Friday 30th January 2015 - Asheville & Biltmore

Friday 30th January 2015

Not too early up this morning after our late arrival last night. When we eventually got going we headed for the Biltmore Estate. This is a huge house and 8,000 acres of park which is owned by the descendants of George Vanderbilt who had the house built. The house was opened in 1895 and at the end of the 19th century, the estate covered 125,000 acres or about 195 square miles. The house was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and the grounds landscaped by Frederick Law Olmstead, the latter who had designed Central Park in New York. George Vanderbilt, married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in 1898 and they had one child a daughter called Cornelia. Cornelia married John Francis Cecil, an English aristocrat. The Cecil family were the marquesses of Exeter and Salisbury, both descended from William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s lord treasurer. Burghley’s elder son, Thomas, was created Earl of Exeter, and his descendant the 10th Earl was made a marquess in 1801. This line has remained seated at Burghley House in Northamptonshire, the great mansion built by Lord Burghley. Burghley’s second son, Robert, created Earl of Salisbury in 1605, built a new house at Hatfield, the seat of his descendants the earls (later marquesses) of Salisbury. The Cecil family now owns the company that runs the estate. William A.V. Cecil, George Vanderbilts’ grandson now owns the house and about half of the land and his son is CEO of the operating company.

The house which has 255 rooms is very grand in scale and is reached by a 2 mile road from the entrance gate. The house is open to the public and there is an audio tour of the inside. There are also many outbuildings including a huge conservatory with a large orchid collection, a farm and a large hotel. The house itself is a steel and brick construction which is faced with limestone to give it the appearance of a French chateau. The foundations go down 29 feet into the bedrock. The site of the house was chosen for the great views it affords of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the nearer Deer Park and Lagoon. The large Lagoon which is man made has two man made islands in the center. A river runs through the estate.

Photographs are not allowed in the house but the scale of the ground floor rooms are epic. At the entrance way there is a skylighted Winter Garden, the huge dining room which has enormous vaulted ceilings follows. Then there are other grand rooms full of tapestries, etchings by, amongst others, Durer, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Renoir. The bedrooms are equally grand, especially those of the principals. Guest rooms are on the third floor. The house boasts entertainment rooms such as billiards, bowling alley, heated swimming pool, gym and a huge vaulted library with a 23,000 book collection. Everything in the house is on an enormous scale including the kitchens, storage rooms and servants’ quarters. The decoration covers many styles and the rooms are filled with objects which were collected by the Vanderbilts on their world travels. In some rooms, secret doors reflect the fact that George Vanderbilt was a bachelor when he moved in.

The Winter Garden

The magnificent Dining Room with its triple fireplace

The Dining Room decorated for Christmas

The Library

The Tapestry Gallery

The Grand Staircase

Edith Vanderbilt's bedroom

George Vanderbilts' bedroom

The Oak Sitting Room

Damask Room

The Halloween Room in the basement

The main kitchen in the basement

A servant's bedroom

The Gymnasium which is in the basement.

The swimming pool in the basement

After the tour, we had lunch in the Stable Café which, as its name suggests, is in the old stable building. 

Following lunch we took the Legacy Tour which took us all over the grounds so we could see the work of Olmstead, the way that water was directed from a reservoir up on the hill above to the house. There were also ingenious arrangements to direct water including a complex flume system, the explanation of which completely escaped me. The estate is vast and it took us well over an hour to tour around it taking in the equestrian area, the old dairy farm, and areas used for raising cattle, poultry and a kitchen garden to supply the restaurants on the property. The estate tries to be as self-sustaining as possible.

Exterior View

Exterior View

The Bass Pond

Waterfall in the grounds

A view of the house from the grounds

Another view of the house from the grounds over the Lagoon

A gargoyle on the main house

We left the estate having learned much about the life and work of the Vanderbilts which lead up to the building of the house. The founder of the dynasty, Cornelius Vanderbilt was not a nice character and made his money in shipping, railroads and other transportation. It is interesting to note that the family also owned a large house at Hyde Park in New York State, a large house in New York City, houses in other parts of the US and also in Paris. This was wealth way beyond that which even the richest people today know. Presently, the estate could be threatened by inheritance tax demands and the family is trying to see what can be done to keep the house and estate and preserve it for public access. One final question, why was it called Biltmore.

Cornelius Vanderbilt's great-great-grandfather, Jan Aertson or Aertszoon, was a Dutch farmer from the village of De Bilt in Utrecht, Netherlands, who emigrated to New York as an indentured servant in 1650. The Dutch van der ("of the") was eventually added to Aertson's village name to create "van der Bilt" ("of De Bilt"), which was eventually condensed to Vanderbilt. ( note this is from Wikipedia). George Vanderbilt wanted to call the estate Bilton to memorialize the name of the town from which his ancestors came. The State Postmaster objected as there was already a town called Bolton in the State and he was concerned about confusion. George this included the word Bilt and added a corruption of the English word for rolling hills, ‘moors’ and called it Biltmore. OK, believe it or not that is what we were told by our guide.

After returning to the hotel we walked up the Asheville Main Street to have a very nice dinner at a restaurant called Rhubarb. Then it was back to the hotel to spend time digesting the impact of the news that Mitt Romney would not be our next President. 

Tomorrow it is off to Virginia.

Thursday 29th January 2015 Nashville to Asheville

Thursday 29th January 2015

Up at the usual time and collected breakfast. Then packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel. We drove to the State Capitol building, parked and walked up the imposing steps to the very attractive building. Upon entering, we went through the usual polite security process and we're just in time to join the tour of the building at 11am. The tour was conducted by a very knowledgeable young lady who was a State employee. At the outset she explained that Tennessee was very proud of its three US Presidents, Andrew Jackson, James Polk and Andrew Johnson. Two other Tennessee sons had also become Presidents but not of the USA and they are little known about. One tried to become President of a Central American country but was executed there for his efforts.

Tennessee also has other famous people including suffragettes (Tennessee was the State which finally voted to adopt the Constitutional Amendment which gave women the vote), civil rights leaders and war heroes. Tennessee was the last State to secede from the Union in the Civil War and the first to be returned to the Union afterwards.

The legislature was not in session, so we were allowed to visit the Chamber of Representatives, the Senate and the old Supreme Court room where five Justices would have sat. The Supreme Court has now moved to another building. 
    The Capitol was designed by an architect called Strickland with money raised by the State Comptroller whose name was Morgan. Strickland was a thrifty soul but Morgan wanted a more flamboyant building. Morgan won. Both were eventually buried on the steps of the building as were President Polk and his wife. The rooms in the building are ornate and grand although in the library, some of the furnishings were bought from a catalog!! We were even allowed into the outer office of the Governor who was out of the building at the time.

The cupola of the Tennessee State Capitol

Tennessee's favorite son, Andrew Jackson

The old Supreme Court Room

The House of Representatives Chamber

The Senate Chamber

The Library with its distinctive spiral staircase

A mural on the wall of the outer office of the Governor

The imposing Strickland designed Capitol building

The tour was very interesting and informative and I learned a lot about the State which is, unusually, divided into three equal administrative districts, west, mid and east. All are treated equally but are almost sub-States.

From the Capitol we walked the short distance to the State Museum. This is huge with over one million exhibits so we were not able to cover it in the time available. The museum covers the period from earliest pre-Columbian times until more or less the present day. Of course there is much about life before and after the Civil War and the Civil War itself. There were also exhibits about the reconstruction period, the Ku Klux Klan, segregation and other more modern day issues. A Civil War re-enacter was there talking to a school group about the life of soldiers during that period and getting the school kids engaged in a discussion. There were a lot of exhibits highlighting of course, the lives and activities of the three Tennessee Presidents.

Another famous son of Tennessee

A piano belonging to President Polk

....and above, some of the many, many exhibits at the Tennessee State Museum

From the museum we drove to Hattie B’s Hot Chicken on South 19th Avenue. A small restaurant with lines often out of the door. The chicken comes in medium, hot and ……well I guess incendiary. There are the usual sides. It was excellent. The medium was hot enough for me, I can't imagine what the others were like. It is marinated in a spicy brine and then the crispy coating is spicy too. Definitely high on the fried chicken hall of fame list. The place was busy all the time we were there and looks like a gold mine.

Hattie B's Hot Chicken

Inside Hattie B's

 From lunch, we drove out of Nashville towards Lynchburg. This took a little over an hour. We arrived at the Jack Daniels Distillery. We were in time for the last tour of the day. The distillery is set in picturesque surroundings and the main lobby building is a high-beamed wooden structure. Our guide was the absolute highlight of the tour. His name was Jon. He spoke in such a thick accent that it was quite difficult to understand him, even for MAC but I would have cheerfully bottled his accent if I could. He had such wonderful expressions and his explanation of the way the whiskey was made was a real trip . I couldn't begin to try to replicate it in print but basically, this is the route of the tour. First we visited the place where they burn the white oak wood to make the charcoal through which the whiskey will eventually be filtered. The wood is soaked in whiskey before it is lit and then left to burn but not to ashes. The charcoal is then crushed down to small pea-sized pieces. From here we went to the rock cave where the spring water used for the whiskey flows. This is one of the most important ingredients. The solid ingredients are corn, barley and rye. These are reduced to a mash. The mash is then heated with water, yeast is added and then the residual is distiller after which it is passed through the charcoal, put into barrels and left to mature for a number of years depending upon what grade of whiskey is desired from the regular to the premium. As Jon said “ You gotcha mash, you cook yer mash, you ferment it you distill it and they are the forwer (sic) steps to make whiskey”. That is as close as I can get to the quick phonetic version of the description he gave us as we moved from building to building. We viewed the huge fermentation vats as well as the filtering vats and were invited to smell the container which were pretty intoxicating. The distillery is very conscious of environmental matters and all the materials used are recycled in one way or another. The mash goes to farmers do cattle feed, the wood from used barrels, they are built on the premises and are only used once, is used for barbecue chips and the used charcoal for barbecue briquettes. Even any residual whiskey left isn't the charcoal after filtration is used for some purpose. We walked through the barrel rooms where hundreds of barrels of whiskey were aging. The numbers are staggering as there are barrel storage buildings both on this property and on others in the area. The plant employs just over 400 people and there are more in the Head Office, sales staff, etc, elsewhere. During the tour as we walked between buildings, several wild turkeys flew overhead and came into roost, Jon joked that was the only Wild Turkey we would see on this tour as Wild Turkey is a competing whiskey brand. There is a statue on the grounds of Jack Daniels himself and it is supported by a pile of rocks, yes you guessed it, it is called Jack on the Rocks!! We had to have a photo there!! This was a great tour and although neither of us managed to get all that was said, we got enough to get the idea about how the product is made. Jon was a great guide who kept things moving along and I just loved to hear him describe things in that wonderful patois and with such enthusiasm. I would go back and do it all over again, just to hear him talk!!! Then it was to the gift shop where we bought a couple of bottles one of which we had engraved to mark our visit, a nice souvenir which can be enjoyed at leisure.

In some of the parts of the facility, for safety reasons, we could not take photos but these are some which we could take.

The Jack Daniels Distillery

Must be the first 'dry' Moore in the dynasty but isn't it ironic that the distillery would be situated in a dry county?

One of the exhibits in the reception hall

The reception hall

The Rickyard where the wood in stacks (called Ricks) awaits being converted to charcoal

The wood is burned here

The wood being burned

The charcoal which is ground down to the size on the left

One of the huge barrel storage facilities

The spring which provides the water for the whiskey

The ingredients.

Our guide Jon with 'Jack on the Rocks'

The grain storage facility

The barrel making facility

The area where the whiskey is filtered through charcoal

The bottling and packing area

Barrels being stored, many for several years to fully mature.

Then it was the 300 mile drive to Asheville NC. Fortunately, the roads are well paved, well marked and relatively clear of traffic so it took us five hours straight to do the trip. The last part of it through the mountains were quite twisty but the road is good so it did not slow us down too much.

We arrived at the Aloft hotel at about 11.15 pm having lost an hour passing back from Central to Eastern Time. The hotel is a smallish boutique hotel and has dogs for adoption in the lobby although I don't think we will be taking one home.

It was a long day but we are another step on our way home. Tomorrow we will see the Biltmore Mansion and explore Asheville. As they say “From Nashville to Asheville is more than just an N” I don't actually know who said that but I just did.