Tag: Single Barrel

Whiskey Wednesday: A Little Russell In Faith

From no Turkey to a Turkey a month it really does seem like I’m filling that Wild Turkey hole. I promise I’m not repeating myself or selling out. I like exploring things I don’t know and I love sharing experiences.

I’ve talked several times in the past about house single barrels, and I’m sure I will many more times in the future. In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a what a house single barrel of whiskey is, it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s an entire barrel of whiskey that has been bottled, labeled, and sold to a single bar or store.  Most bottles of whiskey are a batch of a couple dozen to a couple thousand barrels of whiskey depending on the brand. Each barrel of whiskey ages differently, aging is an organic process after all. The time spent interacting with the oak, where in the warehouse, what the weather was like over the years, all of these contribute to the flavor of the barrel. To create a consistent product these different barrels and flavors are batched together. Single barrels on the other hand celebrate those individual differences.

It’s also a collaborative effort. Sharing the barrel and story with the customer helps them build the story of their evening out on the town, while the actual selection process is a collaboration between the distillers and the account. The distillers have already narrowed down your choices to a mere handful of barrels before you start tasting anything. They’ve already passed the distillers/brands personal taste test and now it’s about trying to match that to not only what you as the buyer likes, but what you think your customers will enjoy. It’s an ever growing relationship.

And if I’m honest it is a way to keep myself and the other bartenders interested behind the bar. It’s a way to make things more personal and break up the monotony of the 369th Old Fashioned order of the week. But anything can become predictable if do it enough, even barrel picks. That’s exactly why this barrel of Russell’s Reserve caught my attention; it had a funk and an tannic note that I wasn’t expecting.

I reached out to Bruce Russell, grandson of the eponymous Jimmy Russell of Russell’s Reserve, as to why that might be and he had this to say, “The thing that I found interesting about your barrel is the fact thatit moved from the bottom floors (floor 2) of warehouse B up to floor 6 (and right by a window on the edge) after about 6 years. It’s the reason why I think your barrel has such a funky, unique flavor profile. Generally if we move barrels it is down in the warehouse. We do that if we find whiskey we really love because moving it down slows down maturation and will keep the whiskey from changing a lot. Moving it up in the warehouse will speed up the process and is usually done early on in maturation to fix a whiskey that didn’t age very much after 2-3 years. I honestly don’t know why they moved your barrel (or the other dozen or so that got moved) when they did. But it definitely gave it a palate that I haven’t seen in any other of the single barrels this year.”

So even the barrels personal journey was a unique story and it certainly seems to have left an imprint on the flavor of the whiskey. Bottled at 110 proof and non chill filtered, the nose is slightly hot, as you’d expect at 110 proof but it also has a dark chocolate and earthy note that carries into the mid palette. Once on the tongue the whiskey displays dark stone fruit, a rich brown sugar quality and a touch of nutmeg, while the finish is all of that vanilla and a hint of white pepper. It definitely has that Wild Turkey funk but it also has its own undeniable off kilter character.

Whiskey Wednesday: The Old Forester’s New Clothes

It’s time for the same old song and dance but with a brand new look. The first entry in a new chapter of house single barrels with the first Faith and Flower edition single barrel of Old Forester.

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Old forester is an old brand, introduced by Gavin Brown in 1870 as the first bourbon brand sold exclusively in sealed bottles. Being sealed gave consumers assurance that the product hadn’t been tampered with or adulterated which made it the fan favorite of pharmacists who stocked it for its “medicinal qualities”. This reputation probably helped with Old Forester being granted one of six legal licenses to produce medicinal whiskey throughout Prohibition.

Unfortunately, over the century and a half of its existence Old Forester has been over shadowed by the Brown-Forman corporations other whiskies, like Jack Daniels or Forester’s mashbill twin Woodford Reserve. But recently the company has been trying to inject some new life into the old horse.

To kick things off the new Old Forester distillery is slated to open in downtown Louisville this year, And a few years back Old Forester was made the official bourbon for mint juleps at the Kentucky Derby (replacing Brown-Forman’s Early Times whiskey which is not technically a Bourbon) and around the same time they started rolling out their Whiskey Row Collection. The Whiskey Row is a series of Old Forester Bourbons meant to highlight milestones in Old Foresters history and the style of whiskey being made at that point in time. The Whiskey Row series are hence named with a date and a style like the 1870 “Original Batch” or the 1920 “Prohibition Style” and they also came with fancy new bottles and labels that set them apart from the classic Old Forester bottlings. And now all that fancy bottle and label goodness has found its way to the single barrel.

The Old Forester Single Barrel has always been a bit of a rare breed and been at least marginally separated off from the main bottles so it makes sense to align it more closely with its Whiskey Row brethren. The bottle is sleek, black, and just a little sexy.

510BA05C-43B6-4957-BAD0-F3DB91AEA44B.JPG  The single barrel offerings are at a solid 90 proof, one of the things that set them apart from the standard bottles, but the color scheme on the new label is an almost complete palate swap. Where the normal Whiskey Row bottles harken back to the old white/cream style labels of the brands history the new single barrel is jet black with silver lettering. And clearly looking to scratch the whiskey intelligentsia’s need to know everything the rickhouse and floor where the barrel aged are large and center.

 

But packaging doesn’t improve the whiskey in the bottle. So what about the actual whiskey? This inaugural Faith and Flower barrel comes from the first floor of Warehouse K. It’s the classic Old Forester/Woodford

mashibill 78% corn, 12% Rye, 10% barley that can too easily come off as a sweet corn bomb, but here it’s taken on a darker tone. Deep, red, ripe cherry winds its way through the middle of the palette while cinnamon, nutmeg, and woody sweetness lingers on the nose. The finish is medium yet weighty leaving the rough edge of the barrel mingled with the caramel sweetness.

Seeing this single barrel dressed up and tasting like this is like seeing a old friend the you’ve long felt to be predictable suddenly dressed to the nines and just dripping with an heretofore unseen sex appeal. The bones are the same but it’s a reminder that everything, and everyone, has a unexpected side that can make you sit up and take notice.

Whiskey Wednesday: Shooting Turkey Rye in a Single Barrel

I don’t like to repeat myself, but the conversation about the Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit Barrel a few weeks ago got me thinking. While I might not be a Wild Turkey Bourbon man at heart the rye has always tickled my fancy. I’d like to say that it’s simply because it’s damn good whiskey but that hasn’t always objectively been true.

I touched a bit on the history of Wild Turkey with the post of Kentucky Spirit (You can read about that here) but Wild Turkey’s history feels more tied with the pop culture of past decades that almost any other brand except Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam.

Wild Turkedownload.jpgy as a brand was said to originate in the 1940’s when an Austin Nichols executive, Thomas McCarthy, brought some choice whiskey along on a wild turkey hunting trip in South Carolina. Enamored with the samples he brought his friends kept asking for more of “that wild turkey bourbon.” More likely it was a marketing approach to appeal to hunters and the rugged, rustic type but every whiskey loves a mythical origin story.

Turkey also appeals to me because it’s been the favored drink of self destructive writers for decades. Hunter S. Thompson was a known lover, Stephen King mentions it with distinction in a few books, and in his biography it’s listed as the drink of choice for perennial hipster literary icon David Foster Wallace.

Yet throughout all this pop culture iconography it’s always the bourbon they’re talking about. The rye always seems to be the unspoken younger sibling despite, at least from personal experience, it being the bartender favorite.

The Wild Turkey Rye is known as being a “barely legal” rye.  At 51% Rye/37% corn/12% barley it meets the bare minimum by law to be considered a rye whiskey. Yet, along with the brand Rittenhouse, it is a rye that kept rye alive in the decades when it was certainly not cool to drink. And it was certainly popular enough that when the 101 proof rye was dropped in 2012 there was enough of an outcry that it was reinstate a mere two years later. And now it might finally have its family champion.

Bruce Russell is the third generation of Turkey Russells and he is the current

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Like Grandfather, Like Grandson

driving force behind their rye, at least their high end stuff. While Jimmy Russell has always been unassuming and focused on the fact Wild Turkey makes two products, a Bourbon and a Rye, his son Eddie and grandson Bruce have championed the expansion of the range arguing differentiation through aging.

The idea that certain spots  in certain warehouses yield “honey” barrels is well established in Kentucky whiskey lore even if no one understands why that should be the case. But for Wild Turkey rye that took a new edge with the release of the Russell’s Reserve 6 Year rye and then even more focus with the Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye.

While the single barrel carries no age statement it is clearly considered to be the upper echelon of the Turkey Family Rye. The 6-year was first introduced in 2007, the year after they raised the barrel entry proof from 105 to 115 and four years before the new distillery came online in 2011. This of course means there’s been a fair amount of flux in the production.

The rye itself is a fine example of Kentucky rye. It is all rich tobacco, which makes the old smoker in me shiver, a hint of dill, a full serving of citrus and a baked quality that ties in the darker spices and the heavy vanilla/caramel barrel notes. And it’s bottled at 104 proof which grants it the same oomph as its Wild Turkey 101 sibling.

The problem for me is twofold. 1) pricing and 2) transparency. The pricing hangup is easy for me to explain, I want quality at cost like it used to exist before the “Bourbon Boom” but that’s the old man in me yelling at the local teens to stay off my lawn: it ain’t going to happen. As for Number 2 there’s no denying that Jimmy, Eddie and now Bruce make good, and often great, whiskey but in an age where the consumer is more and more interested in the process of what ends up in their bottle the Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Rye lacks any discerning features on the label. If a single barrel product is supposed to be different barrel to barrel I want to be able to compare barrels and bottlings, and nothing on the label gives me the ability to do that. There is no barrel number, warehouse ID, or even simply year or batch number. And these aren’t new requests. These are standard industry practices for single barrel and have been since single barrels were introduced in the 80s. Which brings me back around to the why of  why does the Wild Turkey Rye tickle my fancy so?

I think it has to do with placement. There is a wonderful sweet spot that the 101 Proof Wild Turkey Rye hits in flavor, cost, and history. While I can love the flavors and the drive to create more rye that the Russell’s Single barrel presents the balance between those things isn’t there for me yet.

But then again, aren’t we most critical of those we want the love the most?

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I mean if it’s good enough for Aragorn…

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.

Whiskey Wednesday: Kentucky Spirit Soars Like A Wild Turkey

Let’s do something different, different for me at least, and talk Wild Turkey and about a single barrel not chosen by me.

Gathering together all of my Whiskey Wednesday posts, my personal whiskey collection, and the bottles I routinely stock at the bar a pretty glaring hole starts to emerge, and that hole is shaped like a damn Turkey. I couldn’t tell you why it’s there either. Wild Turkey seems like it should check all of the high proof, rough around the edges, old school bourbon boxes for me. And it’s made by Jimmy Russell! And yet it’s never close at hand for me. Let’s shake that up.

Wild Turkey was born as a Non-Distilling Producer in 1942. Austin Nichol’s & Co. were a New York based grocery wholesaler. They finally purchased the Ripy Brothers Distillery (then kimgres.jpgnown as the Boulevard Distillery) in 1971 and renamed it the Wild Turkey Distillery. This purchase made sense since the Ripy distillery was where most of the Wild Turkey Whiskey was coming from but it was terrible timing as “white goods” started gaining steam and the bourbon market tanked. The brand and distillery, were purchased by Pernod Ricard in 1980 and then sold to Gruppo Campari in 2009. But through out all of those changes Jimmy Russell has been there, making whiskey.

Jimmy’s career has lasted over 60 years; he started at
the Wild Turkey distillery well before it was the Wild Turkey distillery. In fact,

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Pictured: Jimmy Russell’s mad skills.

his tenure at wild Turkey began 10 years before the 1964 act of Congress that declared Bourbon to be a “distinctive spirit of the United States.” He was named Master Distiller in the late 60’s and is the last living Elder Statesman of Bourbon. He, along with Booker Noe and Elmer T. Lee, were the first generation of rock star distillers. These were distillers that were forcibly evicted from the seat in front of the stills to go travel and spread the good word of Bourbon. And even into his 80s he’s still traveling and distilling. And it’s a family business these days, his son Eddie is the new kid on the block with only 30+ years of distilling experience.

Jimmy Russell is essentially old school Bourbon personified. Yet he doesn’t take himself seriously and no matter who his employers are he makes no qualms about who he is or his opinions. For the past several years when doing tastings and traveling Jimmy would tell everyone at the tastings that he didn’t like low proof young whiskey, while pouring them Wild Turkey’s low proof young whiskies. Guess what Wild Turkey doesn’t mimgres-1.jpgake anymore? Seeing the Wild Turkey 101 Rye return with a vengeance was transcendent moment amidst all of these brands lowering proof and dropping age statements. Yet for all of my love of Jimmy, and his rye, when I drink the Bourbon it’s usually me trying to figure out why I don’t drink the Bourbon.

So naturally the first time Ryan Wainwright plopped this single Barrel of Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit in front of me at Terrine (now The Ponte) my eyebrow rose skeptically. At 101 proof the Kentucky Spirit is essentially single barrel W

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Original Drop

ild Turkey 101 Bourbon- so I was expecting an incredibly earthy, slightly musty, hard oak. Instead, it turned out to be a spice bomb of a bourbon, with a dark baking spice, a dark, overripe cherry, with a farm house quality the I feel is coming from the Wild Turkey yeast. The oak and caramel in the barrel are supporting players rather than the main attraction and the proof sits right where it should granting all of the flavor with very little burn. I was genuinely surprised.

But I don’t think I should have been. This barrel taste’s like Jimmy’s bourbon philosophy, chosen by a bartender with a very specific palette. What this barrel says to me is that although Wild Turkey is quite frankly in a slump there is still liquid gold in its warehouses. There is experience, and skill, and craftsmanship that seem to be producing a sometimes muddled bourbon, but when the sun breaks through, damn, does it shine.

Hancock’s President’s Reserve Single Barrel

I often say that I like surprises, but that’s not really true. What I actually like is discovering new things. It’s safe to say I know a bit about whiskey. Yet I constantly find myself surprised and excited by things that I don’t know. And it is rarely the massive, specialty releases that catch me off guard. It’s the little guys that usually make me sit up and notice. Maybe it’s because they’re unexpected, or maybe it’s just a touch of arrogance. If I haven’t heard of it, who knows what it could be?

It happened just the other week. I got a call letting me know that if I moved fast I might be able to get a case of Hancock’s President’s Reserve. Before that call I might have vaguely recognized the name but couldn’t have told you anything else. So immediately I was intrigued.

The whiskey seems to be named for Hancock Lee, one of the cofounder of Leesburg, Kentucky. But information on Hancock is relatively scarce and the same goes for his namesake whiskey, which is odd in an age where debating the minutia of even the most esoteric of hobbies has become a pastime of it’s own. But what is known is that it’s made by Buffalo Trace using mashbill #2. This put it firmly in the Elmer T. Lee, Blanton’s and Rock Hill Farm family which despite how well known its siblings are the fact that they are related could be part of the reason for it’s obscurity.

When Sazerac purchased what is now known as the Buffalo Trace distillery in 1992 the distillery was already under contract producing whiskey for Age International, a contract that continues to this day. The relationship is complicated but essentially boils down to the fact that Age International owns the labels, and by extension rights to the mashbill, for Blanton’s, Elmer and Rock Hill Farms while Buffalo Trace distills the whiskey and distributes in the Unites States. And the Hancock is no different. So without full control of the label, the success and demand for its sibling single barrel bourbons could be the reason Buffalo Trace doesn’t have much information available.

Incidentally, this arrangement between Buffalo Trace and Age International is why there are two different Buffalo Trace mashbills. Mashbill #2 for the preexisting contracts and mashbill #1 for all their proprietary bourbons and while they don’t publicly disclose the recipes for either they’re pretty similar in the end with mashbill #1 being lighter on the rye.

The liquid itself sits between the taste profile of the Elmer and the Rock Hill Farm. It is lighter in body, and much more mellow at 88.6 proof. There is a nuttiness on the nose that is somewhat overwhelmed by the sweetness of the body with an abundance of vanilla, cinnamon, and oak giving why to a dry, tannic finish. In the end this reminded me more of the now discontinued Ancient Age 10 Year than any of its single barrel counterparts. As it stands there really isn’t anything that differentiates in from the other mashbill #2 single barrels. I’d personally grab it over Blanton’s but with the apparent effort needed to track down a few bottles I’d much rather put in the time grabbing a bottle of Elmer or Rock Hill Farm.

This bottle was a surprise but it doesn’t seem that its scarcity is due to some amazing liquid in the bottle, but rather simple lack of information and knowledge of the brand and with its pricing it certainly isn’t poised to take over the cult following that the Ancient 10 left behind. Then again, it did just win a silver medal at the 2016 San Francisco World Spirits Awards so maybe there’s another surprise around the corner.

A FEW Good (Rye) Barrels

Inertia can have its benefits. I’ve been running the bar at Areal for 4 years now which means that these days the bar is essentially an extension of my personal tastes over the years. It also means that I am spoiled. On average I get to taste 3-6 new spirits a week. Which honestly isn’t surprising considering there are over 1200 craft distilleries operating in the United States as of 2016. And everyone of them has a gin that they want to sell you and most of them are making a whiskey. You could stock an entire bar with the mediocre spirits being pumped out and consumed because of their “localness” or their “craft” appeal. Just because something is local and small, doesn’t mean that it’sfew21.jpg any good. Just like being big and global doesn’t necessarily negate your quality and attention to detail. Everyone wants to start a distillery these days and I’ve got one piece of advice for you: wait. The quality of product being produced right now can’t support the number of “craft” products being produced and in about five years there’s going to be a glut of distilling equipment available for pennies on the dollar.

So, in this world
of abundance what actually marks a good product? I hate to say it but it’s time. Increasingly what I see is that people who take the time, whether it’s in learning the craft before starting a distillery, letting something fully age in full size barrels, perfecting a recipe before rushing a product to the market, investing in the future like the team at Leopold Brothers, or if we’re being honest just starting out at the right time. Open your distillery today and you’ve already missed the boat. If you started up six or more years ago though you’re now sitting golden. Just ask the team at Tuthilltown Spirits with their Hudson whiskies. The pricing and quality they went to market with would never cut the mustard today.

Where does FEW sit in all of this? I’m going to say well over the hump of the bell curve. They’ve been in the game for years now so they’ve got that inherent leg up. And while they produce a wide range of products (including at least 5 gins to clutter your back bar) the product that brought them to my attention years ago, and that still seems to be the winner for most people is their Rye.

Few-Spirits-Labels.jpg            FEW has always had a delightful self awareness about the fact that they’re just making booze. The distillery name gives rise to a myriad of word play about having a FEW drinks, etc. But it’s also a nod to the distilleries home in Evanston, right out side of Chicago, which was a major staging ground for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Movement and the home of woman’s suffragist and prohibitionist France Elizabeth Willard. That playfulness carries over into their rye.

FEW encapsulates what I like to call the “New American Whiskey” flavor. These are young whiskies that have a lot of breadlines, a heavy oak presence and a fire to make any cowboy sit up and take notice. Most never find a balance to actually make them drinkable. There is a spice and a caraway to the FEW that has always helped tip it into drinkable fire for me though. They’re also the first distillery in four years to say, sure we’ll sell you a barrel of rye.

Rye, if you’ve been living under a rock, is currently the old school David Bowie of the American Whiskey world. And no one was making it. Nearly everyone who’s selling you a rye bought that rye from someone else. You’ll know they didn’t make it themselves if they can afford a national marketing campaign to support the brand. And the people who actually do make a rye have been hoarding it because demand far outstrips supply. But here we have the definition of new school distiller opening it’s vault with an unadulterated offering that is bright green apple, spice, caraway with a toasted breadlines and just a dash of almost crunchy peanut butter.

FEW, and this barrel, are far from perfect but they are to me an example of how to move forward. It’s time. It’s time placed in your product. Time placed in your methods. Time placed in the barrel. And time set aside to plan for more time in the future

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”

Son of a Preacher Man: Elijah Craig 18 Year Single Barrel

People always ask, “What is your favorite whiskey?” and I always respond, “That’s like asking a parent to pick their favorite child.” It’s flippant but also kind of true. A parent will tell you they love all their children, but there’s always one that the spend more time with. In the bourbon world that child for me is the Preacher: Elijah Craig. But as the Nobel Laureate once said, “The times they are a-changin’.”

It’s gotten incredibly obvious over the past year with the old standard 12 year dropping its age statement and a major bottle design overhaul, but the first sign of change came nearly 5 years ago when they discontinued the original iteration of the Elijah Craig 18 Year Old Single Barrel.

As the Nobel Laureate once said, “The times they are a-changin’.”

The Bourbon was, without a doubt, one of my favorite things I’ve ever put in my mouth. Massive, oaky, creamy and not overpowering. It’s a prime example of the quality of the older whiskies that fed into and eventually led to the Pappy Van Winkle craze, and at $45 bucks a bottle it was something everyone could enjoy. It was an entry point into the bigger, wider world of Bourbon. And they had to take it away from us for two reasons: 1) We drank all of it. 2) The Heaven Hill fire.bourbon.jpg

In the mid 90s a fire started at on of the Heaven Hill distillery rickhouses, most likely from a lightning strike. Ironic in light of the old marketing story that Elijah Craig became the father of Bourbon when a lightning strike burned his barn to the ground, but being a frugal man he saved the barrels stored there and used them to store whiskey, becoming the first to use charred barrels and thus the first to make modern bourbon. The story is complete myth of course.

But this actual fire spread through the warehouses like, well like fire through alcohol. It followed the wind and the terrain and set fire to the distillery itself. Other distilleries banded together to help them continue production until they purchased the Bernheim distillery a few years later but with the loss of stock and production ability sacrifices had to be made and the 18 year was put on that altar.

368291375969919360.jpgAs a consimgres.jpgolation prize in the following years Heaven Hill released a 20, 21, 22 and 23 year old version of the single barrel. Some with varying success but as the age on the bottles ticked up so did the price on the bottles, riding right along the crest of the Bourbon Craze. Then the 18 Year came flaming back last year.

 

Still a Single Barrel, but now a once a year release, I was excited to taste it and felt warm inside as it slid down my throat just like I remembered. Rich, deep, dark yet still lively. But with a price tag 3.5 times what it used to be the entry point was gone. No longer was this something to share with newcomers and aficionados alike. Now this was for the connoisseur. And yes, now this means that you actually might have a chance of finding a bottle on the shelf. Of having something to share in those special moments, but with the bottle change and the loss of the 12 year age statement from the Preacher’s Small Batch bottles I’m left wondering where that entry point is going. So, tonight I’m going to raise a glass because I want to. And because I can. For now.