After More Than 20 Years, Stitzel-Weller to Resume Production

Earlier today, John Hansell reported on the Whisky Advocate Blog that Diageo sources have told him Stitzel-Weller will resume production soon. No further details are available. Hansell received the news in confidence several months ago, and decided to confirm it today after the news began to leak over the weekend. According to one report, on Friday night a Diageo rep spoke about it freely at Bourbon's Bistro in Louisville.

Stitzel-Weller is the Louisville distillery established by the Van Winkle family after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. It was known for producing wheated bourbon, which it sold as Old Fitzgerald, W. L. Weller and several other brands. The Van Winkle family sold the distillery, its whiskey stocks and brands in 1972. After that, ownership changed several times until it landed with a predecessor company to Diageo, which closed it in 1992. Since then, the warehouses have been used but not the distillery. There have been multiple reports that the need for asbestos abatement makes it cost prohibitive to return the existing distillery to production. How that will be resolved remains unknown.

In 1999, Diageo sold Old Fitzgerald and the other Stitzel-Weller brands.

When the Van Winkle family sold Stitzel-Weller, they retained rights to Van Winkle as a brand name and went into business as a non-distiller producer, using whiskey bought from their family's former plant. This is the basis of the now famous Pappy Van Winkle line, although today only the 23-year-old is entirely Stitzel-Weller bourbon. In other forms too, whiskey produced at Stitzel-Weller has long been highly prized but, after more than 20 years, it is very scarce.

Diageo's only active whiskey distillery in the United States is the George Dickel Distillery in Tullahoma, Tennessee. In 2012, Dickel Master Distiller John Lunn was put in charge of operations at Stitzel-Weller, where whiskey for Diageo brands is matured and blended.

We await an official announcement from Diageo as well as meaningful details. Whatever the plan, it will be several years before new Stitzel-Weller whiskey will be ready to sell.

In recent years, Diageo has prepared Stitzel-Weller to serve as a homeplace for Diageo's Bulleit brand, which is made elsewhere at non-Diageo facilities. Although The Bulleit Bourbon Experience has been ready for nearly two years, it hasn't been opened to the public. Presumably that too is imminent, but again there is no official word.

Excessive Exuberance: The Van Winkle Phenomenon

Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks, writes that "Excessive exuberance is the Achilles Heel of social media." It's the Achilles Heel of many things touted on social media too, including the sudden hipness of all things whiskey. Nothing exemplifies this better than the Van Winkle phenomenon.

Because it's end-of-the-year and holiday time, when editorial budgets run out, and your better-paid writers and editors are on their way to a beach somewhere, you're going to see lots of lists: gift ideas, year's best, party tips, and so on. The name of Van Winkle will be on many such lists.

Let's acknowledge right off that the people who most need to read this probably won't, because then they would be informed and most Van Winkle fanatics aren't.

Let's also acknowledge that there are people who have long enjoyed the whiskeys selected and bottled (but not made) by the Van Winkle family. Most of them aren't interested in all the commotion about Van Winkle, and with only a slight twinge of regret are happy to drink something else. That's because they know their way around bourbon and know that the Van Winkle whiskeys, while very good, are not sine qua non.

Here's the history. Julian P. "Pappy" Van Winkle used to own Louisville's Stitzel-Weller Distillery, makers of Old Fitzgerald and other bourbons. After his death, his heirs couldn't agree on the company's direction, which forced a sale. Pappy's son, JPVW Junior, started a new company using the only brand the family retained in the sale, Old Rip Van Winkle. His son, Julian (JPVW III), continues that business to this day. Assisted by his son and in partnership with the Buffalo Trace Distillery, he sells bourbons at 10, 12, 15, 20, and 23-years-old, and a 13-year-old rye, under various iterations of the Van Winkle brand.

Van Winkle primarily sells bourbon made with wheat instead of rye. That's a minority approach, but not unique. Most of the Van Winkle whiskey is made at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, which also makes the W. L. Weller line of wheated bourbons, a former Stitzel-Weller brand.

Van Winkle has always been a very small brand. It was pricey and its extra-aged products were not to everyone's liking. Still, it always had a good reputation among enthusiasts. Then, a few years ago, a few celebrities mentioned they liked it and it started to show up on "best of" lists. Whiskey was suddenly hip and the laziest question a person can ask about whiskey is, "what's the best?" Van Winkle became the default answer and began to be very hard to get. Some retailers and scores of eBay sellers asked absurd prices for it and, in at least a few cases, got them.

Van Winkle is a problem for retailers because there’s so much more demand than supply that people who fancy themselves ‘good customers’ get testy when a store can’t fulfill their Van Winkle desires.

The phenomenon is driven largely by lazy journalists who simply copy what other people write, so everybody who writes about bourbon and desirable high-end bottles winds up writing about Van Winkles. Most of the pieces are written by people who know little or nothing about whiskey. They are ‘life style’ journalists. Their bread and butter is ‘ten best’ lists, which they simply compile from a couple of already published ‘ten best’ lists, so the thing feeds on itself.

Generally, the people clamoring for a Van Winkle are the same as the people behind the lists. They know almost nothing about bourbon. For them, it’s the lazy shortcut route to connoisseurship. They read somewhere that Van Winkle is the best, and since they only buy the best of everything, and they (apparently) have more money than they know what to do with, Van Winkle it must be.

If you actually just want a very good bottle of that type of bourbon (wheated and well-aged), the Weller line is right there for you. The Weller 12-year-old is comparable to all but the 20-23 year-old Van Winkles, and costs about $30 a bottle. It’s in short supply too, though not as crazy as Van Winkle. For that matter, purely in terms of the whiskey, most would be happy with a bottle of Maker's Mark (also a wheated bourbon and about $20 a bottle). If you want something exclusive and high end, the 2010 edition of Parker's Heritage Collection, a 10-year-old barrel proof wheated bourbon, is the peer of any Van Winkle.

If you're a real bourbon enthusiast, you already know this. If you're a typical Van Winkle fanatic, you never will.

Julian Van Winkle (JPVW III) explains the scarcity strategy well. Because there is so much more demand than supply, his cost of selling is about zero. He simply announces how many bottles he has to sell, customers tell him how many they want, he tells them how many they can have, and pretty soon it’s all gone. It's a nice business.

Most stores never put it on the shelf, and they have people on long waiting lists for it. It’s great for Julian but it’s kind of a nuisance for the stores. Yes, they sell every bottle instantly, at a healthy markup, but they have to deal with dozens if not hundreds of unhappy customers.

There are plenty of knowledgeable bourbon enthusiasts who like Van Winkle too (it is genuinely good stuff, just not ambrosia) and wish they could find and afford it, but they’re competing with all the dopes who have to have it because they read something about it in Maxim. It's not worth the trouble.

And now there is one more year-end Van Winkle story.

New Larceny Bourbon Is A Mystery Times Two.

These are the labels for a new bourbon from Heaven Hill. The story they tell is true. It was revealed in a book published in 1999. It is about John E. Fitzgerald, the man after whom the Old Fitzgerald brand was named.

The Old Fitzgerald brand was created by Charles Herbst, a pre-Prohibition wine and spirits wholesaler, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was made at a distillery Herbst owned near Frankfort, Kentucky, called Old Judge (now long gone).

When Herbst created the brand he made up a story to go with it, that Fitzgerald was a distiller in Frankfort who, starting in 1870, made a fine bourbon whiskey that he sold only to railroads, steamship lines, and private clubs.

It was all fiction, but Fitzgerald was a real person, a U.S. Treasury agent. Treasury agents in those days, and up until the early 1980s, controlled access to all whiskey warehouses, the better to ensure that all taxes were paid and all whiskey was made to government standards. This made the local 'government man' very powerful and there was little a distiller or distillery owner like Herbst could do if the agent assigned to his distillery helped himself to a taste now and then.

Fitzgerald had a reputation among the Herbst folks for being a particularly good judge of whiskey. The barrels that received most of his attention almost always turned out to be exemplary, and it became an inside joke to refer to a particularly good barrel of bourbon as 'a Fitzgerald.' The joke was immortalized when they chose John E. Fitzgerald as the fictional producer of a brand they called Old Fitzgerald.

No one knew the true story until author Sally Van Winkle Campbell and her historian consultant, Sam Thomas, uncovered it. Campbell is the granddaughter of Julian 'Pappy' Van Winkle, who acquired the Old Fitzgerald brand from Herbst during Prohibition.

The label above was discovered through a different kind of sleuthing. It didn't come from Heaven Hill, which owns the Fitzgerald brand today. Instead it was discovered by a COLA troller. COLA stands for "Certificate of Label Approval." All alcoholic beverage labels have to be submitted to the Treasury Department's Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for approval, and when approved they become matters of public record and are posted on the TTB's web site.

COLA Trollers are enthusiasts who search the TTB web site for clues about new products. Label approval doesn't necessarily mean a product is imminent, or that it will be released at all, but they can be tantalizing, as this one is.

Weller Antique Is Not Being Discontinued.

Several whiskey-enthusiast blogs and web sites are reporting that Weller Antique, a wheated bourbon produced by Sazerac at the Buffalo Trace Distillery, is being discontinued. The ostensible source is none other than Harlen Wheatley, Buffalo Trace Master Distiller, speaking at a tasting event in Dallas, Texas.

Two different individuals who attended the event have written that he cited limited amounts of wheated bourbon barrel stock as the reason. As reported, his exact words were, "Weller Antique is going away."

So your humble correspondent asked the Buffalo Trace PR department about the reported incident. Through them, Mr. Wheatley denied making the statement. Both he and the PR department assert that, in fact, Weller Antique is not going away and there are no changes to the Weller line underway.

The two witnesses are knowledgeable, veteran whiskey enthusiasts. There appears to be no reason to doubt them, nor to doubt the denials by Mr. Wheatley and the official spokespeople at Buffalo Trace. How to explain the discrepancy? Many possibilities suggest themselves. Most fall well short of the conspiracy and duplicity suggested by some members of the commentariat.

One would think that the denial is enough, everyone assumes there was some kind of misunderstanding, now cleared up, end of story. But that's not how it works among people afflicted with whiskirexia nervosa, a condition whose principal symptom is an unreasonable belief that no matter how many bottles of whiskey you already have, there is one more you desperately need. Paranoia is a typical reaction to conflicting stimuli.

One problem with the notion of Weller Antique being discontinued is that there is no reason to do it, nothing to be gained by it. Buffalo Trace only has two lines of wheated bourbon, Weller and Van Winkle. Van Winkle is extremely popular and profitable, but it's also tiny and intends to stay that way. They can make appropriate increases to Van Winkle production without robbing Weller. So why would they discontinue Antique?

One theory is that they are going to push all wheated bourbon production into Weller Special Reserve, which conveniently lost its 7-year-old age statement not long ago. By using younger whiskey and diverting whiskey from Antique, they can produce a lot more Weller Special Reserve, cheaper and thus more profitably. Antique was always just the high-proof version of Special Reserve, after all, 53.5% ABV instead of 45% ABV.

It's not a good theory, necessarily, just one that rationalizes the conclusion.

The Weller line, which also includes Weller Special Reserve and Weller 12, may not be big where you are but it's huge in Texas and everyone knows you don't get between a Texan and his or her bourbon. It's not healthy.

Get It Right.

I guess I was always looking for trouble.

Twenty years ago, I started to research and write about American whiskey because most of what I could find on the subject was riddled with inaccuracy. Part of the problem was scotch writers who thought they understood bourbon but didn't. Another was general assignment reporters who only knew what their interview subjects told them and since those interview subjects were selling some brand or another, the articles were loaded with not-always-accurate marketing spin.

General assignment reporters also tend to possess misinformation gathered during misspent youths, which they regard as gospel.  

It has gotten better. Some credit goes to the companies, who are training their people better, and separating the product information function from the sales function. Beam, Inc.'s whiskey professors, for example, are terrific. The internet has helped and so has the rise of publications such as WHISKY Magazine and Whisky Advocate.

But as I was reminded today, writers who should know better can still get a lot wrong. While it gives me no pleasure to call them out, what else can I do? When we were both learning how to drive, my brother used to criticize me for not blowing my horn vigorously enough at drivers who committed various automotive sins. "How else are they going to learn?" he argued.

Case in point: Robert Moss, who writes about food and drink for the City Paper in Charleston, South Carolina. His lengthy article about bourbon, published two weeks ago, had a very promising beginning, an anecdote about Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon being effective celebrity bait in the South. His discussion of the cult phenomenon Pappy has become was accurate but without providing much insight as he described a Charleston bar where Pappy 20 sells for $65 a glass, and Pappy 23 sells for $85.

Although the bar-restaurant he describes sounds terribly pretentious, it's a great advance that, today, pretentious bars can be bourbon-themed.

The phrase "slow-aged corn whiskey" bothered me because aging can be long, but slow? And corn whiskey is not bourbon; although bourbon is made mostly from corn, corn whiskey is its own type and not the same thing. A nit? Possibly.

Then he states that "Congress declared (bourbon) to be 'America's Native Spirit' in 1964," which is often said but simply not true, and always sets me off.

The sad thing is that Moss clearly did a lot of research to find so much inaccurate information.

His capsule history of the American whiskey industry is about half right. The claim of Scots-Irish dominance in frontier distilling has been largely discredited, for example. Moss accumulates and reports facts without seeming to understand them. His modern history ignores the impact of the export market and of Maker's Mark.

What's worse, he seems to believe there is an actual Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery and calls the Van Winkle whiskeys 'artisan,' when they are no more nor less so than any other major distillery products. Call it what it is. Van Winkle is a small and elite brand from a big producer, but Moss seems to have no idea how or where the Van Winkle whiskeys are actually made or, if he does, he chooses to not share that information with his readers.

Even though he interviewed Julian Van Winkle, Moss makes ignorant statements such as, "Van Winkle started buying up old inventory from struggling distilleries, particularly those selling his family's old brands." Julian didn't tell him that. In fact, Van Winkle bought whiskey from his family's former distillery, Stitzel-Weller, which was not struggling, and supplemented it with whiskey from defunct distilleries whose struggles were behind them.

Or perhaps he refers to Buffalo Trace, Van Winkle's present home, which sells W. L. Weller bourbon, one of the "(Van Winkle) family's old brands." Again, Moss has the facts, he just doesn't understand them.

Then he shifts the story to a Charleston-based flavored bourbon, something anathema to any Pappy drinker. To talk about the enthusiasm for premium bourbon and the recent rash of flavored bourbon in the same breath, without mentioning how much premium bourbon enthusiasts despise flavored bourbon, is journalistic malpractice.

I'm piling on Mr. Moss, who I do not know, because I thought we were finished with this sort of thing. In 2009, Kate Hopkins published 99 Drams of Whiskey: The Accidental Hedonist's Quest for the Perfect Shot and the History of the Drink. She started out knowing nothing about whiskey, wrote a whole book about it, and got almost everything right. It can be done.

"Perhaps What The Bar In Heaven Looks Like."

The picture above, taken from their web site, doesn't do it justice. The bar at the Berghoff, at 17 W. Adams in downtown Chicago, has been described as "perhaps what the bar in heaven looks like."

Heaven could do a lot worse.

The Berghoff is famous for receiving Chicago's first retail liquor license immediately after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. It was also a popular, family-owned German restaurant that began in 1898.

In 2005, the Berghoff family announced that the restaurant would close in 2006 and so -- after much memorializing and tributization -- it did.

Sort of.

Happily, they never really closed. They simply compressed what had been a very large restaurant and bar into the bar space. The bar was always separate, with a few tables and booths in addition to the bar itself. Today it is open Monday through Friday from 11:00 AM until 9:00 PM. On Saturdays it opens a half-hour later, at 11:30 AM. Closed Sunday.

That may seem awfully early for a proper bar to close, but that part of downtown mostly draws a lunch and after-work crowd, with some pre-theater business in the evening. Think of it as you would a London pub. They typically close by nine or ten, if not earlier.

In the old days, the bar served a typical bar lunch -- sandwiches, soups, salads, some munchies. At lunch they had a carving station. The 'new' Berghoff has a very substantial menu, essentially the same as the old restaurant, with all of the expected German specialties. At lunch time, a very similar menu is served at the Berghoff Café downstairs, a space created originally to absorb overflow when the restaurant was full. It is all still owned and run by the Berghoff family. They also have a catering business.

The Berghoff Bar was always famous for having its own Berghoff-brand beer and bourbon, which they sourced with care. Both were outstanding. The beer became popular enough to be sold in stores. The bourbon was for many years wheated bourbon made at Stitzel-Weller in Louisville. After the Van Winkle family sold the distillery, the Berghoff continued to buy its house bourbon first from Julian Van Winkle Junior, then from his son, Julian Van Winkle III.

Bars and restaurants should get back to having a house bourbon, just like they do a house wine.

Before the Van Winkle brands took off, the Van Winkle's post Stitzel-Weller business was mostly private label bottling. The Berghoff was their biggest customer.

If you've never been, you really should visit the Berghoff if you ever have a chance. That way, when you get to heaven, you'll know what to expect.

Pappy Van Winkle, Cult Icon.

The Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery website has just been refreshed, for the first time in a long time. It's still pretty simple and doesn't contain much more information than the old one. It's just more up-to-date in its design and functionality, a welcome improvement.

There's also a film in the works, by independent filmmaker Mark Casey. He has it up on KickStarter now. It's called "Chasing Pappy," and is about the hardest of hardcore bourbon enthusiasts, Pappy fiends.

Let's see if I can explain the Van Winkle phenomenon in a few words. Van Winkle is a brand of whiskey. The Van Winkle whiskeys are always in very limited supply. Each year, at about this time, the annual allocation is released. What follows is a frenzy, as fans try to secure as many rare bottles as they can.

Much of the drama is played out online.

As you can learn from the new website, there are actually seven products in the Van Winkle line. All are limited but the frenzy is reserved for the rarest ones, the three bourbons sold under the Pappy Van Winkle banner. They are 15 years old, 20 years old, and 23 years old respectively.

Julian P. 'Pappy' Van Winkle (1874-1965) was a real person, a colorful character who owned a legendary distillery, Stitzel-Weller. Today's Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery isn't a distillery so much as a marketing company. It is run by Pappy's namesake grandson and his son, and is affiliated with Sazerac and, specifically, Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort.

I've written about Van Winkle before, most recently here.

Van Winkle Watch.

The purpose here is not to tell you about the Van Winkle whiskeys. It is to tell people who already know about Van Winkle whiskeys that the fall 2011 release will be in stores before 2011 expires -- barely. Probably just after Thanksgiving. Get friendly with your whiskey monger now.

That's official, from the Van Winkles.

You should know (and this isn't from-them official) that the chronic scarcity of Van Winkle whiskey is a deliberate business strategy, not that there's anything wrong with that. By keeping supply well below demand, the company reduces its selling cost and market risk to just about zero. Nobody pressures you on price when you're on allocation, so profits are protected and predictable. They actually do increase the supply, so their profits do grow, just not by much. It's a very unconventional and conservative business model, probably suitable only for small, family-run businesses.

To reflect a bit afield, the current state of things should have us all thinking about the point at which 'reasonable profits' slips over into 'unconscionable greed.' A company like Van Winkle shows that 'get as much as you can as fast as you can' is not the only way to be successful.

The Deconstruction Of Black Maple Hill.

The memo above just came into my possession and I knew it would be of interest here. It illustrates my contention that although whiskey companies will rarely tell an outright lie, they will twist themselves into pretzels to mislead you or, at least, avoid telling you the whole truth.

Black Maple Hill (BMH) is a line of very pricey, very small batch, extra-aged bourbons and ryes. It has been around for about ten years. I'm not a big BMH guy myself, but I know many people who love the stuff. BMH whiskeys have a great reputation.

The brand is owned by CVI Brands of San Carlos, California. CVI does not operate a whiskey distillery. The bourbon and rye it sells as BMH was made by someone else. About that there is no dispute.

The money line in the memo above is this: "Black Maple Hill has no connection whatsoever with Heaven Hill."

Let's review what we know.

The earliest BMH releases were bottled for CVI by Julian Van Winkle III at the Hoffman Distillery (DSP-KY-112) just outside of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. According to VWIII, that was 'his' whiskey, i.e., wheated bourbon from Stitzel-Weller.

When Julian left Lawrenceburg, BMH went to Kentucky Bourbon Distillers (KBD) in Bardstown (DSP-KY-78), where it remains to this day. Like CVI and Van Winkle, KBD is not a distiller. No one will say who made the whiskey KBD bottles as BMH. There has been speculation that some of it is from the Medley Distillery in Owensboro, which stopped distilling about 20 years ago. And there has been speculation that it's Heaven Hill.

Here's why:

KBD operates out of the old Willett Distillery in Bardstown. Heaven Hill is right across the street. The folks at KBD get all pissy when someone says that all of KBD's whiskey comes from Heaven Hill, but they can't plausibly deny that most of it comes from there. There is nothing wrong with that. A non-distiller producer has to get whiskey from somebody. KBD and Heaven Hill have a long beneficial relationship.

So KBD has relationships with both Heaven Hill and BMH, but there is no relationship between BMH and Heaven Hill. Fair enough.

But saying "Black Maple Hill has no connection whatsoever with Heaven Hill" is not the same as saying "there is not one drop of Heaven Hill-made whiskey in any bottle of Black Maple Hill." Although true literally it certainly would be disingenuous if, in fact, KBD is using Heaven Hill whiskey for BMH.

If it's not Heaven Hill, then who made it? As readers of this space know, the list of possible suspects is a short one.

If CVI intended to be transparent and, therefore, credible in refuting "the Bloggers and Tweeters on the Internet," they wouldn't just deny a corporate relationship with Heaven Hill. They would announce who actually makes their whiskey. That's what people want to know.

By refusing to answer they encourage the "pure speculation" they claim to deplore.

And that is also why I don't have very many bottles from non-distiller producers like CVI and KBD in my personal portfolio. You just never know where they've been.

How Much for Stitzel-Weller Whiskey? How about $350?

If you are looking to spend about $350 on a special gift for a bourbon enthusiast, here’s a suggestion: a very limited Old Rip Van Winkle Family Selection 23 year-old bourbon in an engraved and numbered decanter from Glencairn Crystal of Scotland

Although the press release doesn’t say so, the whiskey was distilled at the legendary Stitzel-Weller Distillery. It aged there initially, then was transferred to Buffalo Trace to finish aging there. It is wheated bourbon, of course.

Julian and Preston Van Winkle personally selected the barrels to be dumped for this bottling. The bourbon is not chill-filtered, leaving all of the flavor and complexity intact. It is bottled at 114° proof, which was the original barrel entry proof.

"This is some of our best whiskey," commented Julian Van Winkle. "I’m thrilled to offer this new expression of Old Rip. Hopefully, whiskey aficionados will appreciate the rich taste of this bourbon as much as I do."

Only 1,200 decanters were produced. The set comes in a solid wood, leather-lined box and includes a crystal stopper and two crystal glasses.

Look for it in stores late November. If you are interested, don't wait for it simply to appear. Talk to your whiskey monger now. For more information go to www.oldripvanwinkle.com.

It may seem like there is a lot of Stitzel-Weller whiskey turning up lately, but there is very little left, and none of it will be sold cheap. These days, the only way to get Stitzel-Weller whiskey cheap is to go dusty hunting.

It also should be noted that not all Stitzel-Weller whiskey is created equal, although it ranges from merely great to stupendous. Selections made by Julian and Preston usually lean toward the stupendous. If you are looking for something a bit more affordable, their Family Reserve 12-year-old, known as Lot B by enthusiasts, can be had for about $45.

Stitzel-Weller was the distillery put together after Prohibition by Julian Van Winkle's grandfather, best known as Pappy. Stitzel-Weller made wheated bourbon long before Maker's Mark did. The family sold the distillery in 1972 and it stopped producing in 1992. It is now owned by Diageo, which uses the warehouses and some of the other facilities. It is located in the Louisville suburb of Shively. The Van Winkles, Julian and son Preston, are presently affiliated with Buffalo Trace.

More Maker's Anyone?

Here is another angle to the issue of Maker's Mark not making any enthusiast expressions. If that was "The Maker's Mark Dilemma," call this "The Torch of Stitzel-Weller."

Arguably, the Maker's Mark Distillery is the natural successor to the legendary Stitzel-Weller Distillery, which distilled its final batch in 1992. Why? For several reasons.

First is the "Pappy gave Bill Sr. the Stitzel-Weller recipe" story, which came to me many years ago from a guy who worked for Stitzel-Weller when Pappy was still alive and the Van Winkle family still owned the distillery. It apparently was common knowledge among insiders at the time. I've talked to Bill Jr. about it and he more-or-less confirms it, saying his father sought and received input from many of his friends in the industry. He mentioned, for example, that Pappy told Bill Sr. that you can't cook a wheated mash under pressure.

The second reason is the Maker's Mark stills. They were made by Vendome, which also made the Stitzel-Weller still, and the specifications are the same, according to former Maker's Mark Master Distiller Dave Pickerell. The stills have some unique characteristics in common which Dave can explain much better than I can.

Third, Joe Beam and his sons worked at Stitzel-Weller at various times and Will McGill, the longtime Master Distiller at Stitzel-Weller, was Joe Beam's brother-in-law. One of the sons, Elmo Beam, who had worked for his Uncle Will at Stitzel-Weller, was the first Master Distiller at Maker's Mark.

Fourth, some percentage of Maker's Mark whiskey is aged in the warehouses at Stitzel-Weller, where Maker's Mark has been renting space from Diageo for a decade or more.

So the premise is that since Maker's Mark is the natural successor to Stitzel-Weller, it should take the torch and try to reach some of the exalted heights of excellence that Stitzel-Weller did with some of its higher proof and longer aged expressions, such as Very Very Old Fitzgerald (12-years-old, 100 proof), which some consider to be the best bourbon of all time.

It is probably impossible to exactly duplicate the whiskey made at one place someplace else. There are just too many variables. Is the Jim Beam White Label made at Booker Noe exactly the same as the Jim Beam White Label made at Clermont?

Still, if Maker's has the best possibility of duplicating what Stitzel-Weller did, shouldn't they try? On the contrary, Maker's Mark follows practices that would inevitably make their whiskey less like Stitzel-Weller rather than more, because they are aiming for a consistent product in the 5- to 6-year old age range to be sold at 90 proof.

According to press releases issued at the time, Julian Van Winkle has since joining Buffalo Trace provided guidance to help BT's wheated juice more closely resemble Stitzel-Weller whiskey, but of course the distillery itself is very different.

Has he succeeded? The proof, I think, is in the excellence of the Van Winkle bottlings, where I no longer care if, in fact, there is any Stitzel-Weller whiskey in there or not, or where the whiskey was made (Bernheim? Buffalo Trace?) because the quality is there (e.g., Lot B).

But the question persists about Stitzel-Weller because real Stitzel-Weller whiskey is becoming so scarce.

The actual successor to Stitzel-Weller, arguably, is Heaven Hill's Bernheim Production Facility, which was designed by the owner of both plants to be the successor, and which was set-up by Ed Foote, the last Master Distiller at Stitzel-Weller.

Although Buffalo Trace produced a little bit of wheated bourbon prior to acquiring the W.L. Weller brand in 1999, it didn't produce enough to fully support the brand and even today a lot of the Weller on shelves is Bernheim whiskey. So is some of the Van Winkle. Of course, all of the Old Fitzgerald on shelves today, except for the odd Stitzel-Weller dusty, is from Bernheim, which Heaven Hill acquired along with the Old Fitzgerald brand.

Dave Pickerell was also deeply involved in the design of Bernheim and probably no one alive knows more about all three facilities.

Finally, I tasted some of the Jefferson's Presidential Select yesterday at Binny's and I agree with what some others have said. It's definitely Stitzel-Weller whiskey and is very good, although it's not the best Stitzel-Weller whiskey I've had by a long shot. It reminds me of that Everett's bottling of Weller 12-year-old from a few years ago, that contained 16- and 14-year-old Stitzel-Weller whiskey. But that was $20 a bottle. This is $90.

For the money, I prefer two bottles of Van Winkle Family Reserve Lot B.