America's True "Same as It Ever Was" Whiskey

 

E. H. Taylor was one of the prominent distillery
owners who lobbied on behalf of the Act.

Last month I posted “Whiskey’s Biggest Lie,” debunking the marketing practice of brands claiming ancient recipes and unchanged methods, implying that whiskey in the past surely was better. Since the industry began, distillers have claimed they did things “the old fashioned way,” whether they did or not.

The prevalence and persistence of such claims suggests there is an itch bourbon drinkers long to scratch, to taste whiskey their parents or grandparents would recognize. People scour liquor stores for dusties. They buy Prohibition-era bottles at auction. Some search for authenticity in moonshine, legal and illegal.

There are problems with all these approaches. Many dusties are glut-era bottlings. They represent what people were drinking then, but it wasn't typical. Many bourbon producers in the 1980s bottled whiskey that was much older than was customary for those brands, just to get rid of it. Those bottlings are representative of that relatively brief period but not, for example, of the periods immediately before or after it, and not of everything sold then. The biggest brands, such as Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s, didn’t do this. They had not grievously over-produced, so they didn't have to do much correction. It was contract producers and smaller brands, some on their way to oblivion, that bore the brunt. (The same thing is happening now.) 

Even a decade or more after they were produced, a lot of those bottles were still out there. If you got your hands on them, they were very good and usually cheap. But bottling better whiskey didn’t save them and most whiskey that was so treated is now gone or priced stratospherically on the secondary. A. H. Hirsch Reserve is a similar story. It was aged that long because the owner didn't have a use for it. Some of those bottles are still out there but they cost a fortune.

Earlier bottlings, including those Prohibition-era pints, are also pricey. Much of the whiskey bottled during and immediately after Prohibition was mishandled or simply in wood way too long. A lot of it, maybe most of it, disappoints. Either way, it’s not representative of what your great-grandparents drank before the drought.

Moonshine, legal or illegal, has its own set of problems.

But there is one way to taste something made today in virtually the same way it was made more than a century ago. Its main parameters haven’t changed because they are dictated by federal law.

That, of course, is bottled-in-bond whiskey. The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 was proposed and supported by distillers such as E. H. Taylor and opposed by rectifiers. Taking advantage of the law was voluntary. The business between distillers and rectifiers could continue as it always had but now distillers had a way to ensure that their customers received what Taylor called "the genuine article." 

As an incentive to participate, the Act allowed distillers to defer payment of the Federal Excise Tax until whiskey was withdrawn from the bonded premises. To get the deferred taxation benefit and the privilege of labeling their whiskey “bonded” or “bottled-in-bond,” the distiller had to follow several rules having to do with how the whiskey was produced and sold. Those rules are still in effect today.

In a way, they codified practices already followed by many distillers, some of which differ from modern practice. Today, it is common for distillers to mix whiskeys of different ages, even whiskeys produced at different distilleries. There’s nothing wrong with that, many very good whiskeys are created that way, but it was less common 129 years ago when the Act was passed.

While bottled-in-bond whiskey isn’t necessarily better, it is different. The sort of blending that is typical today is something a bond can’t do. Everything in the bottle must come from a single distillery and it must have been distilled during a six-month period, either January-June (“Spring”) or July-December (“Fall”), in a single year. 

We have “small batch” and “single barrel” whiskeys. You can think of BIB as “single batch,” the "batch" being all the whiskey produced at that distillery during a six-month period.

The rule also says, “one distiller.” I’m not sure what a distillery is supposed to do if their distiller quits in April, but that’s the rule. Presumably, whiskey distilled from January first through the separation date would be one batch, whiskey distilled thereafter until June 30th would be another batch.

About the only change is that, in the old days, the batch had to be identified on the bottle, usually on a paper strip that “sealed” the bottle in the days before shrink wrap capsules. The distillation season and bottling season had to be noted, e.g., “Fall 2020, Spring 2025.”

That labeling requirement was eliminated in the 1980s but another labeling requirement remains. For BIB spirits, the federal license number of the distillery, known as its DSP number, must be shown on the label. 

All distilled spirits products must indicate on the label the city and state where the producer is located, but it can be any place of business. Typical today is the name of the producer, which can be an assumed business name (e.g., Evan Williams Distilling Company instead of Heaven Hill), followed by one or more cities where that producer does business. 

But that's not good enough for BIB. The number of the distilling DSP must be printed on the label. You'll have to look up the number to identify the distillery, but that's easily done on the internet. If the whiskey was aged or bottled at a different DSP, those numbers have to be there as well.

That requirement allows anyone with a DSP to buy BIB whiskey in bulk and bottle it under their own brand name so long as they disclose where it was distilled, aged and bottled. This is not common, but it is done. Sourced whiskey can be bonded if it meets all the requirements.

BIB whiskey cannot be bottled and sold until it is at least four years old. It can be older, but must all be the same age. If a BIB is labeled ten years old, every drop is ten years old, no more, no less. It also must be bottled at 100° proof (50% ABV), no more, no less.

As for consumer protection, the Act’s purpose was to guarantee the authenticity of whiskey so labeled. It was the first instance of the United States federal government offering a guarantee of this sort. It was the first federal “truth in advertising” legislation.

Back in the late 20th century, several major producers told me they considered dropping BIB. It was always voluntary and as the 21st century dawned, it seemed of little interest to consumers. Because it required deviation from normal procedures, there was no point doing it if it produced no benefit. At that point, few brands still offered a BIB expression. Not surprisingly, many were brands sold only in the South, some only in Kentucky. The best-selling bond nationally was Old Grand-Dad.

But then craft distilleries came along. Every craft distillery that wanted to make whiskey faced a dilemma, what to do for four or five years until that first batch of whiskey matured. They needed revenue and they needed to build a following. Some sold very young whiskey. Others sourced mature whiskey. Others made vodka, gin, rum, amaro, or liqueurs.

For many, the goal they set for themselves was to release a house-made bond. It was a standard they were proud to meet, and many considered that their "arrival." When they were able to offer their bond as a portfolio product, not a limited release, it often became the top of their line, maybe even their flagship.

When consumers responded, this revived interest in the bond segment among major producers. Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond has been very successful for Heaven Hill. 

Brown Forman, founded in 1870, predates the Bottled in Bond Act and opposed it. Although their Old Forester Bourbon was a high quality, all whiskey product, it was blended using whiskey from three different Kentucky distilleries. For many years and until recently, their line included a 100° proof expression that was not bottled-in-bond. Today, Old Forester 1907 Bottled-in-Bond is one of their most popular offerings.

For a bonded bottling, barrel selection is crucial, similar to single barrel. Because blending options are so limited, there is nowhere to hide. Most producers blend to a standard, a literal in-the-bottle sample of exactly how the brand should taste. Quality control consists of trained tasters comparing that standard to each candidate batch. This is done for bonds too. It’s hard to imagine a whole season not producing enough good barrels for a bond release. A producer can always skip a season, I suppose, but I suspect they simply have to tolerate more deviation from the standard with a bond than they would with their non-bonded release.

So, people claiming an unchanged recipe for 250 years are puffing, but 129 years is a different story. Just look for the words "bonded" or "bottled-in-bond."