The Story Of Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage.

In the autumn of 2006, Heaven Hill's Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage series got a bit more interesting. That’s when they unveiled the 1997 vintage.

The 1997 was the first one not made at Heaven Hill’s Bardstown distillery (DSP-31). Heaven Hill continued to make bourbon without a distillery, first at Jim Beam, then at Brown-Forman. In 1999, Heaven Hill bought the Bernheim Distillery from Diageo, where they have been ever since.

In the current issue of The Bourbon Country Reader, which dropped this week, we look at the series from its beginnings 16 years ago, with special emphasis on ‘the wilderness years’ (1997-2001), vintages that are still on store shelves.

The 2002 vintage will be unveiled in October and start appearing at retail in January, assuming the usual pattern.

The August, 2011, issue of The Bourbon Country Reader is Volume 14, Number 1. In it, we also tell the 201-year story of Old Overholt Straight Rye, and review three micro-distillery whiskeys.

Subscriptions to The Bourbon Country Reader are $20/year for U.S. addresses, $24.50 for Canada, and $28.50 for everybody else. It is published six times a year. Well, maybe not, but your subscription always includes six issues.

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After 207 Years, Bodies Of 13 Americans Still In Libya.

I've written before, here and here, about my family connection to an obscure bit of American history.

Dr. Jonathan Cowdery's father and my great-great-great-great-great grandfather were brothers. Dr. Cowdery was ship’s surgeon on the U.S.S. Philadelphia, which ran aground while fighting pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. Three-hundred officers and sailors were captured and imprisoned in Tripoli. Thirteen officers and sailors were killed trying to rescue them. Dr. Cowdery identified the remains and supervised their burial in Green Square.

They're still there.

In the earliest of those two previous posts, I linked to a newspaper article that is no longer up. Here, instead, is a link to another account of the story on the "Remember the Intrepid" web site. It is run by Bill Kelly, who knows all about this stuff, especially the part about the remains of the 13 Americans still buried there. Although people in Libya have a lot going on right now, efforts to repatriate the remains continue, according to Kelly.

Triple-S Makes Micheladas Fast And Easy.

Back in May, I told you about my late-in-life discovery of La Michelada, a beer-based cocktail of which I have become a fan.

I still see my girl, Monique, before every Chicago Fire home game. She’s the only vendor at Toyota Park who makes them. In case you're a Fire fan and would like to try one, she’s behind section 109, just south of the foot long sausage stand.

The term “Michelada” can cover many different preparations. The kind Monique makes is like a beer Bloody Mary.

Shortly after I posted my Michelada piece, I heard from Juan and Sasha Sotelo, who live in Brownsville, Texas, where they make a product called Triple-S Michelada Mix. Monique must be from Brownsville too, because Triple-S is right on the money as far as what I expect from my Michelada.

The Sotelos tell me they’re approaching their one year anniversary and their product is flying off the shelves. They just scored a big contract with H.E.B., a local mega-mart. Good for them, they seem like a nice young couple.

A 32-ounce bottle of Triple-S sells for $7.99 in grocery stores, $8.99 in liquor stores. That’s enough for eight Micheladas, at four ounces of mix to twelve ounces of beer, the ratio they recommend.

They also recommend ice. It gets really, really hot in Brownsville.

Triple-S makes a tasty Michelada, it eliminates the need to buy a bunch of ingredients you might otherwise not use, and it’s quick and easy.

The Sotelos say they’d like to have distribution in Chicago. Maybe I should introduce them to Monique?

Old Anvil Bourbon and Louisville's Mellwood Distillery.

I received an inquiry today about Old Anvil Bourbon and the results of my brief research are interesting enough to post, so here goes.

General Distillers was the post-1935 name for the Mellwood Distillery, which was established on the northeast side of Louisville in the 1860s by George W. Swearingen. It operated there until 1918, then came back in the same location after Prohibition under the General Distillers name.

The distillery was located on both the east and west sides of Mellwood Avenue between Frankfort Avenue and Brownsboro Road. There were several distilleries located in that same general area, all making use of Beargrass Creek.

Mellwood was a substantial distillery but, typical for the times, it sold whiskey as a commodity to middle-men who owned the brands and handled all of the sales and distribution. Brown-Forman, makers of Old Forester Bourbon, and a company that is still in business today, bought a lot of its whiskey from Mellwood pre-Prohibition.

After Prohibition, many companies like Brown-Forman that had been middle-men before 1920 bought distilleries and stopped buying from companies like Mellwood/General Distillers. Commodity producers like Mellwood/General continued well into the modern era, but were mostly gone by the mid-1980s. 

Such companies would sometimes issue their own, small brands -- a ‘friends and family’ proposition for the most part. Old Anvil may have been one of those. They would also produce proprietary brands for customers and even for clubs and other associations, even individuals. Old Anvil may have been created that way.

Most likely Old Anvil was a small, local, short-lived brand, possibly even a one-time thing. Note that the picture above says “bottled by.” This suggests the product was merely bottled there and not actually made there, and certainly suggests third-party ownership. This was just a bottling job, Mellwood/General had no other role. There’s no way to know who made the whiskey, though it was probably one of the other distilleries in the neighborhood.

At its height, Mellwood/General had a distillery, seven warehouses, a bottling hall, and other ancillary buildings. It stopped distilling in the 1960s and continued bottling operations for a few more years after that. I have visited the site and there doesn’t appear to be any trace of it remaining.

It's also possible that "General Distillers Corporation" was later used as an assumed business name by someone, a very common practice in the distilled spirits business, in which case it wouldn't even have been bottled at the Mellwood Avenue facility. 

Jack On CNBC Tonight.

Tonight, cable network CNBC, as part of its "CNBC Titans" series, presents an hour-long documentary about Jack Daniel's. It airs at 10 pm and 1 am ET. There are clips on their website. Also, look on the web site for an article about Jack that quotes me.

Buffalo Trace Release Second Batch of Single Oak Bourbons.

This week, Buffalo Trace will release the second batch of bourbons produced for the Single Oak Project. If you aren't familiar with the Single Oak Project, go here and here.

This release will explore three different variables, recipe, grain size, and char level. Some of the bottles contain bourbon made with rye and others with wheat. The barrels themselves were made from different trees, each with varying degrees of thickness to their wood grain, from fine to very coarse. These barrels were charred at either a number three or number four char level to determine how the burn will alter the taste. All other variables in the experimental project, such as the entry proof, stave seasoning, tree cut, and warehouse location remain constant.

Grain size was one of the variables in the original release. The other two are new with this release.

The second release is made up of barrel numbers 29, 31, 61, 63, 93, 95, 125, 127, 157, 159, 189, 191.

Old Overholt. Rye Whiskey's Grand Old Man.

You’ve probably heard about the rye whiskey revival. It’s real, just still very small.

There are several new brands out there, and some old brands have been revived, but there is one — seldom mentioned by many of rye’s new fans and misunderstood by many others — that is the granddaddy of them all:

Old Overholt.

In about 1810, Abraham Overholt (1784-1870) and his brother shifted their family enterprise from general farming, in which making whiskey was a sideline, to making whiskey as a primary occupation. Their farm was about 40 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The business thrived and Abraham brought his sons and then his grandsons into it. The A. Overholt Distilling Company continued to be owned and run by his descendants until it was closed by Prohibition.

Better known than Abraham Overholt or his whiskey is his grandson, Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), one of the great turn-of-the-century American industrialists sometimes known as ‘robber barons.’ Overholt gave Frick his first job.

With his share of the family’s whiskey fortune, Frick began to invest in coal mines. Then he manufactured coke, which is essential for steel production.

Frick’s extraordinary wealth came primarily from steel and railroads, but he got a little of it from whiskey. Under his ownership, Old Overholt became the best selling brand of rye whiskey in the country.

When Prohibition began, the Overholt company obtained a medicinal whiskey license, which made it attractive to Seton Porter when he began to accumulate medicinal permits, whiskey, distilleries, and brands in about 1927 for what became the National Distillers Products Corporation.

After Prohibition, Old Overholt took its place in the National portfolio as their primary rye. Since National was one of the ‘big four’ companies that dominated the post-Prohibition industry, that automatically made it once again the top selling rye whiskey in the country.

But rye whiskey never recovered the share of market it had enjoyed before 1920. The ratio of bourbon-to-rye sales kept shifting in bourbon’s favor until rye was almost extinct. National Distillers eventually closed all of its Pennsylvania distilleries and shifted Old Overholt production to Kentucky, to the Forks of Elkhorn distillery outside of Frankfort where it also made Old Grand-Dad bourbon.

Jim Beam inherited Old Overholt when it merged with National Distillers in 1987. Beam immediately stopped distilling at Forks. When the rye whiskey made there ran out, Beam simply used the rye whiskey it was already making for Jim Beam Rye. Beam has done little with the brand except continue to make and distribute it.

You would expect Old Overholt to taste like Jim Beam Rye and it does. It tastes like it may be selected for more tannic barrel notes, because it has a bit more bite.

Rye production in Kentucky didn’t begin in the 1980s, when the last of the Eastern rye distilleries shut down. Even before Prohibition, Kentucky distilleries like the ones operated by Beam family members routinely made both bourbon and rye, so the Beam rye recipe probably has an old pedigree within the family. The whiskey has its detractors, but it is a legitimate style.

I’ve never had a problem finishing a bottle of it.