The Best-Kept Secrets in Bourbon Are Hiding in Plain Sight

There are some really terrific bourbons out there that most people overlook. In many cases they are old brands that the manufacturers sell but don't support. Some offer a chance to taste something a little different, others are among the best bourbons you can buy, and all are great values. While a few have limited distribution, many are hiding in plain sight at your neighborhood whiskey monger.

A prime example is Weller 12-Year-Old. This wheated bourbon from Sazerac is right up there with the very best bourbons available today, and it costs less than $30 a bottle in most places. A few years ago it was in very short supply but now seems readily available. If you are pining for Pappy but have never had Weller 12, what's wrong with you?

At the other end of the spectrum is Very Old Barton, another Sazerac product. It is a 6-year-old, rye-recipe bourbon that used to be sold only in Kentucky and a few southern states. In Kentucky, it is very popular and competes head-to-head with Jim Beam and Jack Daniel's. It is now more widely available but not national. Unless you drink 1792 or Ten High, you've probably never tasted a bourbon from this distillery. Very Old Barton is a solid, reliable, standard bourbon that usually sells for less than $20, often a lot less.

Old Forester is the brand that launched Brown-Forman 143 years ago. It was the first bourbon to be sold only in bottles. It has the same recipe as Woodford Reserve. The 86° proof (43% ABV) is usually about $20 and the 100° proof (50% ABV) is usually about $25. Again, it is just a good, solid, dependable rye-recipe bourbon at an excellent price.

Old Grand-Dad, discussed here on Monday, is one of the few high-rye bourbons and definitely the least expensive one. Its bonded expression has long been the best-selling bonded bourbon in the country. The bond usually sells for about $20, the 80° proof (40% ABV) is about $17. It's made by Beam.

Also from Beam is Jim Beam Black Label, which is 8-years-old, 86° proof (43% ABV), and about $22 a bottle. Compare that to Knob Creek, which is the same juice at 9-years-old and 100° proof (50% ABV), and about $30. Even though it carries the Jim Beam name, or perhaps because of it, many bourbon fans overlook this superb value. It's available everywhere.

Evan Williams Black Label is Heaven Hill's flagship brand and the #3 best-selling American whiskey, after Jack and Jim. Again it's a good, solid, standard rye-recipe bourbon, selling in many places for around $10.

No one who really knows bourbon would turn their nose up at any of these.

Beam Cuts Old Grand-Dad Proof Without Protest

Compared to the recent hubbub about cutting the proof of Maker's Mark, which was subsequently rescinded, drinkers have largely been silent about the cut from 86° proof (43% ABV) to 80° proof (40% ABV) for the lowest-proof expression of Old Grand-Dad bourbon.

Although the change took place more than six months ago, it has only recently appeared on the radar, thanks to folks on the straightbourbon.com discussion board.

Old Grand-Dad's bottled-in-bond (100° proof/50% ABV) and 114° proof (57% ABV) expressions remain unchanged. In fact, the culprit in the proof cut, according to Beam, is the bond.

Asked to comment, Beam provided the following statement: "This was an adjustment that happened mid-year 2012 to address certain factors particular to the Old Grand Dad brand, including maintaining a competitive retail price amidst higher input costs, while continuing to meet surging demand among bartenders and consumers in Old Grand Dad Bonded – which is 100 proof and one of very few bonded products out there. It should also be noted that Old Grand Dad’s signature high-rye mash bill – which has certainly set the brand apart from most other Kentucky Straight Bourbons in the last few decades – has not changed (and will not change)."

Incidentally, 80° proof  is effectively the floor for straight spirits such as whiskey. Producers are permitted to bottle whiskey at lower alcohol levels, but are required to label it 'diluted whiskey.' That tends to be off-putting to consumers, even though virtually all whiskey sold is, in fact, diluted for bottling.

Old Grand-Dad is a brand established in the late 19th century. After Prohibition, it returned as part of National Distillers. It became a Beam brand when the two companies merged in 1987. Of the many bourbons Beam acquired in that transaction, the original recipe was retained for only one; Old Grand-Dad. The rest (Old Crow, Old Taylor, etc.) became Beam juice.

The Old Grand-Dad recipe was retained because its mash bill contains about twice as much rye as Jim Beam and other standard bourbons, and a consequently smaller proportion of corn. It was also, at the time, commanding a premium price, so the higher cost of preserving its integrity was deemed acceptable. The Old Grand-Dad recipe is also used for Basil Hayden bourbon, which Beam recently announced saw sales surge in 2012.

When bourbon sales collapsed in the 1970s and '80s, brands whose names start with 'Old' took the biggest hit. It remains conventional wisdom among producers that legacy brands, especially the 'Olds,' deserve only minimal support, as they are only bought by long-time fans and aren't capable of attracting significant numbers of new consumers.

That may or may not be true, but if you're a bourbon enthusiast and haven't tried Old Grand-Dad yet, you should -- while you still can.

Basil Hayden Growth Confuses Bourbon Fans.

Last Thursday, in a little news digest post, I mentioned that Beam's Basil Hayden bourbon is up 33 percent in sales this year. If you read the comments, most are about that. Many readers found that news hard to swallow. Serious bourbon enthusiasts generally dismiss Basil Hayden as too light at 40% ABV, and too expensive at about $40 a bottle.

You shouldn't take too seriously a big one-time bump in sales on a small brand such as Basil Hayden. After 20 years in the marketplace, it is still a small brand. If it sustains a 33 percent growth trend over several quarters, then something is happening. If it does that, it won't be a small brand for long.

Eagle-eyed bourbonians have noticed that Beam recently received approval for a Basil Hayden label with no age statement (NAS). Just because a label is approved, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be used. I don't believe a NAS Basil Hayden bottle has shown up at retail yet.

The trend away from age statements has been to give producers flexibility, in this time of booming sales, to mix in some younger whiskey if it meets the brand profile. Many enthusiasts always believe the worst of the big producers, but the highest priority for most producers is to match the brand's flavor profile with each and every batch. It's not in their interest to make changes that actually change how the whiskey tastes, even if they can save a little money and put out a bit more volume by using younger spirit.

So what is moving Basil Hayden's needle? Beam seems to have had success focusing Basil Hayden on a cocktails-oriented, fashion and style-oriented consumer, something to drink while watching "Project Runway." Maybe it simply has taken 20 years for Basil Hayden to find its drinkers.

All four of the bourbons Beam calls The Small Batch Collection are very good but over-priced. The only one that seems appropriately priced for what it is is Knob Creek, which has been the most successful. There have been reports of Basil Hayden selling for closer to $30, but it's hard to know if they have permanently adjusted the price, or if they've just been dealing it a lot.

Heavy dealing can also account for a short-term 33 percent sales increase, which doesn't mean anything if they can't sustain the price point that's driving the extra sales. The idea, of course, is that deals drive sampling and usage, and the hope is that at least some of those consumers will stay with the brand after the price goes back up.

Most of the Beam bourbons are based on the Jim Beam recipe. Basil Hayden is not. It is based on the Old Grand-Dad recipe, which has about twice as much rye in the mash, and consequently less corn. It's still bourbon, not rye, but it has more rye flavor and may be enjoying some boost from the recent fascination with ryes.

The 'What Happened To Old Crow" Story.

One of the most unusual stories I heard when I was working on the documentary "Made and Bottled in Kentucky (1991-92) was told by a man who identified himself as the last master distiller at Old Crow and who was by then a Beam employee working at Forks of Elkorn (formerly Old Grand-Dad and now Beam's Frankfort maturation and bottling facility), which is where Beam stuck all of the National production people it retained.

They had permission to show me around Old Taylor and Old Crow, then in ruins but still owned by Jim Beam as a result of the 1987 acquisition of National Distillers. It was just me and a couple of these old National guys. I wasn't shooting, just researching. There was no one with us from Beam PR.

This gentleman told me that in the 1960s, National enlarged the Old Crow plant and accidentally altered the percentage of setback they were using to condition their mash. He said this completely screwed up the flavor of the whiskey. Everyone, including he and the distillery tasting panel, told management it tasted wrong, but at that point they were making it as fast as they could and selling all they could make, so nothing was ever done to fix it.

A few years later, when the bottom fell out of the bourbon business, it was worse for Crow than any other major brand; double-digit share and sales losses every year. He said they finally figured out what the problem was and fixed it a couple of years before Beam bought the place, so for the last few years of production the whiskey from that plant was good.

I've never found another source who could either confirm or dispute that story.

The Retro Bourbon You Really Must Try: Old Grand-Dad Bonded.

With its bright orange label, there is no chance you will mistake Old Grand-Dad for one of those new, trendy bourbon brands. Old Grand-Dad Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is proudly retro, from its package to the taste of the whiskey inside.

There are several expressions of Old Grand-Dad, but my favorite is Bonded Old Grand-Dad. As a bond, it must by law be 100° proof (50% ABV) and the product of a single distillery during a single distilling season. There can be no mixing of younger and older barrels. It must also be at least four years old.

Old Grand-Dad is a bourbon, but it contains about twice as much rye as most bourbons do. The rest of its unique taste must come from its yeast. It's very flavorful, spicy and earthy like a rye, sweet and satisfying like a bourbon.

Many bourbons today are eight years and older, so wood notes overshadow the grain and yeast. Old Grand-Dad seems to have those three flavor elements more equally apportioned.

Old Grand-Dad is a genuinely old brand too, one of the oldest still on the market. It was created by Raymond Hayden in the late 19th century and dedicated to his grandfather, Basil, a follower of Lord Baltimore who brought the family to Kentucky from England by way of Maryland.

Basil Hayden Bourbon, which is one of those trendy new brands, is Old Grand-Dad bourbon aged eight years and diluted to 80° proof (40% ABV).

Old Grand-Dad itself also comes in 86° proof and 114° proof expressions. Unlike Basil Hayden, none of the Old Grand-Dad expressions bear an age statement, so they are at least four years old and probably less than six. Although bonded bourbons today are a shadow of their former selves, Bonded Old Grand-Dad has long been the most popular bottled-in-bond bourbon. It is a product of Beam Global.

Old Grand-Dad is, I imagine, what many bourbons tasted like back before blended scotches and Canadians spoiled the American palate for real swallow hard and make a face whiskey. It's the other end of the flavor spectrum from something like Weller 12-year-old, which I also favor. It's often overlooked but is an essential part of any whiskey fan's education.
 
It's also a great value at about $20 for a 750 ml.

Sold For Parts.

What's worse than being sold? Being sold for parts. Maybe not. Dead is dead.

Old Crow is a brand of bourbon whiskey. The distillery where it was made from 1878 until 1987 is being demolished. You can find out how to buy some of the pieces here.

Old Crow today is a bottom-shelf product but once it was considered the finest whiskey in the land. United States Senators asked for it by name. It was one of the first whiskey brands and, as such, one of the first branded products of any kind.

Old Crow was not the first American whiskey but it was one of the first to be sold under a brand name. Before Old Crow, whiskey was a commodity. People only rarely drank the product of one distillery. Instead, distilleries sold to distributors, who combined spirits from several plants, filtered it through charcoal or bone dust, then treated and flavored it in various other ways before selling it to the public, generally by the barrel. A saloon or general store would buy a barrel. If I wanted some whiskey, I would take my own ceramic jug or other container down to the store and fill 'er up.

Sometime in the 1840s, James C. Crow, physician and distiller; and his employer, Oscar Pepper, distillery owner; began to sell their whiskey by name, either as Old Pepper or Old Crow. Pepper continued to sell Old Crow after Crow's death in 1856. Even though the distiller was dead, his whiskey only grew in popularity. When Pepper died too his son sold the distillery and the Old Crow brand. A few years later, the distillery went one way and the brand went another. A new Old Crow Distillery was built close to Frankfort--that's the one they're tearing down now. The original one is today's Woodford Reserve.

After Prohibition, Old Crow was the flagship brand of National Distillers and the #1 bourbon in a country that, in those days, didn't drink much other than bourbon. When bourbon tanked in the 1970s, no brand fell harder than Old Crow. By the time Jim Beam bought National in 1987, it had reached its present lowly condition.

Jim Beam got the Crow distillery, and several others, when it bought National. It closed them all immediately. (There was a whiskey glut.) For awhile, Beam used the warehouses at Old Crow, and at Old Taylor next door, but they didn't age very well because of their location. Whiskey warehouses in the country tend to be on hills, for air circulation. Crow and Taylor are in a narrow valley.

So when the whiskey that was put there originally aged out, they didn't put any new whiskey in. Years went by and the buildings and grounds deteriorated. Roofs caved in, brick walls collapsed. Beam sold Taylor first. It has had several owners since but no one has done anything much with it. Not long ago, Beam sold Crow to these guys.

Beam still owns the Old Crow brand. Here's what I'd love to see them do. Take one more look at the Old Crow site. Pick one cool thing. Pick two if you want, but pick at least one. I don't care what it is. Maybe it's that big limestone sign. I don't even care. Pick one cool thing and find a home for it, somewhere people can see it, like at Clermont where you have the visitors center. It wouldn't have to cost very much. I'm talking about bricks and stone, something that's already been outside for a century and can stay outside. Something that doesn't need a building. Do the same thing with Old Taylor and Old Grand-Dad. Is there anything left at Old Overholt?

These companies all say they care about the history. Show us how much you care.