"Blue Grass & Brown Whiskey": Southern Foodways Alliance coming to Louisville in July.

In January, I learned about the Southern Foodways alliance:

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

It's true that I often have an adverse relationship with certain social and political aspects of my Southern heritage ... but food and drink is a different matter entirely, and that's the whole point of the Alliance.

The specific reason all this came up was an interview I did with Amy Evans, an oral historian:

Southern Foodways Alliance oral history project includes the Publican's testimony about the late Max Allen.

The SFA is coming to Louisville for its annual field trip, and even though beer isn't a part of the program, it looks awfully interesting.

Lousiville: Blue Grass & Brown Whiskey ... Eighth Annual Southern Foodways Alliance Field Trip

Join the Southern Foodways Alliance as we travel to Louisville, Kentucky, home of the “most exciting two minutes in sports,” and the arguable birthplace of the old fashioned.

We’ll play dainty, an only-in-Louisville game, in the streets of the city’s Schnitzelburg neighborhood. We’ll gather in the Rathskeller, beneath a tooled leather ceiling, to toast the work of Minnie Fox and the African American cooks she honored in the Blue Grass Cookbook.

We’ll taste Benedictine spread and Henry Bain sauce. We’ll sip brown whiskey from the state’s best distillers and red wine from grapes raised by a onetime tobacco farmer. We will dine on fried catfish at the All Wool and a Yard Wide Democratic Club. And farm-fresh fare at Lilly’s. We’ll sample bourbon-marinated smoked fish. And bourbonbarrel-aged sorghum.

The region’s best scholars will show us the way, providing context and amplification. Smart talking and great eating (and drinking), that’s what we promise.

Southern Foodways Alliance oral history project includes the Publican's testimony about the late Max Allen.

Earlier in January I received an e-mail from a researcher named Amy Evans, who is an oral historian for the Southern Foodways Alliance (Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi).

She had uncovered an old 2005 posting during the course of Internet searching:

Remembering Max Allen.

It turns out that Amy is doing research on "old line bartenders and the bar tradition in Louisville," and accordingly, she stopped by to interview me last Friday.

I was delighted to help "preserve" Max for posterity.

For a closer look at what Amy does as an oral historian, see what she compiled in 2005 about bartenders in New Orleans.