Buffalo Trace Distillery Announces Second Release In Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. Collection.

Buffalo Trace Distillery has announced the second release in the Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. collection. It is a single barrel bourbon aged in a warehouse built by Taylor in 1881 (Warehouse C).

The bourbon was aged for 11 years, 7 months, and Bottled-in-Bond at 100 proof. The recipe is Buffalo Trace rye-recipe bourbon mash #1.

It joins the E. H. Taylor Jr. Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon Buffalo Trace released earlier this year. Availability will be similarly limited. The packaging is also similar, and reminiscent of Taylor’s bottles from nearly one hundred years ago.

E. H. Taylor is widely considered one of the founding fathers of the bourbon industry, fighting for the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. During his lifetime, Taylor implemented several innovative methods still used today by Buffalo Trace, such as climate controlled aging warehouses.

Suggested retail is $59.99 per 750ml bottle.

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.

Colonel E. H. Taylor Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon; Tasting Notes.

A month ago, when I wrote this post about the new Colonel E. H. Taylor Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon from Buffalo Trace, I had all the information about it but had not yet tasted the whiskey.

That omission has been corrected.

Since the February post is quite thorough I won’t rehash the product story here. This will just be my tasting notes.

The nose is mild, with tart citrus and warm caramel. Those flavors continue on the tongue but then something surprising happens. Cumin! It just jumped out at me. I love cumin but it’s not a taste I normally find in bourbon. Very earthy and vegetal. A nice surprise.

It is earthy but at the same time, light. Although both can be characteristics of Buffalo Trace bourbons, this is not a recognizable Buffalo Trace whiskey, even though it likely uses one of their standard rye-recipe mash bills and their usual yeast. That’s because when you change a yeast’s environment it will create a different flavor profile. Very much its own creature, this whiskey wears its nine years lightly with barely a trace of soot-char-smoke.

Although the sour mash process doesn’t necessarily or even usually produce a sour-tasting whiskey, this one is ever so slightly sour; sweet and sour like sourball candy. There are some similarities to Old Charter, a Buffalo Trace bourbon. The sourness comes across as tart apple or a slightly sour white wine. It is a pleasant level of sourness unless you have no tolerance for that in bourbon at any level, in which case you won’t care for this.

It is slightly sour on the tongue and slightly bitter on the finish, wrapping up with an anise note.

The high price being asked for this whiskey is mostly because of its rarity due to being an experiment and, therefore, a very small run. It’s not because of the taste necessarily, yet the taste is subtle, elegant and sophisticated. It may appeal to scotch drinkers and others who think bourbon is usually too sweet or in-your-face. This Taylor is neither.

It probably should be mentioned that the new Colonel E. H. Taylor Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon has no relationship to the existing Old Taylor Bourbon that’s on the market, except that it's named for the same guy and made by Buffalo Trace. As explained in the February post, this is the first step in a repositioning of the brand that may, in the future, see Old Taylor Classic go away. But that’s not for sure and in no sense imminent.

There is a temptation to buy something like this and hold on to it for a ‘special occasion’ that never seems to come. That would be a shame because it really should be tasted.

Buffalo Trace Demonstrates Another Way To Sour A Mash.

Yesterday, Buffalo Trace rebooted the Old Taylor Bourbon line as Colonel E. H. Taylor, Jr.

The repositioned brand’s first release is Colonel E. H. Taylor, Jr. Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon Whiskey. It will be 9-years-old, 50% alcohol, bottled-in-bond, and $70 per 750ml cork-finished bottle. The bottle comes in a tubular canister similar to those sported by many single malt scotches.

But the product’s raison d’etre is the ‘Old Fashioned Sour Mash’ claim.

At this time I must issue a Geek Alert. This is about to get very geeky. Geeky and long. You have been warned. Continue reading at your own risk.

Colonel E. H. Taylor, Jr. (1830-1923) was a major figure in American whiskey history. Among his long list of accomplishments was ownership of the distillery now known as Buffalo Trace. It was under Taylor’s leadership that it became a major whiskey producer.

The Taylor name was disconnected from the distillery during his lifetime, by him, and only restored to it in 2009.

By coincidence, that distillery in 2002 conducted an experiment inspired by one of Taylor’s practices. In barrels ever since, that experiment has now been deemed a success and bottled.

Sadly, the history of American whiskey-making has been not well preserved nor very much studied. We have very little detailed information about distillery practices in Taylor’s day, which spanned the 1850s to Prohibition.

Taylor was a distillery owner and financier, not a day-to-day distiller, but he worked with people such as James Crow and other top distillers, and he had his own strong opinions about the best ways to make whiskey.

Normally, the term ‘sour mash’ refers to the use of spent mash to condition new mash by lowering its pH. Spent mash is what comes out of the still after distillation. It contains no alcohol, no fermentable sugar, and no yeast or other micro-organisms, but it does have other nutrients yeast can use and is more acidic than new mash. All of today’s major American whiskey distilleries use this technique, mixing old mash with new in a 1:3 to 1:4 ratio.

There are some obscure references in old literature to a ‘sour mash’ technique that doesn't use spent mash. Something else sours the mash. Mike Veach has noted references to this by Taylor himself in the Taylor-Hay papers, which Veach archived for Louisville’s Filson Historical Society. This confuses modern readers who equate sour mash with spent mash.

This subject has also come up with micro-distillers because some of them refer to the introduction of lactobacillus during mashing as 'sour mash,' even though no spent mash is used. Lactobacillus produce lactic acid, which has an effect similar to spent mash in lowering the pH of new mash to an appropriate level. Lactobacillus are used in the production of yogurt, cheese, sourdough bread, and other foods. They are also used in brewing. Before Buffalo Trace switched to dry yeast they used to add lactobacillus to their yeast mash, as some distilleries still do.

At Buffalo Trace, mash goes from the cooker into what they call a drop tub, where they can hold it before sending it to the fermenters. Usually this is just for timing, where a batch of mash might sit there for a couple of hours. In 2002, Buffalo Trace decided to deliberately let a batch of rye-recipe bourbon mash sit in the drop tub for several days, monitoring the pH level but otherwise leaving it alone.

Would the mash sour naturally? Is time just as good as spent mash at neutralizing new mash? Would the mash then ferment well and make good whiskey?

Because they were concerned about spontaneous fermentation and other possible contamination they planned the experiment for the end of a run so nothing else could be affected and they could clean up afterwards if it went wrong.

One difference from Taylor’s day was that back then they mashed in barrels, not the large mash cookers they use today.

To learn more they interviewed six different old-time employees, all then in their 80s and 90s. One was Al Geiser, who was the first master distiller there after Prohibition. Another was Ralph Dupps, who died in 2007 at age 90.

None of them had lived in Taylor’s time, but they all had heard stories about how the distillery didn’t use spent mash then but instead allowed their mash to sour ‘naturally.’ Dupps was the only one who really looked into it. A mechanical engineer by training, Dupps worked for Schenley at both Buffalo Trace in Frankfort and Bernheim in Louisville before going to Tennessee in 1956 to build the George Dickel Distillery. He considered using this technique at Dickel.

After a few days the pH was right and the mash was otherwise as it should be so they piped it to the fermenters, pitched their yeast, and everything after that was done in the usual way. They liked the taste of the distillate, even though it was different, so they decided to barrel it up. Nine years later, that is the whiskey they are releasing as Colonel E. H. Taylor, Jr. Old Fashioned Sour Mash Bourbon Whiskey.

This is similar to Woodford Reserve’s sweet mash experiment, which was released in 2008. They didn’t sour their mash in any way. Their yeast were able to adapt but produced a very different set of flavors due to the different environment.

In both the Woodford and Buffalo Trace cases, it’s a good experiment from a scientific standpoint because they changed one variable only, no mash conditioning in Woodford’s case and the use of time instead of spent mash to condition it in Buffalo Trace’s case.

The experiment doesn’t show us how Taylor soured his mash, but it demonstrates that it is possible to sour mash ‘naturally,’ without spent mash.

As for the Taylor name, in January 2009, Buffalo Trace parent company Sazerac acquired some assets from Constellation Brands which included the Effen Vodka brand. Beam Global, which owned the Old Taylor brand, wanted Effen so a deal was made. Buffalo Trace announced then that they would continue the existing Old Taylor product but expected to re-launch the line, up-market, sometime in 2010 using extra-aged rye recipe bourbon from existing stocks. (See my article in Malt Advocate, the Winter 2009 issue.) They are slightly late but this is the fulfillment of that promise.

The New Old Taylor, First Batch.

As archivist at the Filson Historical Society for the papers of E. H. Taylor, Jr., Mike Veach discovered that Taylor favored white corn, not yellow, and used 2 1/2 times the normal amount of barley malt -- about 25% malt. With 10% rye and the rest white corn, that was Taylor's mash bill. He distilled it to about 107 proof and put it in the barrel that way, aging it for about 8 years.

The picture above, courtesy of Mark Brown, is that recipe, last week, in the micro-distillery fermenters at Buffalo Trace. The first batch of the new Old Taylor has started its journey.

Old Taylor to be Rye Van Winkle.

There was a lot going on during my short visit to Buffalo Trace Friday. One thing we talked about was Old Taylor. They continue to be very excited about the acquisition and have big plans. They want to make it the equivalent in the rye-recipe bourbon arena of what Van Winkle is in the wheated bourbon segment. No guess yet when the first bottles will be rolling out. They're still figuring out what they have and what they can do with it, but the talk (directly from Mark Brown) is of a portfolio of offerings similar in some ways to the Antique Collection, but not quite so scarce and not with an annual release but with a steady, full time availability of a consistent, ongoing but high end product, like Van Winkle.

Buffalo Trace Welcomes Old Taylor Home.

Although it remains unclear what Sazerac is going to do long-term with the recently-acquired Old Taylor brand, in the short term they are having some fun with it.

On Wednesday, July 29, there will be a "welcome home" event for Old Taylor at Sazerac's Buffalo Trace Distillery. That's the day the barrels of whiskey they're receiving from Jim Beam arrive. As part of the deal, Trace got 1,800 barrels of aging bourbon, although no one has revealed the age or ages of the whiskey.

An event like this, on a Wednesday afternoon, is mostly intended for the local community. There will be cocktails, of course, hors d'oeuvres, and a special "Taylor Tour." Having events for the local community is smart. Community goodwill is valuable for any business, but Buffalo Trace is in Frankfort, the state capital, so the "local community" includes legislators and other government officials.

Edmund Haynes Taylor, the man behind the Old Taylor brand, played a major role in the development of what is now Buffalo Trace. He was also in many ways the father of the modern bourbon industry, as well as a prominent and respected community leader. Taylor was first elected as Frankfort's mayor in 1871 and succeeded himself seven times. (It was a two-year term.) After that he was elected to the state legislature, first as a representative, later as a senator. During his senate career he depleted a significant part of his fortune lobbying for the capital to remain in Frankfort as his fellow lawmakers tried to move it to the much larger community of Lexington.

Taylor's story is a reminder that whiskey-making is a respectable business and a signature industry for the commonwealth. Most of the companies today are not locally owned but they have local employees and pay a fortune in local taxes.

Beam, which owned the Taylor brand for a bit more than 20 years, never had a natural connection to its heritage and never did anything with it, the heritage or the product itself. Buffalo Trace is certainly a better fit and perhaps trying to figure out their long-term plan is pointless. Old Taylor today is a very small brand and unlikely to become a much larger one. The price Trace paid for it was not very high and may have been worth it just for these little PR nuggets.

Sazerac Acquires Old Taylor.

Sazerac, the parent company of bourbon-maker Buffalo Trace, has acquired the Old Taylor brand and inventory from Beam Global Spirits and Wine, it was announced today. In return, Beam gets Effen Vodka.

Old Taylor is a venerable bourbon with 19th century origins. It was named for its owner, E. H. Taylor, Jr., a banker who used his financial acumen to acquire and develop several major distilleries, including the one now known as Buffalo Trace. He had, however, a fraught relationship with that distillery’s owner at the time, George Stagg. Since they together had sold a bourbon under the Taylor name in happier days, Stagg sued to prevent Taylor from using the name. He lost.

The Taylor distillery still stands, albeit in ruins, on the outskirts of Frankfort, adjacent to the ruins of Old Crow, in which Taylor also had an interest. A few years ago, Trace looked at buying the Old Taylor Distillery but ultimately passed.

Beam acquired the Taylor brand, along with Old Crow and Old Grand-Dad, when it bought National Distillers in 1987. I've always felt that Beam should either do something with those distinguished brands or sell them. Now they have, at least one of them.

As an indication of the current shortage of fully aged bourbon, the sale included enough Beam whiskey to support the Taylor brand until Buffalo Trace can make it from their own stocks. (Old Taylor is a 6-year-old straight bourbon.) Both Beam and Trace make a lot of whiskey and Taylor is a small brand, so clearly supplies are strained enough that whiskey needed to be part of the deal.

Sazerac/Buffalo Trace, Old Taylor's new home, has been making some interesting moves lately, with the acquisition of the Constellation/Barton portfolio (which is how it got Effen) and the Tom Moore Distillery in Bardstown, but they haven't said much about what they intend to do with them, except that acquiring Barton’s super premium bourbon, Ridgemont Reserve 1792, was the primary goal. Now this.

It will be fascinating to see what Trace does next.

By the way, announcements about the deal came from both Beam and Sazerac. Beam’s was primarily about them acquiring Effen which--and this is hilarious--they claim is named after the Dutch word for 'smooth.' Yeah, right!

Here is how Buffalo Trace is spinning the acquisition.

“We are ecstatic about this transaction,” said Mark Brown, president and CEO of Buffalo Trace Distillery. “Part of our family is returning and we are thrilled to welcome home a true bourbon whiskey pioneer.”

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.