As master distiller at Milam & Greene Whiskies, Marlene Holmes never imagined she’d be ignoring retirement at age 65 to work until who knows when in Blanco, Texas. That the Bourbon Women Association awarded her Master Distiller of the Year last August was even more of a surprise to a lady who had visions of becoming a catfish farmer in the late 1980s.

That’s right. Not a cat lady. A catfish lady. But the idea wasn’t all that crazy, really. On her 32-acre farm was a sizable pond in which the fish could grow from fingerling to fat cats filleted for restaurant consumption. But here’s where the story gets good-crazy.

Somewhere along the line her musings caught the attention of one Booker Noe, then master distiller at James B. Beam Distillery’s plant in Boston, Ky. Noe’s thoughts about fish farming were further along than Holmes’s. He had 1,000 fingerlings cats in various ponds on the Boston plant’s campus, and he needed someone to feed them. Pleased to find another with aqua-preneurial dreams, Noe hired Holmes for a summer job as pond-side server to the wiggling, whiskered creatures of the murk.

““You knew (Booker) was coming long before you ever saw him come into the room. That big, booming voice, it was something.”

“The experiment didn’t pan out for him, and I didn’t become a catfish farmer,” Holmes laughed. “But going there to feed those fish was the first time I’d ever been past the gate at the distillery. … I got to see all that huge equipment, and the atmosphere there really intrigued me.”

On trips to the distillery to fatten Booker’s fish, the catfish lady made friends with employees at the plant. When one told her Beam was hiring, she was intrigued. Holmes lived just 10 minutes away, which would cut about 20 minutes off her drive to UPS in Louisville, where she was a safety supervisor.

She was hired by Beam in 1990 to work the 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift. Though the plant was old and in need of some TLC, the work was new, challenging and stimulating.

“I loved the fermentation room, just loved those aromas,” she recalled. (Beam is currently spending $400 million to expand the plant.) “But, boy, that place was old. There were cracks in the floor I could step into. Lighting there was poor—especially on the graveyard shift—so I was given a flashlight to be able to walk around and check all those gauges.”

During her first few years, Noe was one of her bosses before the company refocused his whiskey making time to global brand building with consumers. Holmes said his reputation for high standards and doing things his way preceded him, as did his  larger-than-life personality.

“You knew he was coming long before you ever saw him come into the room,” she said. “That big, booming voice, it was something. He was a character and a great person to work with. I wish I’d have gotten to spend more time with him before he was on the road so much.”

Jerry Dalton (who, like Noe, is a Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Famer) replaced Noe, and Holmes became his student. She recalled him as another man of high standards who approached bourbon making strategically.

“He was all about the science behind it, always wanting to know what was going on with fermentation and with the quality of grains coming in,” she said. “And he was a good generous soul type, a coach.”

Adding to her list of famous instructors, Holmes talked about working for Pam Heilmann, who would become Kentucky’s first woman master distiller while at Michter’s American Whiskies. 

“Pam’s one of my mentors, and we worked together for about 15 years,” Holmes said. “Pam was a tough cookie who didn’t cut anybody any slack, but she treated everybody the same: fairly. She knew every employee and was very personable. She was fabulous.” 

When Holmes was first hired, bourbon’s interminable sales slump was ongoing, and with such low demand, only a half dozen workers managed the night shift at the plant. But as its popularity returned in the new millennium, hiring and whiskey making took off. Before, when times were good, the Boston plant could produce 700 barrels a day. But by the early 2000s, it filled 1,400 barrels daily and distilled round the clock.

By 2018, Holmes had logged 28 years at Beam and was looking for a new challenge in distilling. At age 59, she enjoyed her work, but she’d begun sniffing around opportunities in craft distilling. Ironically, it would be another Beam employee who’d steer her to Milam & Greene. 

“Marsha Milam asked him if she knew of anybody who’d be interested distilling there, and he said, ‘I just might,’” Holmes recalled. She and Marsha connected, “I liked the opportunity, and so I packed my bags, sold my farm, loaded up the truck, and off I went to Texas.”

But there was just one hitch. While Holmes’s Beam experience taught her a lot about operating column stills, Milam & Greene’s pot still was another animal. 

“Learning to run a pot still? Yeah, it was a big deal for me,” she said. “The guy that I started working with there at the distillery, Jordan was his name, he’d been there from the beginning and he was very familiar with the pot. Jordan walked me through it and, you know, I just took off with it after that.”

When at Beam, Holmes imagined like some of her coworkers, “that having a little pot still to run would be fun.” Despite inviting some of “those guys to come down come and work on the pot with me, none took me up on it. Maybe they really weren’t that all that interested in the first place, but it sure is a treat for me.”

Holmes gets a column still fix by proxy at Bardstown Bourbon Company, where much of M&G’s distillate is made. Save for a single run during COVID, she’s never missed one in six years. She said some of the crew there are, like her, former Beam employees.

“BBC is a great partner of ours,” she said. “I really enjoy working with those guys.”

She’s also smitten with Texas life, including the challenging dry heat that accelerates the whiskey aging process. Pivoting to new meteorological circumstances is fun and easier “with a small outfit like we’ve got. We can experiment, try a few barrels of this and that.” What may take two years of aging to accomplish in Kentucky can happen in “less than three months because of Texas aging. But what’s cool is when you tinker around a lot like we do, the flavors you can create are just endless.”

Though people ask Holmes regularly when she might retire, her answer is always, “I don’t know, really, because I love what I do. It hardly seems like work. I guess I’ll go when they run me off.”

“I mean we’re going to bars—really nice places and dive bars—talking about Milam & Greene, and that’s my work! Who wouldn’t enjoy doing that?”

Recounting a recent two-week tour of M&G California accounts to promote the brand, Holmes made first-time visits to Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Her dream of taking in a concert at the Hollywood Bowl was made manifest by no less than Eric Clapton. Not a bad set of perks for a humble Kentucky girl who all but stumbled into a distillery job a quarter century ago.

“I mean we’re going to bars—really nice places and dive bars—talking about Milam & Greene,” she said. “And that’s my work! Who wouldn’t enjoy doing that?”