Month: November 2016

Whiskey Wednesday: The Preacher Just Keeps Getting Younger

Hey it’s time to talk about two of my favorite things again. Privately selected single barrels and, less enthusiastically, change!

Let’s take this arrival of a brand new 10 year old single barrel of Elijah Craig to look at just how much things have, or haven’t changed.

First things that clearly haven’t.

A bit of history:

Elijah Craig was a fascinating man. Born in 1738 in Virginia, he was a Baptist preacher arrested at least twice for preaching without a license from the Anglican Church. The Baptists at the time were given a bit of a hard time for their stance on slavery (they were against it) and he worked with James Madison and Patrick Henry to help preserve the right of religious freedom at a federal level after the Revolutionary War.

imgres-1.jpg            After the war he helped lay out and plan the city of Lebanon, Virginia which eventually became Georgetown, Kentucky as the state lines and city names changed to reflect a growing country and their pride in their first President. Our Preacher founded some of the first mills west of the Appalachian Mountains that produced cloth and paper. He was also a big proponent of education. Founding the first classical school in Kentucky in 1787, which was than linked to the Rittenhouse Academy in 1798 with the help of land donated by Craig. Rittenhouse eventually morphed into Georgetown College, not to be confused with Georgetown University. He also happened to found a distillery.

“If virtue consists in being useful to our fellow citizens, perhaps there were few more virtuous men than Mr. Craig”

In 1789…ish, Elijah Craig founded a distillery which, despite all his other accomplishments, is the reason any of us are talking about him today. According to almost all whiskey historians, and there are a surprising number of them, there is no reason to believe the Preacher was making anything other that the typical style of corn-based spirit being made by 100’s of other farmers at the time. By the time Bourbon County was formed in 1785, two years after the first registered distillery in Kentucky, people were already trying to find a way to distinguish between the corn based Kentucky style and the rye based style that predominated on the other side of the mountains.

Despite lack of evidence, Elijah Craig is first mentioned without citation as the inventor of Bourbon in 1874, nearly 70 years after his death. And most Bourbon aficionados can tell you the charming tale of his magical discovery of charring barrels to create Bourbon. After a lightning bolt set fire to one of his farm houses the good Preacher was too frugal to throw away some burnt barrels that he deemed perfectly suitable and the whiskey stored in these barrels emerged from “a process that gives the bourbon its reddish color and unique taste.” This story completely ignores the fact that barrels have been used for storage for millennia and they were valuable. Being reused to store anything from fish, to hardware, to whiskey. And they only way to truly clean out a wooden container after it’s stored salted fish: setting it on fire. Charring the inside. Bourbon was an evolution, not an invention.

So why are we still talking about the “Father of Bourbon”

Enter Heaven Hill. Founded as soon as the money could be pulled together after the end of Prohibition, Heaven Hill is the only remaining family owned distillery in Kentucky, The largest family owned and operated producer and distributer of distilled spirits in the US, the seventh largest alcohol supplier in the US and the second largest holder of Bourbon in the world. They’re lagging slightly behind Jim Beam, which almost feels appropriate with the number of Beam they’ve had as Master Distiller. Their very first distiller was Jim Beams 1st Cousin, he was eventually followed by Jim Beam’s nephew and even the current Master distiller’s, Parker and Craig, carry the Beam family name. There is history everywhere. And in 1986 Heaven Hill first released the Elijah Craig 12 Year Small Batch Straight Bourbon.

Nimgres-2.jpgamed and marketed after the dubious claim of our good Preacher as the Father of Bourbon, the whiskey was nevertheless damn good. While “small batch” has never been a regulated term Heaven Hill has always stood by the fact that their Elijah Craig brand is never more than a 200 barrel dump per batch, which is more than most distilleries can actually distill but at least there is a number to the claim. It was also always 12 years old, which put it actual years ahead of most of it’s premium competitors.

But times change.

Due to the success of the super-aged version of Elijah Craig, the Barrel Proof Editions, a massive, debilitating fire in the mid 90’s that literally destroyed a distillery, and a massive uptick in the call for good bourbon this stalwart brand has had to make some interesting calls in the past few years.

The biggest being the fact that it’s dropped it’s age statement. For nearly 30 years Elijah Craig has been the benchmark for old bourbon. images.jpg12 years blasted out large on the label gave it a gravitas and a certain definitiveness in what the benchmark of flavor should be. Heaven Hill insists that the new “Small Batch” Elijah will always be a blend of 8-12 year old bourbon and that the change allows them to maintain the Barrel Proof at 12 years old and eventually increase supply of the highly lucrative and delicious 18 and 23 year old single barrel variations, but it still feels like a loss.

We in the bourbon world are sometimes overly obsessed with the idea of “the past” and “tradition” so much so that the marketing stories overtake the liquid even when they’re pretty blatantly misleading. The old tales of the Preacher Elijah Craig are mild compared to most brands. We resist change. But especially with the new, and in my opinion terrible, bottle redesign I can’t help but feel like something is being lost in translation.

Part of what always stood out for me with Elijah Craig was that it was an introduction to the wider world. It wasn’t a well whiskey, it wasn’t a call and it certainly wasn’t expected. It had all the right ingredients: amazing quality, an age statement that puts almost anything to shame, and a price point that let you experience something new without stress. It was the key that turned the lock on your palette. It’s bourbon and had all those necessary parts but added up to so much more. And as so many parts move, so rapidly, I can’t help but feel they might not be getting the combination to the lock right any more.

But maybe I’m just getting old.

I certainly wouldn’t have bought a barrel of it if I didn’t think it was worth it. This 10 year is the third generation in my personal selections of the Preacher and it is more lively and kicking than most standard issues I’ve had, with a deep oak backbone supporting a brighter stone fruit and peach note before finishing dry and tannic.

The future is wedded to the past and after all that Elijah Craig has been to me both personally and as something to share with customers I feel the need to do something we should all do more of, challenge our preconceptions and keep an open mind.

Elijah Craig had,been and is, one of my stalwart companions,- but I can’t help but feel there might be something subtly gleaned from the preacher’s actual obituary, “He possessed a mind extremely active and, as his whole property was expended in attempts to carry his plans to execution, he consequently died poor. If virtue consists in being useful to our fellow citizens, perhaps there were few more virtuous men than Mr. Craig”

Back In The Alley 6

The craft distillery and spirits movement wasn’t born yesterday but it sure feels like it.  In 2011 there were a mere 200 “craft” distilleries running spirit off their stills. By 2014 that number had literally tripled to over 600 and now there are estimated to be over 1200. That’s a massive jump in in 5 years. That’s a shift from about  700,000 cases a year to over 3.5 million.

I hate to throw around rather abstract numbers, but I feel that in this case we have to because that change is simply staggering. There is literally too many craft spirits being made to even support the great ones let alone the good ones. I know I personally came of age as a bartender during this boom. I’ve watched brands I’ve discovered and lovingly hand sold instead of the Big Labels come of age and actually stand on their own merits on shelves across the country. No longer needing to be propped up by some random bartender over eager to share.

And then I’ve watched those brands be bought up by the Big Labels, seen the love fade and then there’s yet another new kid in town knocking on your door and the cycle starts all over again.

The cycle has ramped up into hyperspeed now and there’s a new kid knocking on the door before it’s fully swung shut from the last one.

Or maybe that’s just because I’m more involved in the process these days.

Alley 6 distillery  was founded in Sonoma County in 2012 by Jason and Krystle Jorgensen and it sounds like the quintessential definition of a “craft” distillery.  A venture by a loving couple that does everything – milling the grain, mashing, fermenting distilling, barreling and bottling – on site. The have a 500l Alembic Pot Still nick named “Horton” and they have a unique mashbill drawing influence and flavor from aromatic barley. Aromatic Barley is actually the name of the type of berley and is very predominent in France and Belgium. With a mashbill of 78% rye and 22% aromatic malted barley they were aiming for a big malty back bone and rye spice.

The first, incredibly small, batch hit the shelves in late 2015 and a rep who was very excited to have a new whiskey to sell to me brought around a sample immediately. I remember thinking it was well made rye, not overwhelmingly exciting and with a rather hefty price point it got lost in the crowd.

A few months later a regular at the bar brought me in a bottle of whiskey to taste from a new distillery his friends were running up in Sonoma County. This whiskey tasted so drastically different that it took me a few minutes to realize that it was the same Alley 6 that I had had months before. It struck me enough that I filled it away as something to examine down the line.

Well here we are at the end of 2016 and we’re looking at batch no 6 of Alley 6. The whiskey is certainly more complex than batch 1 with a hefty dose of dry rye spice, a hefty bready back bone and a dark cocao and coffee. Again, interesting but not amazingly mind blowing. But what is interesting is watching the growth of this distiller.

Because that’s what we’re experiencing right now with these craft distillers: their growing pains. The Big Labels went through their’s years ago and their brands are the result of decades of experience. Over a 1000 of these new kids have less than four years under their belts. If history is any indication there are a lot of them that won’t survive the growth spurt, but I for one intend to enjoy the journey.

Give Me More of that Octomore

Maybe it’s like becoming one with the cigar. You lose yourself in it; everything fades away: your worries, your problems, your thoughts. They fade into the smoke, and the cigar and you are at peace.
Raul Julia

Smoke is indelibly linked to water for me. Years of camping with my family have sealed the sound of the waves in the night with the scent of smoke hanging in the air. The Octomore encapsulates that in the deep black of its bottle; the fact that it’s massively over proof really helps out right about now.

Bruichladdich_Logo.png The Octomore line sails in from the shores of Islay and the Bruichladdich distillery. Bruichladdich is old history with a new face with that spirit of this spirit running right back to its earliest days. When the distillery was founded in 1881 it was the height of modernity. A state of the art facility, especially when compared the distilleries on Islay at the time which were often just converted farm houses. Built right on the shore with uniquely tall and narrow necked stills the distillery managed to survive when many others failed. At least until 1994 when it was mothballed for being ‘surplus to requirements’.

But it was resurrected in 2000 when a group of private investors purchased the distillery, dismantled and reassembled the whole shebang. Having missed out on all the modernization in the 90’s the original machinery was still in place making it one of the few distilleries to have no computers in use for production.

The new owners did make two major changes though. 1) They turned their focus to the province of their barley. They wanted the local character of the barley to shine through as much as the barrel and aging. They shifted to using all Scottish barley, something somewhat surprisingly not required for Scotch, and started growing barley on the actual island of Islay. All of their whiskies now have both a Scottish and Islay barley version with their own DNA. 2) They hired Jim McEwen as their Master Distiller.

Jim McEwen is a whisky legend. He started working at Bowmore when he was 15 and Islay Whisky may as well literally run in his veins. He ran the stills with skill but he also started producing peated whiskey for the traditionally unpeated Bruchladdich. These peated whiskies have become the Port Charlotte line up, and in it’s super peated forms the Octomores.

url.jpg The Octomores are some of the most heavily peated whiskies in the world. Their phenol content (the scientific way to measure peat) have been as high as 238 but even in their “standard” range they are three times as peated as a Laphroig. Yet, even with all this smoke, and being bottled at cask strength, they avoid being one dimensional. They are sea salt air tinged with smoke and a threat of rain in the air once the sun has set while I’m reading by the fire.

With the distillery now owned by Remy Cointreau and Jim McEwen no longer at the helm though it’ll be interesting to see where that leaves the Octomores as the years, and the memories, roll on

Orphans. Orphans as far as the eye can see.

Rhetoric:
-language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience but often regarded as lacking sincerity or meaningful content.
Let’s say you’re a major spirits company. Let’s even say you’re the largest in the world in fact, and in the late 90’s you divest yourself of all of you major American whiskey holdings. Why wouldn’t you? American whiskey is the pits and no one is drinking it. Canadian whiskey however…
Jump a head a couple decades and Bourbon and rye is outstripping demand and you find yourself without an American Whiskey distiller but you do have a massive amount of super aged Bourbon still languishing in your warehouses. What would you do? If you’re Diageo you market the hell out of it.
After Uniimgres.jpgted Distillers became a part of Diageo in 1997 when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan they seemed rather interested in divesting themselves of the American whiskey holdings, going so far as to sell their only active distillery, the Bernheim Distillery, to Heaven Hill in 1999. Yet they held onto a massive amount of stock that they continued to age, selling it out on contract and in bulk but not making any personal use of it. They were seemingly content to let it get older and older.
Even when they founded a new flagship American brand in the form of Bulleit, a brand who’s history is only as deep as the ink on the paper it’s printed on, they made no use of it. Instead they relied on their remaining contract with Four Roses for the to fulfill the flavor profile they needed.
Then in 2014 the Orphan Barrel landed with a thud. The Orphan Barrel “Distillery” had found a “limited” number of “forgotten” and “abandoned” barrels. Who knows where they came from! But we do know that right as all the old whiskey seems to be drying up that these are super old. Some are even 28 years old! That’s a lot of quotation and excitation points.
The bottles were given evocative names and flashy old fashioned- style bottles but these weren’t orphans, more like children dressed up for family photos. They look fancy but you know who they really are.
Take the Rhetoric line up. We know that these we distilled at Bernheim in the early 90s by United Distillers which became Diageo and then aged in the warehouses of the now defunct, legendary Stitzel-Weller which ARE now owned by Diageo. That’s some amazing Bourbon heritage right there and it’s 20 years old. That’s a great story! These aren’t orphans. These are children who’s parents are going through an identity crisis.
And just personally I’ve always kind of felt an arrogance from the lineup. Right as Old-Blowhard-Lo-Res.jpgconsumers are expressing greater interest in the origin of their spirits, what the mash BILL is, how it’s aged, all of the nitty gritty details- here comes a brand actively hiding its history. Even the names them selves, Old Blowhard, Gifted Horse, Rhetoric, seemed to be thumbing their noses at people who ask too many questions.
But it wasn’t just “enthusiasts” that pushed back. Turns out the consumers meant it when they said they wanted all these “unnecessary” details. So, begrudgingly a little bit was let out. But not enough to overtake the marketing. Or to give the whole story.  And that is incredibly puzzling. There’s actual, interesting history here and even a little mystery. Let’s face it you just a don’t see American whiskey this old. Why was it left to age so long?
But instead of talking about the whiskey here we are still talking about all that marketing ink..
So what about the whiskey? Well, they are old. In the case of the Rhetoric they’re dusty, dry, tannic and soft. My personal taste craves something a little more lively but if you like all the super oak it’s here for you.
Premium old whiskey makes a buzz anytime it’s released, yet interestingly the “Orphan” Barrels seem to be making less of a splash each time. Maybe the marketing put people off. Maybe the price did. Or maybe it was just the whiskey itself. Either way we don’t know what the future holds for the rest of the orphans. Maybe a few more will plop on to your shelves. Maybe now that their parents contracts with Four Roses and Jim Beam have expired they’ll be blended in with their cousin Bulleit, though that seems unlikely. Or maybe it’ll be something completely different. But for now this is where these orphans have found their homes.