The Fascinating Reason Why Psychology Helped Elizabeth McCall Become Woodford Reserve's Master Distiller
Elizabeth McCall never expected to spend her career nosing barrels and shaping one of America’s most popular bourbons. When she finished graduate school with a master’s in counseling psychology, she imagined a very different life for herself.
“I thought I’d have an office with a couch and do therapy,” she says. “But it was very intimidating, and not what I had this glamorous vision of.”
Then she heard about an opening at Brown‑Forman, the parent company of Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey. The role was in sensory science—evaluating human response to flavor and aroma—and the company often hired people with psychology backgrounds. She applied on a whim. “I didn’t know anything about alcohol,” she says. “I wasn’t a whiskey fanatic. I didn’t even know what made bourbon bourbon.”
Courtesy Woodford Reserv
She learned quickly. Working in quality control, she tasted everything the company produced—bourbon, tequila, flavored spirits, pre‑mixed cocktails—while traveling to global facilities to train teams on standards. “I got into it by happenstance,” she says. “And then I developed my passion while working at Brown‑Forman.”
Time in the distilleries deepened that passion. Trips to Woodford Reserve and Jack Daniel’s revealed the craft behind the spirit. “You realize how amazing the magic of making whiskey is,” she says. “That’s when I really fell in love with it.”
Her curiosity didn’t go unnoticed. In 2014, during an internal training with longtime master distiller Chris Morris, she peppered him with questions and helped run the tastings. She made an impression, and soon after was invited to train as a master taster. “I realized I really enjoyed speaking to people, connecting,” she says. “That was my first ambassador role.”
Courtesy Woodford Reserve
By 2015, she held the title officially, balancing sensory science with production work at Woodford. Three years later, she stepped into the role of assistant master distiller, working directly under Morris and taking on the responsibility that now defines her career: protecting the character of the whiskey. “You can’t make a change to Woodford Reserve without me being part of that conversation,” she says.
Innovation is the other pillar of her job, though she approaches it with disciplined curiosity. Trends like ready‑to‑serve cocktails don’t tempt her to take shortcuts. “That’s not a Woodford thing to do,” she says. Instead, she looks for natural ways to express new flavors—through grain, fermentation, distillation, and finishing. “There’s always an authentic way to do it.”
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That philosophy shows up most clearly in the special releases she shepherds. Some, like Double Double Oaked, surprised even her. “I thought it was going to be super sweet and indulgent,” she says. “And then we tasted it, and it was bold and robust—leather, tobacco, roasted coffee.” Others, like the Sonoma Triple Finish, reflect her love of blending distinct influences, in this case Sonoma County pinot noir wine and brandy, to create something seamless.
She treats the limited-editions with a kind of reverence—not because they’re rare, but because they’re unrepeatable. “We don’t have more of them,” she says. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone.” She’ll share them, but only with people who will truly appreciate what’s in the glass.
“It’s just such beautiful liquid,” she says. “These are little moments in time we’ll never have again.”
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Her sensory instincts remain sharp, even off the clock. She smells her Coca‑Cola without thinking. She dissects cocktails at lunch. She encourages people to build their own flavor memory bank: “You have to know what a true red apple tastes like versus a green apple or a honeycrisp.”
In February 2023, McCall became Woodford Reserve’s master distiller—while pregnant with her second child. The company announced both milestones in the same breath, a pairing that felt quietly radical in an industry dominated by men and long‑held assumptions about what leadership is supposed to look like. Internally, the conversation was refreshingly straightforward. When her manager floated a July announcement to coincide with the annual shareholder meeting, she simply told them her due date was in July. “And the reaction wasn’t hesitation,” she says. “It was, ‘Congratulations. So do we announce before maternity leave, or after?’”
For McCall, that shift mattered. “I’ve had so many friends say, ‘I’m going to wait to have a baby because they won’t want to hire me,’” she says. “It was powerful to see that wasn’t the case here.”
The title also came during an era when Woodford’s role inside Brown‑Forman had shifted. When Morris started, he told her, “nobody cared about us…we were just little Woodford.” Now, the brand carries far more weight, and with that comes more eyes on every decision.
Yet McCall approaches the job the same way she approached sensory science: with patience, curiosity, and a long view of the whiskey. She’s the gatekeeper for quality and the creative force behind the special releases that have become cult favorites.
Even with the title, the visibility, and the pressure, her ambitions remain grounded in the work itself, in the slow craft that pulled her in more than a decade ago.
“I hope that by the time I’m retiring, people will think I made some really delicious whiskey.”