Who was Doug Farris? I did not know him until I had a conversation with Ed Foote the other day. He is actually pretty significant to Julian Van Winkle. Doug Farris was the Master Distiller at the Old Boone Distillery in Valley Station when it closed down in the 1970s. He came to work at Stitzel-Weller and was there when Ed arrived. So how is he significant to Julian? He was the Distiller that made the whiskey that went into the first bottling of Pappy 20 - you know the one that won all of the praise that convinced Julian to continue the brand and expand it into Pappy 23.
Ed told me that Farris was a friend of Roy Hawes who was master distiller at Stitzel-Weller for most of the 1950s, the 1960s and into the 1970s. It was Hawes that helped Farris get the job at Stitzel-Weller when Old Boone closed down. This meant that Ed had access to the experience of not only Hawes and Wilson, his predecessors at Stitzel-Weller, but also a third Master Distiller with Farris when he started at Old Fitzgerald (as the distillery was known when Ed started there in 1984).