbon writer Susan Reigler, a horn player. “They’re interested in the process and they’re interested in the stories. If somebody in bourbon also happens to be, say, a musician or an artist, they probably started doing that before they came to bourbon. It’s something that people can get their children doing, having them play a musical instrument, which they can do their whole lives. It introduces them to a whole community of people. These tend to be the kids who are the good students, and it’s a great community, and it’s something to do together. And a lot of times, sports are extolled as this virtue of teamwork. Well, there’s no more precise teamwork than playing music in an ensemble and everybody being in tune and following the conductor and interpreting this one piece of music that’s from one person’s mind, but it takes multiple people to make it happen.” Pat Heist and Shane Baker at Wilderness Trail played in a rock band together long before they opened the distillery. Marianne Eaves, Kentucky’s first female master distiller, is a former band kid. The skills of practice and teamwork learned in a collaborative music setting translate to success in almost any job, but the unique skills that come from music can actually improve overall brain function and have proven statistically to correlate with higher academic achievement.

“Playing a musical instrument is the absolute only human activity that involves every part of the brain,” Reigler says. Sometimes people from various parts of the industry get together and play in local, nonprofessional community bands and ensembles. Edwards has played in a brass band previously with Reigler, and the latter has also played charity events with Callaway.

“Dan is a very, very fine horn player, and his wife owns the Louisville Academy of Music,” Reigler says. “She’s a violinist and teacher. For a couple of years now, Dan and I have been part of their fundraiser that we came up with, Bourbon and Brass, and they also now have another faculty member who’s a trombonist, who also happens to play in the brass band that I play in. So the first year for Bourbon and Brass, it was just duets that Dan and I played together. The next year, we actually had a little brass ensemble that played. People bought tickets and came for drinks and appetizers and some music. It was a fundraiser for the Louisville Academy of Music.”

There are numerous musicians at Buffalo Trace in various roles. In the Whiskey Woodcraft shop alone, two of the woodworkers are also musicians. Art Hoskins makes guitars out of barrel staves and plays guitar in a band called the Muddlers and can often be seen playing whiskey barrel guitars for tour guests at the distillery. His woodshop colleague Collin Vice also plays the cello.

As in music, where multiple people have to play different parts in order to produce the complete sound, all the people in a distillery have to work together in harmony in order to produce the water of life.

“You have a lot of different parts coming together to create a more complex whole,” Reigler explains. “I also like to say that something like the various expressions of the same brand, like say the Old Forester Whiskey Row series, are like variations on a theme in music. That’s my music analogy when I’m coming to bourbon. You also have all of the people in the distillery in various jobs... You can’t just have the distiller or the taster or the warehouse people or the staff who are milling the grain or all of the various components of who’s doing what in the distillery. And again, to make a complex whole like a whiskey, it’s like having all the players in an ensemble. You can’t just have the flashy master distiller.”