More Kentucky Brandy

A correction to my Kentucky Brandy post: Brown-Forman owns neither Korbel brandy nor Korbel Champagne. Korbel Vineyards is privately owned by a guy named Gary Heck. Brown-Forman handles sales and marketing for the California Champagne line. It used to market and sell the brandy too, but turned that business back to Heck a few years ago. Brown-Forman has no relationship to Korbel Brandy except they sell them used Jack Daniel’s barrels for their aging.

According to Korbel Brandy's web site, "a new barrel is simply too strong in the harsher oak characteristics." It also says they char the barrels. This, however, may be a misstatement. The barrels are charred, of course, by the manufacturer before the Jack Daniel's goes in. Does Korbel char them again? I doubt it.

So, all of the top four U.S.-made brandies are distilled in California from California grapes. Korbel and E&J are aged in California, Korbel in used Jack Daniel's barrels. Paul Masson and Christian Brothers are aged in Kentucky in used bourbon barrels. Paul Masson and Christian Brothers also are bottled in Kentucky.

This business, the partial production of domestic brandy (the aging and bottling part), is in Kentucky providing jobs and tax revenue because bourbon whiskey production is located there. So, whiskey production doesn't just provide the whiskey-making jobs and revenues, it also brings other business to Kentucky, business that could be anywhere.

Kentucky Brandy

In the 1980s, as the rye business was drying up and all of the rye whiskey distilleries in Pennsylvania and Maryland were closing, what little remaining rye whiskey production there was shifted to Kentucky. The Kentucky distilleries had always made rye whiskey, but when the last of the Maryland and Pennsylvania concerns closed down, only Kentucky remained. Although venerable brand names like Old Overholt, Pikesville, Rittenhouse and Mount Vernon continued to be sold, the whiskey was coming from Kentucky.

Now the same thing is happening with brandy.

Well, not exactly the same thing.

Brown-Forman has long owned Korbel. Heaven Hill owns Christian Brothers and Barton owns Paul Masson. Of the four best-selling U.S.-made brandies only one, Gallo's E&J, is not closely linked to a bourbon producer. All four companies use California grapes and the distilleries are there too. Gallo and Korbel also do their aging there, Korbel in used Jack Daniel's barrels.

Heaven Hill and Barton both ship their new-make brandy to Kentucky, enter it in used bourbon barrels there, and age it in their Kentucky warehouses. Both use warehouse locations for brandy that they prefer not to use for bourbon, specifically the lower floors of Barton's warehouses, and Heaven Hill's brick warehouses in Louisville. Most of the brandy is bottled and sold after two years of aging.