Category: Heaven Hill

Quarantine Bottle Kill #9: Elijah Craig 12 Year (From Long Ago In The Before Time)

There’s a sense of static in the air these past few weeks of quarantine. Not of any sense of normal but certainly of familiarity. A sense of sameness and of the world outside the familiar walls drifting away. But also there’s that electrical charge like anything can and could happen at any moment.

The world seems to be looking for answers and I’m sitting here working my way through old booze and writing about it.

It is a way to help keep my sanity. Beyond it being something from the Great Before that I enjoyed it’s also been an avenue for self reflection and rumination.

It’s mental travel.

Placing myself in the place, time, and person that I was when this bottle joined the collection. No spirit allows me to check in with myself and chart my trajectory more than Elijah Craig.

Elijah Craig 12 Year Bourbon was my first true Bourbon love. I’m not going to say that it “got me into whiskey” but it certainly helped expand my understanding of what good Bourbon could be. When I started buying barrels for my program Elijah Craig was the first barrel I bought. And I kept buying barrels. Even after the aged statement was dropped. It is a benchmark Bourbon and the numerous barrels arriving over the years have given me an excuse to examine the years as they pass.

But as time goes on and the age has changed and after so many barrel selections I forgot what old school Elijah tasted like. Was it inflated in my mind? Was the memory of who I was when I discovered it altering the actual liquid? Am I drinking nostalgia flavored whiskey?

So how fortunate was I to discover a bottle of standard issue  Elijah Craig 12 Year Old from 2012 hiding in my closet. This bottle is from when my career shifted from being a bartender to a Bar Manager and when so many of my early influences and opinions crystallized. Here is a liquid opportunity to examine the past.

NOSE: Caramel, Oak, Apricot, Tilled Soil
PALETE: Toffee, Vanilla, Baked Apples, Baking Spices, Earthy and Deep
FINISH: Long, clean, spicy with a hint of white pepper. Drying to a lingering woodyness

This dram is deep and powerful. It is what I have idolized for years. While the NAS Elijah Craig is a very good Bourbon this old 12 Year has a maturity, for lack of a better word, that its descendant does not. 

And while the Elijah Craig Barrel Proof releases are still 12 Years old the much higher proof gives an edge that here is softer and more nuanced.

This is a dram for deep thoughts and late night conversations. It’s also a perfect example that things don’t stay static forever. Eventually all things change.

Quarantine Bottle Kill #1: Heaven Hill 7 Year Bottled In Bond Bourbon

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Sheltering in place has led to a massive spike in booze sales across the United States a the days are now divided into “Coffee Hours” and “Alcohol Hours.” Being forcefully unemployed by the pandemic I’m unable to contribute to that spike and have had to reexamine my hoarding tendencies. My reluctance to open bottles, let alone finish them, has been overtaken by my belief that whiskey is meant to be enjoyed. And if not now, when?

So, join me as I work my way through my bar cart with the great Quarantine Bottle Kill of 2020.

First up is a relative newcomer: Heaven Hill Bottled In Bond 7 Year Old Bourbon. Not to be confused with the Heaven Hill Bottled In Bond 6 Year Old Bourbon which was only available in Kentucky and was discontinued in 2018. One year later this 7 Year hit shelves with an updated label, an extra year of age, and a boosted price tag.

I’ve made no qualms about Heaven Hill being one of my favorite distilleries but their lack of an eponymous bourbon certainly means they have much less name recognition as a distillery than say Jim Beam. The old Heaven Hill 6 Year was one of my favorite bottles to bring back from a Kentucky trip and at $12 was an absurd steal.

Now, what exactly does an extra year and a new label and bottle taste like?

NOSE: Chestnut, dusty leather, vanilla, and oak

PALETTE: Earthy with a strong oak presence. A dusting of baking spices and a hint of tobacco. There’s a slight woodsy quality to it with a surprisingly light punch for a bonded whiskey.

FINISH: Medium and dry with a touch of stone fruit and capped with the oak and vanilla from the nose.

This is quintessential Heaven Hill. In fact, if you told me this was the 6 Year Old bottle I would believe you. Which makes sense as it’s the exact same mashbill only a year older and released a year after the 6 Year was discontinued. You can do the math. And that’s my only real con with this bottle: the math.

$12 would be an absurd price for any quality Bourbon these days.  However, at $40 it enters a very crowded field of more household names like Eagle Rare, Woodford Reserve, and Knob Creek. While this is solid bourbon I’d personally pick up a bottle of Elijah Craig from the same distillery for a lower price tag. 

I am happy to see it on the shelves though if only to help spread the Heaven Hill name. Though if it was still at the old price point I might have been able to stock up for the quarantine instead of having to finish the bottle.

Drinking Poetic (On A Christmas Wednesday): The Nutcracker

I’ve always felt disconnected from the Holiday season. While I grew up Catholic it has had been many a solstice since I identified as such. I’ve also spent the past 10+ years living 2,500+ miles from the family and friends I grew up with. As such when the holidays roll around I often find myself latching on to the traditions and celebrations of my friends. Which is why the one tradition that I do have from my childhood is so fascinating to me. 

When I was about 5 my grandfather gave me a nutcracker for Christmas. My siblings were so jealous that the next year he gave all four of us our own nutcrackers. It was a few more years, and arguments about which nutcracker belong to who, before we started putting our names on this ever-expanding collection. So while they ostensibly belonged to someone they were really just collectively ours. When my grandfather passed away my grandmother took up the tradition and it took on new meaning.  If you enter my family’s house at Christmas a veritable army of wooden soldiers, drummers, cobblers, and pirates stand ready to perform their ceremonial duty. 

Like all terrifying dolls the nutcrackers eventually escaped their Christmassy confines and spilled over into the rest of life. Currently sitting on my desk in the 70 degree California sunshine is a board short wearing, hipster beard sporting, surfer bro nutcracker that marked my first full year on the West Coast. It’s a touchstone that exists beyond its original conception. 

It also led to the creation of the Nutcracker Cocktail. 

The Nutcracker was originally conceived as a drink for the Heaven Hill Bartender of the Year competition a few years ago. I drew on all of the above thoughts about tradition and threw them into a glass. I wanted a drink that was very evocative of a time and place but that also existed outside of its “seasonality” just like the Nutcracker resting on my desk. 

I knew I wanted the drink to be based around Elijah Craig Bourbon. Not simply because it was one of the options for the competition but because it is an actual touchstone whiskey for me. The very first private barrel of whiskey I ever picked out was a barrel of Elijah Craig. It’s a whiskey that’s been my companion through my journeys behind bar since the very beginning. It carries a weight, a depth, a tannin, and an earthiness that makes it a classic backbone for a whiskey focused drink. 

Next, I wanted a solid bitter base to enhance the earthiness while also adding in an extra dry component to balance the sweet components I knew would inevitably make their way into the glass. The Clemanti China provided a suitable Manhattan-esque build while adding in a beautiful shock of the bitter. 

Next were the seasonal elements. You can’t call a drink “The Nutcracker” without any nuts so a touch of Nux Alpina Walnut Liqueur added in a discernable nuttiness to play off the base of the Elijah Craig. This Made the drink Nutty but still dry, too dry. To balance this a hint of Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao added in both the Christmas sweetness and memories as well as a balance for the dry, dry, dry components. 

To tie it all together, and to add a hint of fruit to brighten up all of these dark nutty elements, a few finishing dashes of angostura orange bitters went into the mix. 

Now, this drink was fine. However, it didn’t evoke anything larger than itself to me. It was a wintery sipper that was Mostly just a slightly esoteric Manhattan. It needed something to pull it out of its time and place.  

I briefly considered making it a warm drink but that would have turned it into a drink that I had no interest in drinking. I almost universally hate hot beverages, from coffee to tea and everything in between. So, instead I turned to other childhood memories as well as my local Japanese grocery store. In both of those places I found chestnuts. 

Growing up there were several horse chestnut trees in my yard which when the chestnuts would fall I would end up chucking at my siblings as children do. And in the Japanese market there were wonderfully proportioned bags of roasted, soft chestnuts for the holidays. This was the missing factor for this drink. 

I pulled out the Spinzall and infused the chestnuts into the Elijah Craig, stirred everything together and expressed an orange zest over the drink tying in the underlying orange bitters. Now the drink sang. It was complex, fruity, dry with an intriguing sweetness, and was no longer simply a “Christmas Drink.” 

The Nutcracker:

1.5 oz Chestnut Infused Elijah Craig Bourbon
.5 oz Clemanti China Antique
.25 oz Hau Alperine Nux Walnut
.25 oz Tempus Fugit Crème de Cacao
2 Dash Angostura Orange Bitters

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass.
Stir with Kold Draft Ice.
Strain into a punch glass.
Garnish with an orange twist studded with clove. 

Revisiting this drink years later there are a few changes I would make. I might add a splash of Verjus to add in more acidity to the heavy nature of the ingredients. Or I might add in a touch of Oloroso Sherry to length the drink while staying rich and stirred. 

But then again, some traditions shouldn’t be over thought. 

Whiskey Wednesday: Heaven Hill 27 Year Old Barrel Strength

Reinvention is the key to longevity.  No matter how often you hear something being touted as “Old Fashioned” chances are it’s actually an update on an old technique or just straight up marketing. We are constant victims of nostalgia, even the term “Old Fashioned” implies a dissatisfaction with the modern. Yet as much as we glorify the past the only way to truly stand the test of time is by constantly changing.

            Take Heaven Hill’s new premium, limited edition release: the eponymous Heaven Hill 27 Year Old Barrel Strength Straight Kentucky Bourbon. Those are a lot of buzz words that add up to a lot of the old being new, just slightly different.

            Let’s start at the top.

Unless you’re from Kentucky, Heaven Hill probably isn’t a brand you’re familiar with. But if you drink Bourbon it’s a distillery that permeates the very fabric of the category. Founded in 1935, Heaven Hill is the 7th largest alcohol supplier in the US, has the second largest inventory of American whiskey in the country, and is the largest, independent, family owned marketer and producer of spirits in the United States.

In an industry that’s built around the cult of personality and legends of the past (Jim Beam, Pappy Van Winkle, Jack Daniel’s, etc.) Heaven Hill built their name on other people’s legends: Elijah Craig, Evan Williams, and Henry McKenna. Hell, their master distiller since the founding of the distillery has always been a member of the Beam family.

However, they’ve never had that flagship, namesake bottle. Outside of a few specialty releases named after William Heavehill, the farmer who owned the land the distillery was built on, the only true bottling to carry the Heaven Hill name is a 6 year old, bottled in bond, Kentucky exclusive. And this bottle perfectly encapsulates the company in my mind.

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            Heaven Hill kept the bottled in bond designation alive when no one cared and can be directly credited to it’s resurgence with products like Rittenhouse Bottled In Bond Rye. It’s also a 6 year old, straight Bourbon whiskey that ran for $12 dollars a bottle. It is quality at an incredibly affordable price, which is something that Heaven Hill has done well for so long. It also isn’t what the whiskey world is about anymore. These days it’s all about limited, old and rare so it should be no surprise that this little gem has been discontinued in favor of creating a more premium line up.

            Which brings us to the age statement.

            American whiskies, almost as a rule, don’t get this old. The oldest, most consistent age statement caps out at the yearly release of the Pappy Van Winkle and Elijah Craig 23 Year Olds, the latter also being produced by Heaven Hill. Because of the law requiring Bourbon to be aged in brand new oak barrels Bourbon this old just doesn’t taste that good, because it’s often over oaked or overly tannic. There’s also the catch that the Angel’s Share steals a percentage every year meaning there’s less to sell and that’s not taking into account the unpredictable acts of nature. A lot can happen in 27 years.

            At 27 Years Old this batch of a mere 41 barrels were all aged on the 1st or 2nd floors of the Heaven Hill rickhouses where the Angel’s Share is arguably at its most minimal; but with only 2,820 bottles produced that’s still a loss of 75% of the juice.

            This whiskey can also never be replicated due to an act of god. In 1996, the Old Heaven Hill Springs Distillery burnt to the ground taking hundreds of barrels, and gallons upon gallons of aging whiskey with it. These 41 barrels were not only produced at a destroyed distillery, they survived an inferno that took much of its cousin spirit with it. This isn’t just rare because of its age, it’s both rare in addition to its age.

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Heaven Hill goes up in flame.

The Barrel Strength designation is where things get really weird. There is no legal definition for what “barrel strength” means. In fact the TTB is currently working on a new set of regulations specifically about that designation, but in colloquial use barrel strength is generally expected to mean that the whiskey is bottled at the proof it comes out of the barrel at which is usually well north of 100 proof. It is shocking then to see this barrel proof listed at a measly 94.7.

            This goes back to those 41 barrels on the 1st and 2nd floor. The lower flowers generally allow for more mellow aging that reduces the Angel’s share lost. However, it also creates a naturally lower ABV as the alcohol evaporates faster than the water. This literal loss of alcohol is another reason why you don’t see whiskey this old from Kentucky. One of the perks of not having a template though was that these barrels weren’t selected with the idea of creating consistent flavor profile like most standard bottling. Instead these were the barrels left standing. After everything that was over oaked, overly tannic, too harsh, too soft, etc only 41 barrels were left and when batched together the naturally occurring ABV was 47.35, resulting in a technical Barrel Strength whiskey at an incredibly drinkable 94.7 proof.

            The rest of the words we know. Straight Kentucky Bourbon means that it’s legally 51% corn whiskey, made in the state of Kentucky, aged for a minimum of 2 year in brand new, freshly charred, white oak barrels with no added coloring or flavors.

            That’s a lot to take in for a single bottle. And it’s surprisingly alive. Heaven Hill has released a lot of one-off older whiskies. They’ve got deep, deep store houses yet in my opinion a lot of them have fallen flat. There was always something just off about them whether they were over oaked, or they felt thin because of the proof point. Whatever that missing puzzle piece was they seem to have found it with this bottling.

And in the end this is less about of a single bottle and more a culmination of Heaven hill’s journey over the past three decades. Bourbon has gone from the unwanted step-child of the spirit world to a global commodity and the Heaven Hill brands have evolved to keep pace. They’ve gone from affordable work horse whiskies into some of the most awarded and sought after bottlings in the world. And with this pivot Heaven Hill may have finally found a brand to highlight the gems that are sleeping in those Kentucky hills. I just hope we don’t have to wait another 27 years to see them.

 

NOSE: The Oak leaps out of the glass, there is a seasoned cedar wood quality with only a mild hint of the vanilla often expected.

PALETTE: Tannic, with a dried orange, and deep baking spice note. The caramel takes a major back seat only slipping out towards the end while the mid a palette is all about that earthy, savory oakyness.

FINISH: Incredibly dry, and a lingering mélange of everything that reminds you of your grandfather: tobacco, cigars, and leather that lasts longer that it’s proof would suggest.

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Whiskey Wednesday: Elijah Craig: NoMad Edition

I sat down and did this almost exactly a year ago and it’s time again for the annual arrival of a privately selected Elijah Craig Barrel. This one, like all of them, is special because it is a 100% unique bottling but it’s also the culmination of an insane year.

Elijah Craig is the whiskey I’ve probably written about the most so I’ll skip the folklore and brand history, you can read about those here. Instead I want to get personal and talk about the time since the last barrel rolled into my hands.

I started buying single barrels of whiskey years ago.  Elijah Craig was the first barrel I bought and it lit a fever in me. It was pretty easy to track where I had been working using this as a metric. As time went on as the list of “House Single Barrels” would balloon seemingly overnight. Last year was full of first for me. This year has been about constant change.

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Training Tome

When the last barrel of Elijah Craig showed up to Faith & Flower I already new that in a few months I would be leaving it behind and traveling blocks away to the corner of 7th and Olive as one of the opening bar managers for NoMad Los Angeles. What I didn’t know was what that really meant.

I knew that I was joining a well-established,well-regarded, restaurant and bar team. I knew Leo Robitschek mostly by reputation and I knew the program; Pietro Collina, Nathan O’Neil and the rest of the team in NYC had built one of the most impressive bar programs not just in the country but the world. I knew it was going to be a lot of pressure and an immeasurable amount of work. What I didn’t know was how I fit into the equation.

My partner-in-bar Dave Purcell had already been a part of the team for months before I was brought on and given my crash course in everything NoMad. Three weeks after I started training I had pivoted learning to teaching. We were now training a barstaff that was 55 people large on an opening cocktail menu that was nearly 60+ drinks (not counting house specs on classic drinks) spread across four bars and not enough back bar space.

Every single member of that opening team was a goddamn rockstar and every member of our team, nearly a year later, is a member of that opening squad. It speaks to their professionalism and skill that they have risen above and beyond as the restaurant has constantly changed around them. Constant Reinvention is one of our guiding principles after all.

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A lot of late night exits.

Our Head Bartenders, who moved across the country from to be a part of this project, are some of the hardest working, most dedicated hospitality professionals I have ever met and I couldn’t imagine a better crew to get this beast off the ground with.

But even after opening I still didn’t know where I fit in. I wasn’t behind the bar and the Head Bartenders embodied the program and the culture so much more deeply than I felt that I did. They had simply been living with it for longer then I had. As far as I could tell I was here to herd a pack of wild bartenders and to help make the NoMad more LA. The first inkling of what that might actually mean happened when the team at Heaven Hill approached me about buying another barrel this year.

I immediately leapt at the idea and pitched it to Dave and Leo. After some debate, and extended tasting sessions, we settled on this bottle that now sits before me. An Eight Year Old Elijah Craig Single Barrel aged on the 6th Floor of Rickhouse “S” outside the Heaven Hill bottling plant in Bardstown, KY.

It has a heavy caramel nose and an upfront sweetness yet also a delightful earthiness and tannic finish that allows it to be sipped on it’s own but also to be built into cocktails which are surely the lifeblood of any NoMad bar.

Elijah Craig has been an integral part of the history of NoMad. The only drink to have never left the menu at NoMad is the Start Me Up, a Whiskey Sour variation with ginger, honey, Strega, rum and of course Elijah Craig. Using this barrel really drives home those whiskey notes in this drink. Here was something that I could contribute to the NoMad lexicon that was still wholly the NoMad and also intrinsically me.

This year also had it’s fair amount of travel, back to Pennsylvania for my Grandmother’s 90th birthday, a trip to the Cook Island’s (look it up it’s a real place) and a chance to return to France with my always more intelligent than me girlfriend.

There were less competitions, opening four bars in less than three months eats up a lot of free time, but I now have a rotovap as part of my tool set and know more about working with sherry than I could have ever imagined. As I sit here sipping this whiskey I am incredibly proud to see the NoMad symbol on its label.

Last year I declared I hate change and this year I find myself wondering if the new norm is constant change. I don’t have an answer to the question but I do look forward to what next year’s barrel of Elijah Craig brings.

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NoMad Los Angeles

Whiskey Wednesday: Willett Of The Past

Age adds value.

That doesn’t just mean a dollar value, I personally own dozens of books, papers, and social media accounts that only still exist because they’ve essentially become a time capsule. They’re important simply because they’ve survived.

Before NDP, Non-Distilling Producer, was short hand for overblown marketing these producers were some of the most celebrated.

I started collecting whiskey when I got back into bartending in 2011. I suddenly found myself with income surplus for the first time in years and set about recreating the back bar I had at work in my tiny Venice apartment. I ended up with more whiskey then I conceivably drink on my own, which leads directly to the fact that I have dozens of bottles in my overblown collection that are there because anytime I pick them up I think to myself, “I can’t drink that! I’ve had it forever.”

This is directly antithetical to my belief that all whiskey is for drinking, not hoarding. So I thought it was high time to revive that spirit and open some “old” spirits.

Before NDP, Non-Distilling Producer, was short hand for overblown marketing these producers were some of the most celebrated. And none have reached the cult status of the Willet Distillery.

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Officially know as the Kentucky Bourbon Distillers the distillery is most closely associated with it’s Willet Family Reserve line of premium whiskies. And that’s not marketing. The distillery was founded in 1935 by the Willet family as the Old Bardstown Distillery, which produced its first bourbon in March of 1936. Flash forward to 2016 and the old distillery is still family owned and some of the first whiskey distilled on site rolled down the line all over again.

How do you do something for the first time twice? You stop producing whiskey in the 70’s to make ethanol during the fuel shortage. Then the fuel prices drop, the bottom falls out from under the market, and you’re left flat footed.

From the 1980’s until about 2012 the “distillery” was just in fact an independent bottler, a NDP. They began by relying on the back stock of their own product that was still aging and began to source excess whiskey from neighbor distilleries. Most notably they were sourcing from Heaven Hill, which is so close you could roll a Bourbon barrel down the hill and hit a rickhouse. During this time Willet/KBD continued to produce award winning whiskies like Noah’s Mill, Rowan’s Creek, the formerly eponymous Old Bardstown, and turned the Willet brand into a coveted line of old, premium, single barrel whiskies.

While they may not have been producing liquid in-house the team at Willet showed

The Willet Pot Still…was incidentally also how I thought anyone who sat in front of my bar for years about what a “Pot Still” looked like.

remarkable skill in aging. The single barrels and older expressions of whiskey that they put together have long stood out as some of the best bottlings of the past two decades. But as the Bourbon boom ramped up the writing was on the wall for people trying to source whiskey. More was going to the in house brands and in 2012 KBD fired up its own set of stills and now 6 years later we are seeing bottles of old brands with new juice.

But lets get back in the way back machine to right before these stills started producing to when I bought this bottle of Willet Pot Still Bourbon.

The Willet line was already well established as a premium category but they were also pricey. The Willet Pot Still, introduced in 2008, was a non-age statement variation that could introduce people to the line with out breaking the bank. It was incidentally also how I thought anyone who sat in front of my bar for years about what a “Pot Still” looked like.

This bottle is a Single Barrel versus its modern counterpart, which is simple a “small batch.” Bottled at 94 proof, 47% alcohol, this whiskey has nearly as many awards for its packaging as it does for the Bourbon itself. So, after 7 years how does it taste?

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On the nose is a sweet corn, yet dusty oak presence. The alcohol burn is larger than I would expect for something bottle at 94 proof, and for something that’s been in the bottle for three quarters of a decade. But under that burn is a touch of coffee and toffee.

On the palette the alcohol is much les noticeable. A large oak, vanilla, and slight char carry all the way through the dram with some darker fruit, a touch of cherry and almost blackberry, before giving sway to a musty, earthy, barn house sense.

The finish is light fades quickly leaving the oak on the tongue and the alcohol on the sides of the mouth.

It’s a good whiskey, something I wouldn’t be upset picking up off the shelf and drinking today but it’s not transcendent on its own. What is transcendent is the act of opening the bottle, pouring, and reminiscing as I sip on where I was at in my life when I bought this bottle and on all the events that have transpired since.

Nothing is precious on its own, the spirit we imbue it with verifies that value. And for something to have value it must have some use. So let’s raise a glass and reminisce.

Whiskey Wednesday: Decanting Old Fitzgerald Bottled In Bond

Growing old is an interesting proposition.

It’s right there in our language. We GET older, we GROW up whether we like it or not. But these phrases imply a gift. The imply that it is a privilege to age and that we are constantly changing and growing.

Contrast that with the utter fear of aging that our culture exhibits. It’s also right there in our language. We don’t just develop. We deteriorate, mellow, and mature. And at every point along the journey we can’t help but express disbelief at how many chronological ticker marks we’ve accrued. Our own experience is that we are always the oldest that we have ever been, so exclamations like, “I can’t believe 90’s kids can legally drink!” or “Holy Shit, it’s been nearly five years since Old Fitzgerald Bottled-In-Bond was discontinued!” make us feel old and make those older than us roll their eyes at the young ‘uns.

Even in whiskey we want our spirits older, but not too old. Age at a certain point becomes a novelty act, reacting to a new release almost as if to your great-great aunts 97th Birthday, “A 27 Year old Bourbon you say? That’s adorable.” Yet we bemoan the loss of every single age statement, and doubly so when it’s a rocksteady brand that’s stood the test of time yet is still dropped in favor of something new, young, and millennial.

The loss of the Old Fitzgerald Bottled-In-Bond was a loss I felt personally and deeply. While never technically discontinued the Old Fitz was removed from most markets over the past five years in favor of it’s cousin Larceny. Same liquid inside, even still has the Fitzgerald name on the bottle still. It’s technically John E. Fitzgerald’s Larceny, referring to the legend that the original brand was named for.

In short, this tastes like Old Fitzgerald, which is a blessing and a curse

John E. Fitzgerald was a tax bondsman for the U.S. government, which meant that he was one of two people on site at the Old Judge Distillery to have keys to the bonded warehouse. This ensured that there was no theft, since no one could enter the warehouse with out him, and that the government was properly collecting it’s taxes on the whiskey production. However, the workers kept noticing certain honey barrels, the especially tasty ones, were coming up short and that Old Fitz always seemed to have some extra tasty liquid on hand. These barrels became known as “Fitzgeralds” and a brand of whiskey was eventually named after the man and his harmless acts of larceny.

The brand went on to become a working class hero. Bourbon Legend says that the brand was originally sold only to steamships, rail workers, and private clubs. After Prohibition the brand was purchased by Stitzel-Weller, the famed distillery owned by the notorious Pappy Van Winkle. In fact, during his tenure at the Stizel-Weller Distillery Pappy didn’t sell any Pappy. He sold Old Fitzgerald and it was by far their most successful brand. Like all the whiskies made at Stitzel-Weller Old Fitz had that “whisper of wheat” in the mashbill that made their whiskey so unique at the time.

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During the whiskey dark ages of the 70’s and 80’s the brand was purchased by United Distillers, which through several mergers and acquisitions eventually became the behemoth that is Diageo. United Distillers/Diageo closed the Sitzel-Weller distillery in 1994, moved production of Old Fitzgerald to the Bernheim Distillery. Then in 1999 they sold the Bernheim Distillery, and the Old Fitzgerald brand, to Heaven Hill. Heaven Hill continues to make wheated bourbon and releases it under the Old Fitzgerald name to this day.

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The story hasn’t changed. The whiskey hasn’t changed. But the age, the label, and the price certainly have. While Larceny is still a very reasonably priced bottle of whiskey it doesn’t carry the massive bang for your buck that the old Bottled-In-Bond did. And by freeing up the Fitzgerald name from a bargain priced Bottled-In-Bond the team at Heaven Hill have been able to make attempts to push the premiumization of the brand. Some of them more successful than others.

They tested the waters with the one off release of John E. Fitzgerald’s 20 Year Old Bourbon which was some of the last whiskey actually distilled at Stizel-Weller which was released to mixed reviews. And now comes the release of the long awaited Fitzgerald Bottled-In-Bond Decanter Series.

The series will be a limited release each Spring and Fall for the next few years. The throw back to the old label name also comes with a throw back to another old Bourbon tradition: fancy decanters. More important than the glassware though is that this is a Bottled-In-Bond whiskey, it’s 11 years old, and it’s got the price tag to prove it with a suggested retail price of $110.

So how does it stack up?

20180602_164023The packaging and labeling are fantastic. It’s like seeing an old friend after the divorce now that they’ve started working out and gotten a haircut. It still looks like them but a cleaner, fitter, more attractive version of them.

The nose has all the oak you’d expect from an 11-year old, but also a touch of apricot and butter. On the mid palette is black pepper, stone fruit, a hint of nuttiness and a slightly thin caramel which leads into an aggressively woody finish that lingers hot and with a slight exhalation of cherry.

In short, this tastes like Old Fitzgerald, which is a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand I’m incredibly happy to have something that tastes like my old timey Bottled-In-Bond back but at the rarity prices it’s not something I would necessarily pick up off the shelf, and it’s certainly not an every day drinker like it used to be. The extra aging has made the product deeper and mellower but it’s also made it richer and pricier. Much like your recently divorced friend it doesn’t seem interested with hanging out with the same crowd it used to.

In the end I’m happy to see the return of Old Fitzgerald in a semi regular release but it does feel like the difference between hanging out with your college buddies and your great-great aunt. The one you want to see every weekend, the other you’ll drop in on at the holidays. Maybe. If the plane tickets aren’t too expensive.

Whiskey Wednesday: Elijah Craig Check In

Another year and another barrel of Elijah Craig. The very first single barrel I ever picked out for a bar was a barrel of Elijah Craig for Areal a good five years ago. I’ve been fortunate enough to select an Elijah Craig barrel every year since so its arrival is usually a great touchstone for me to reflect on the previous year. A Bourbon New Year as it were. And it’s been a hell of a year.

I left a bar that I ran for nearly five years that promptly closed six months later. I started a new job at Faith and Flower in Downtown LA, competed in the National finals of three major cocktail competitions, traveled to Tokyo, started this wordy blog, and picked out another barrel of Elijah Craig.

Elijah Craig is often the answer to the inevitable question, “What do you drink?’ I’ve talked about it at length here, and here, and during innumerable shifts behind the bar. The basic gist though is that Elijah Craig is one of the semi-mythical early Bourbon distillers that sometime after his death was decreed to be “the Father of bourbon” after he became the first person to char his barrels before aging his whiskey. It’s a completely unsubstantiated claim that makes a good story. So, we all tell the story and then acknowledge that it’s complete nonsense.

The current Elijah Craig brand was introduced by Heaven Hill in 1986 and has gone through multiple changes in its 30-year history but the past year was quite striking. The iconic 12-year old age statement was dropped from the label with the whiskey instead becoming a blend of 8-12 year old. The old school squat bottle was also replaced with a sleeker, taller, more streamlined bottle that I’m personally not a fan of but does actually fit a pour spout .

If you can’t tell, I don’t like change. And that’s not to say anything against the whiskey. It’s still an earthy, massively tanic, barrel forward whiskey that is one of the few bottles that I think works equally well in both mixed drinks and as a neat sipper. Most of these changes were made because there’s not enough whiskey to go around. Especially not old whiskey. Part of me feels like saying so what? Let there not be enough for everyone, don’t change this bottle that I love. Yet, that view is selfish.

Part of the joy of bartending, and indeed the joy of this very blog, is getting to share things that I love with other people. In the end, these changes aren’t for me. I clearly jumped on the train years ago. These changes are for the people seeing Elijah Craig for the first time on a billboard, or a sports arena, or even hearing about it on its recent NPR advertisements. The old Preacher is growing and hanging out with a younger crowd these days and I’m glad to see it.

In the end change isn’t good or bad. How we react to it, how we deal with it, that’s where the emotion comes in. Sometimes, change is just change. And I look forward to seeing what the Preacher and I have to talk about the next time we see each other.

Whiskey Wednesday: McKenna’s Patience

Bourbon is full of history, tradition, and ancient family recipes.

Except when it’s not. (which is pretty much all the time.)

This call back to the golden days of our frontier forbearers is meant to impart some sort of permanence, stability, and a patriotic appeal to what is actually a relatively new spirit. Bourbon wasn’t defined as a unique product of the United States until the 1950’s. As far as the United States government was concerned the term “whiskey” wasn’t even defined until almost 1907. So, while the “Founding Father’s” of Bourbon were certainly making whiskey, they were following their own rules by making what felt like a good product to them. Most of the regulation like the Bottled In Bond Act were spearheaded by the distillers themselves looking for tighter control and quality of their products.

In the worst case this clarion call to the past is meant to mislead consumers, but even the best intentioned creates a consumer base deathly averse to change. This is antithetical to the alcohol industry needing to be an ever-evolving marketplace.

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Why would you ever change this glorious label?!

I still remember my first gut reaction of, “Why the hell would you do that” in the modern whiskey world. It was the label change on Henry McKenna Bottled-In-Bond.

Henry McKenna is a name that harkens back to the early days of the Kentucky distilling world. In some circles he’s as highly regarded as George T. Stagg and William Larue Weller, (very well regarded indeed).

McKenna was an Irish immigrant that moved to the Kentucky territory in 1838. Like many Irish immigrants at the time Henry worked on the railroads helping build the country’s early infrastructure. Also like many other immigrants he went into less backbreaking work as soon as he could.

He settled with his wife in Nelson County and by 1855 was a partner in a flour mill. Looking to make use of the spent grains they soon purchased a farm and soon after that were distilling about a barrel a day from the leftovers from the gristing process.

These early whiskies were almost assuredly all wheat but by 1858 the whiskey was had proved popular enough to hire a fulltime distillery manager and had begun distilling corn as well.

images.jpgThe whiskey produced at McKenna’s Nelson County distillery never carried the name ‘Bourbon’ but it was regarded to be of the highest quality. Newspaper at the time noted that McKenna never sold a drop that wasn’t at least three years old. There was even a bill introduced to Congress in 1892 asking for unlimited bond period on aging whiskey to prevent tax penalties on whiskey aging beyond the bond. This bill was known as “The McKenna Bill.” The next year McKenna passed away at the age of 75.

He left the business to his sons who had grown up in the distilling world. They managed the company until the advent of Prohibition forced them to mothball the distillery. But following Repeal James McKenna, a ripe 79, reopened the distillery with a distiller trained by his father’s original distillery manager supposedly keeping the family recipe intact.

James died in 1940 and the family sold the distillery to Seagrams, but not the original recipe. Seagrams marketed and produced Henry McKenna for decades until they dismantled the original distillery in 1976 and sold the brand to Heaven Hill in the early 90’s.

Under Heaven Hill two versions of McKenna are still on the shelves. The 80 proof Henry McKenna and the Henry McKenna 10 Year Bottled In Bond Single Barrel. You get one guess which one I love.

Not only does the Bottled-In-Bond meet all of the bonded regulations, it’s also 10 years old which is ancient in this shifting whisky scene AND it’s a single barrel so there is the possibility that each bottle you dive into will be different, a new variation upon the McKenna theme.

I’m spoiled and was able to purchase to Private Single Barrel a few years ago and haven’t tasted a regularly available bottling in a while. So, how does it stack up to all of that history?

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The nose is redolent of salted caramel, and the mid palette is all pistachio and pecan drizzled with vanilla and a dry, oaky, tannic finish. There is still a heat, and a rough around the edges quality from the its 100 Proof nature that hasn’t been fully tamed by its ten years in the barrel. It’s a whiskey that you can sip on but feels like it loves to be tossed around in a mixing glass as well, with plenty to offer a cocktail while not losing its identity.

This is most assuredly NOT the whiskey that Henry McKenna was making when he first set out to Kentucky nearly 200 years ago, but it is good modern whiskey. The label change I originally hated has grown on me and I’m sure that its updated look helped introduce it to a modern audience. Trying to stand on tradition alone can often leave us unable to see over the crowd, but perching on it’s shoulders can help show us the stage set for the future.

Just A Little Larceny

Larceny is not theft.

Let’s draw an analogy: Marketing is selling. False marketing is theft.

It’s theft of your time, your ability to make informed decisions and ultimately your money. It’s spending those things with the expectation of one product and getting something at best tangentially related. The liquor world is awash with claims that straddle this divide. American whiskey is the major culprit these days.

The whiskey world is obsessed with authenticity, real or manufactured. We want the 264 year old history of your brand, even though it was just started three years ago. Preferably in convenient sound byte form, downloaded instantly so that when we buy your $50+ bottle we can rest assured that despite it being made in a factory in Indiana we know that you found the recipe in your great grand aunt’s attic.

There are dozens of examples of brands doing it wrong but they get enough ink spent on them. Instead let’s talk about people doing it well and say again: Larceny is not theft.

So, what is Larceny?

It’s a story. A perfect marketing story. Before Prohibition there was a man named John E. Fitzgerald. He never distilled a drop and he never had a distillery. Himgres-1.jpge did have keys to a bonded warehouse where they aged whiskey and was known to “sample” barrels. Sample- read: pilfered. Despite his acts of theft being well known Fitzgerald kept his job. In fact, the company started calling particularly good barrels “Fitzgeralds” and ended up naming a brand after him, all bottled from only the best barrels. After Prohibition the brand was sold to Pappy Van Winkle where it became his flagship brand at Stitzel-Weller.

But as you know from our talk about Pappy last week, Stitzel-Weller closed in 1992. The brand, and some aging whiskey, transferred to Heaven Hill where they created a heated mash bill to keep “Old Fitzgerald” consistent. That is until 2012, when Heaven Hill removed Old Fitz from almost every market and presented us with Larceny. Same juice, but named for the crime. Not the man.

What does this have to do with the whiskey?

Not a damn thing.

It’s all marketing. All a story. John E. Fitzgerald’s Larceny has no more connection to the purported original act of theft than it does to the whiskey made at Stizel-Weller or the whiskey sold before Prohibition. But it’s a story we all tell, something that gets us talking about this bottle.

And it’s still the spirit of Old Fitz. It’s still the same whiskey they were making before the name change. It’s the same mashbill inside the bottle, different proof, no age statement and still nutty, slightly rough around the edges with a dark, dark cherry note ringing through the center. But tasting notes aren’t enough on their own.Tasting notes don’t sell, history does.

And Heaven Hill has history in abundance, what they don’t have is a brand. Jim Beam has a brand. Four Roses has a brand. Heaven Hill has stories: Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, John E. Fitzgerald, and they are very successful stories. Evan Williams is the number two selling Bourbon in the world, so how do you get to number one? Marketing.

In the end is the Larceny a theft?. No, it’s just a fresh coat of paint on a well worn Kentucky barn. It’s still the same whiskey inside.