How Can A Non-Distiller Be Distiller Of The Year?

The liquor industry, like most, loves to give itself awards. Industry media give out most of them. That media, of course, is funded by advertising from the companies being honored. This generally is not considered a conflict of interest because the media outlet's readers have independent ways of judging if the awards are deserved or not, and the outlet’s credibility is what hangs in the balance.

Wine Enthusiast, as its name suggests, is about wine, but since wine drinkers may also enjoy other liquors, Wine Enthusiast dabbles in other forms of alcohol too. So it is that Wine Enthusiast announced yesterday its Wine Star Awards. Among them as distiller of the year: Michter's Distillery.

This will not help Wine Enthusiast’s credibility with whiskey enthusiasts. There are several issues with this choice. Principally, Michter's Distillery is just a name, it's not a distillery, it’s not even a company. It’s a brand name, used by a New York company called Chatham Imports for a line of American whiskey products.

Chatham isn’t a distiller either. They buy and sell distilled spirits, but do not distill any themselves.

The name Michter's is about 60 years old. It was coined by Louis Forman in the early 1950s for a new whiskey brand he planned to sell. Forman (no relation to Brown-Forman) wasn’t a distiller either, not then anyway. He was a whiskey broker, meaning he bought and sold bulk whiskey. He thought he could make more money if he sold some of it as a brand instead of a commodity. That’s how Michter’s was born.

About twenty years later, Forman became a distiller when he bought a historic Pennsylvania distillery and gave it the Michter's name. In 1990, with Forman long gone, that business collapsed. Its liabilities so far exceeded its assets that the then-owners simply walked away.

One of the assets they abandoned was the Michter's name.

A few years later, Chatham re-registered the Michter's trademark. With the legal right to use the name, they began to shamelessly appropriate everything associated with it, in particular the long history of that Pennsylvania distillery. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because there’s a whole book about it, called The Best Bourbon You’ll Never Taste, which is for sale just over to the right of this column. Everything here is explained in a bit more detail there.

And it makes a great gift.

Michter’s today is what is known as a Potemkin Distillery. The façade is quite elaborate. They even have a person with the title of master distiller. His resume includes Brown-Forman, a major distillery owner and operator, except he wasn’t a distiller there. Wine Enthusiast Spirits Editor Kara Newman claims that Michter's is a distiller even though she acknowledges they “don't have their own brick-and-mortar facility.”

“Like a great many smaller producers,” she insists, “they have used stills at other facilities.” Newman claims that Michter's “selects the mash bill, yeast, etc. and oversees the physical distillation and other production details, right down to figuring out the best bottling strength and aging times.” From this she concludes that Michter's “is not working with whiskey made by anybody else.”

What she describes is a fanciful explanation of contract distilling, but it’s doubtful Michter’s even does that much. More likely they buy bulk whiskey, selecting from whatever is available. The whiskey Michter’s sells is good and making those selections is an important job, but it’s not distilling.

It's possible but unlikely that Michter’s is contracting with one or more distillers to make whiskey to its specifications. True contract distilling is rarely done by small producers because the risk and upfront costs are just too great. Even if they have a production agreement with one or more distillers, it’s probably for products that distillery already makes, nothing custom.

And even if they are hiring an actual distiller to do from-scratch contract distilling for them, that doesn't make Michter's a distiller. The rent-a-still image that Newman paints simply does not exist.

What Michter’s is doing is unique only in the venerability of the entity they are sacking. Some have argued that this is simply marketing. History and historical figures are appropriated all the time for commercial purposes. Historians tells us that neither George Washington nor Abraham Lincoln ever actually attended a mattress sale, for example.

The reason it’s offensive is because it devalues the American whiskey industry’s genuine rich history. Talking to Shanken News Daily last week, Chris Bauder, general manager U.S. Whiskies at Beam Inc., said, “We attribute the latest Bourbon surge to innovation, premiumization and authenticity.”

Michter’s has benefited from that surge but what it is selling, and Wine Enthusiast is honoring, is not authenticity. It’s more like what Stephen Colbert calls ‘truthiness,’ something that sounds true but really isn’t.

Chatham did a good deed when it rescued the Michter’s name from oblivion, but everything it has done since has been something else.

Sam Cecil Talks About The Beam Family.

The Beam Family Reunion is coming up on September 8, at the Jim Beam Distillery in Clermont, Kentucky. If you are descended from Jacob Beam, you should check it out.

Like most of the Beams, Sam Cecil was born and raised in Nelson County, Kentucky. Like so many of them, he spent his entire career in the whiskey business. In his case, the career spanned more than 40 years. Even after he retired in 1980, Cecil worked occasionally for Heaven Hill, giving history-oriented tours of Bardstown and vicinity.

In 1999, he published The Evolution Of The Bourbon Industry In Kentucky, an invaluable historic resource. Cecil died in 2005.

In 1992, he was interviewed for the documentary "Made and Bottled in Kentucky," which you will see is available for purchase in the column to the right. If you live in Kentucky, you can probably catch it on KET, where it first aired 20 years ago and is still in heavy rotation.

In this excerpt, Sam Cecil sorts out the many threads of the whiskey-making Beam family.

Forty-Two Years Ago, It Was Illegal For Women To Tend Bar In Chicago.

First of all, do you know there is a branch of the National Archives in Chicago? There is, at 7358 S Pulaski (Pulaski and W. 75th Place). This story is featured in the current (February 2012) edition of their newsletter.

In 1951, the City of Chicago enacted what was called the 'barmaid ordinance.' It prohibited women from "pouring, mixing, or drawing intoxicating liquors" unless they owned the tavern or were related as wife, sister, or mother to the owner. Chicago wasn't unique. The article mentions a similar law in Michigan.

Women could waitress. The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960. But they couldn't make the drinks. A woman couldn't even draw a beer.

Enforcement of the barmaid ordinance didn't begin until 1961. Dozens of women were arrested and hundreds lost their jobs. Early attempts to sue the city on behalf of female bartenders were unsuccessful. It was only in 1968, in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, that a federal lawsuit began to gain traction.

Many of the affected women were unionized but their unions, dominated by men, supported the ordinance. At trial, a business representative for the Bartender’s Union Local 278 questioned whether a woman could handle the job, "physically and emotionally." Could she tap a keg or "maintain an orderly house," he wondered.

Lawyers representing the city claimed that female bartenders would cause morality problems. "It is the city’s position that there is a danger to the public health, safety and welfare and that morals are in fact going to be endangered." They argued that female bartenders would "hypnotize" and "mesmerize" their male patrons, causing them to drink too much and cause trouble.

How many times has that happened to you?

In March, 1970, Judge James Parsons ruled that "sex is not a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the business of tending bar in the City of Chicago." The barmaid ordinance was dead, but it had stood for nearly 20 years.

So, yes, it is ridiculous that women in Saudi Arabia aren't allowed to drive a car, but don't feel too superior. Forty-two years ago, in Chicago, they weren't even allowed to draw a beer.

The Day Beer Became Legal In St. Louis.

Sunday’s Budweiser commercial about the end of Prohibition reminded me of my dad’s stories about the day legal beer arrived in his neighborhood. This is especially pertinent since he grew up in Budweiser’s hometown of St. Louis, on Roosevelt Place, in a neighborhood called Wells-Goodfellow today. Dad was 13 when Prohibition ended in December, 1933.

The commercial cheats history slightly, because legally-made and sold Budweiser actually arrived in St. Louis taverns shortly after Franklin Roosevelt took office in March, 1933, as dad explains below. The term ‘legal beer’ is used here because beer itself never left the neighborhood. Here’s how dad remembered it:

"Gelhausen was the local bootlegger who also had a saloon down on Clara Avenue. There was a wire leading from their house out to the garage. In the center of the yard there was a light bulb hanging from the wire. Sometimes at night, we would see the light flashing on and off -- like Morse Code. Sometimes this was followed by a car in the alley, pulling up to the garage. We never went to investigate.

"The Meyers family lived up near Goodfellow Blvd. Mr. Meyers was the acknowledged best home brew maker in the neighborhood, if not the civilized world. He undoubtedly applied the same skill and attention to detail as he did in his job as a tool and die maker. His stuff was far superior to the stuff that we occasionally made in our basement.

"It was no more illegal for kids to drink heingemake (homebrew) than for adults, so we were allowed to join in the responsible and moderate use of the quaff. At the Meyers' house, as was common, the beer was bottled in one-fifth gallon bottles and served in an aluminum bucket, from which all partook.

"Frank Meyers' system was a seven day process that he would tend to right after work. He would come in the back door, put his lunch bucket on the sink, kiss his wife, then go to the basement for that day's part in the process. After FDR took office, an executive order was issued proclaiming that 3.2% beer was not intoxicating, therefore it did not fall under the restrictions in the 18th amendment. A date was set when this would take effect.

"The building at the corner of Clara and Roosevelt (named for Teddy, I might add) was owned by Anheuser-Busch and had been a tavern. It was now Wesling's grocery. Gelhausen's Saloon across the street had never closed. Perhaps they served iced tea and soda pop during the great drought. The lease for Busch's building had a clause that if beer ever became legal again the lease could be terminated.

"An agreement was reached and an addition was built onto the rear of the grocery and made into a tavern. You may note that I refer to one establishment as a tavern and the other as a saloon. This is not accidental. Gelhausen's was a dark, bad place with men sitting around. I do not know why, when beer was again legal, that Grandma always had me go to Gelhausen's when she wanted a pitcher of beer. There was a side door at the rear and a separate tap for take-out. It cost a whole dime for a big pitcher of beer.

"When 'B' day was drawing near, Mr. Meyers finished up the current batch and started to dismantle and pack away his equipment. When the fateful day arrived (as I remember it, it was April 12, 1933), most of the men in the neighborhood congregated at Wesling's Tavern. The house was packed and everyone was having a riotous good time. When Frank Meyers walked in a hush fell over the place and the crowd around the bar parted like the Red Sea to make room for the greatest. He walked up to the bar, Mr. Wesling drew a glass and set it in front of him. He took a sip, then another sip, then pushed the glass away and turned and walked out. It was not the same after that, it was quiet and half the customers left. Obviously, I was not there but my Uncle Russ was and told me about it.

"Mr. Meyers went straight home, straight to the basement, unpacked his equipment and started a new batch. Mrs. Meyers kidded later that it was the first time in their forty years of marriage that he had come into the house and started working without kissing her first.

"In fairness to Anheuser-Busch, I should add that they were limited to 3.2% alcohol while the Meyers brew ran close to the theoretical maximum for the fermentation process, around 12%."

Women And Whiskey.

I was asked today if I knew of any whiskey brands named after women. The questioner mentioned Four Roses, which is a stretch.

There certainly have been women in the industry, though not many. There are a few famous cases pre-Prohibition of women taking over the family distillery after their husbands died, but as managers not distillers. (In many cases, their husbands weren’t distillers either.) Mary Dowling, who ran Waterfill & Frazier, comes to mind. Agusta Dickel similarly helped run George Dickel for many years after George’s death. But much like the Jewish families who owned distilleries but never put their names on the labels, there have been many unsung women in the whiskey biz.

In modern times, Rachel Barrie of Glenmorangie has the title “Whisky Creator and Master Blender.” Jill Jones is the executive in charge of all production at Brown-Forman, including Jack Daniel’s and Woodford Reserve.

Craig Beam, master distiller at Heaven Hill, has no sons but two teenage daughters and he hopes at least one of them will want to carry on the Beam family tradition.

I’m 60, so I’ve watched this business for a long time. My mom drank nothing but bourbon her whole life as did many women of her generation. Women not drinking whiskey is the more recent phenomenon, but in the last ten years or so the pendulum has swung the other way. I teach a ‘whiskey 101’ class and frequently women outnumber men among the students. I taught a bourbon class last night and I believe there were 5 women out of 13 students. Three were with guys and the last two were with each other. Often in the classes I get groups of 2 to 5 women taking the class together, and their numbers equal or exceed the number who come with male dates. They are invariably young (under 30), as are most of the students in my classes.

Ten years ago, women were rare at whiskey events of any kind, unless they were working, and 90 percent of the women who did attend did so with male dates. But today, among young adults, there seems to be very little difference between the genders in their interest in whiskey. At least that's so here in Chicago.

Revised TTB Rules? Be Careful What You Wish For.

Some craft distillers are frustrated by the Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits, a set of labeling rules enforced by the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) of the Treasury Department. They think the rules squelch creativity and should be changed.

This is a story about an effort more than 40 years ago to do exactly that. It was supported by some of the largest and most powerful companies in the distilled spirits business. There were no micro-distilleries then, but those arguing against the proposals were the relatively smaller, family-owned distilleries that specialized in straight bourbon, straight rye, and Tennessee whiskey.

It was a battle between modernizers and traditionalists, and the traditionalists won.

The changes were proposed in response to foreign competition. The argument was that the whiskeys of Scotland, Ireland, and Canada had significant cost advantages because they were generally distilled at much higher proof (ABV), entered into barrels at higher proof (ABV), and aged in used barrels.

American producers could make a similar product, but the rules required them to label it in ways that diminished its marketability. There were certain terms they were not allowed to use in regard to such a product, such as ‘straight bourbon whiskey’ and ‘straight rye whiskey;’ and certain terms they were required to use, such as ‘aged in used cooperage.’ The imports merely had to be labeled here the same way they are labeled in their home countries.

So the big companies tried to get the Federal government to change the rules, so they could make American whiskey more in the foreign style, but still label it ‘straight bourbon,’ etc.

They wanted the top distillation proof raised from 80% ABV to 95% ABV, and the rules regarding maximum barrel entry proof and new charred oak barrels eliminated altogether. They wanted to relax the standard for straight whiskey to permit blends of straight whisky, even of different types, to be labeled as straight whiskey without the words ‘blend’ or ‘blended.’ One petitioner wanted a new rule requiring a minimum aging period of two years, another proposed a four-year minimum.

In January, 1968, the agency rejected most of the proposals and explained its reasoning in a nine page Industry Circular (No. 68-03).

It said that spirits made in the proposed way would “generally lack the distinguishing characteristics of such whiskies.” To call these products ‘straight bourbon’ or ‘straight rye’ would be misleading and not “in the interests of the consumer.”

The agency found that higher distillation proof “produces a distillate containing less pronounced natural flavoring components (both desirable and undesirable ones).”

On the minimum age requirement proposals the agency observed that, “there are no appreciable amounts of immature whiskies currently being sold,” a statement that is not true today. They did note, however, that “the present regulations protect the consumer by requiring all whiskies less than four years old to bear a true age statement.”

The most surprising fact about the 1968 circular is the extent to which the agency concerned itself with the balance and flavor of American whiskey. Although the regulators usually insist that their sole interest is truth-in-labeling, not quality per se, that does not appear to be the case here.

Perhaps there was some tasting involved.

More Thoughts About Elijah Craig.

Reading back Tuesday's post about Elijah Craig, I got to thinking about it.

Since Collins is the sole source for such a pivotal claim in bourbon history, it bears closer examination. First, Collins (in 1874) uses the term 'bourbon whiskey' without defining it, either there or anywhere else in the book. That suggests he was confident his readers would understand the term the same way he did. Although we don't know exactly what that was, the inclination is to assume that 'bourbon whiskey' meant then what it does now. Did it? Is that a fair assumption? Maybe not.

Second, why did he clearly point to Craig without naming him? If you read the rest of the page, it is what in 1874 may have passed for a light diversion in the midst of a serious enterprise, a sidebar meant primarily to entertain. Therefore, I have always assumed, he was sloppy about it, just making a list from odds and ends in his notes, but not treating it as seriously as he did most of the work. What if I'm wrong? What if he was more purposeful than I've ever suspected? And, if so, what was he trying to say?

Henry Crowgey in his book, Kentucky Bourbon, The Early Years of Whiskeymaking, mentions a 1789 letter from Craig to his legal representative that may shed some light.

In the letter, Craig announces that he has a man from Pennsylvania "coming to make corn." Who was this man, and why was the event so memorable? Are we right to assume that "to make corn" means to make corn whiskey?

Perhaps Collins is coy about naming Craig because he is referring to something done by this "man from Pennsylvania" at Craig's behest, but not by Craig himself.

Craig is usually ruled out as the 'inventor' of bourbon because routine aging in new, charred oak barrels came much later, probably in the mid-19th century.

But maybe Collins is talking about something else. We know Kentuckians were making whiskey from corn before 1789, maybe the 1789 innovation was the deliberate addition of rye to the recipe. Perhaps that was the initial distinction between corn whiskey and bourbon whiskey.

Today, most bourbons contain a little bit of rye, 8 to 15 percent in most cases, to give the beverage a little more flavor and, more to the point, a distinctive flavor that is neither corn whiskey nor rye whiskey, but bourbon whiskey, even with little or no aging. Pennsylvania was known for making rye whiskey just as Kentucky was known for corn. Perhaps this mysterious man at Rev. Craig's fulling mill brought the two together and that is what Collins was really memorializing on his page of 'Kentucky Firsts.'

Elijah Craig Did Not Invent Bourbon.

Elijah Craig is a brand of bourbon made by Heaven Hill Distilleries. It comes as a 12-year-old or an 18-year-old, both excellent.

Elijah Craig was also a real person, c. 1738-1808, a Kentucky pioneer, community leader, entrepreneur, and Baptist minister.

But he did not invent bourbon whiskey.

The durable but unsubstantiated claim that Elijah Craig ‘invented’ bourbon can be traced to Richard Collins and his 1874 History of Kentucky. Collins does not identify Craig by name, but writes that "the first Bourbon Whiskey was made in 1789, at Georgetown, at the fulling mill at the Royal spring." This claim is included, without elaboration or substantiation, on a densely-packed page of "Kentucky Firsts." Since Craig operated "the fulling mill at the Royal spring" in that year, the "invention" is attributed to him.

There are several major problems with the claim. First, what made Craig's whiskey different from other whiskey made in the region? Second, the Georgetown site was never in Bourbon County, so if the place name and the whiskey have to go together, Craig cannot be the originator. In fact, the name 'Bourbon whiskey' was applied to all whiskey from that region beginning early in the 19th century but the style of whiskey we now call bourbon didn't really evolve until many years later, in about the middle of the century, long after Craig’s death.

The Craig claim has been convenient. His ministerial vocation was played up by wet forces in the run-up to Prohibition. When something has an inventor the story of its origin is much easier to tell, but actual history is seldom so neat. Whatever else it may be, historically the Craig claim is unsupported.

Important Historic Whiskey Site in Louisville Is Threatened.

In the Kentucky bourbon industry's 19th century heyday, when riverboats were still the primary way whiskey was shipped, Louisville had a singular importance. Louisville is where it is because that is the only place where the Ohio River is not navigable. Because of that accident of nature, Louisville developed as the region's primary transportation and distribution hub. Just about everything had to come off the boats there, at least temporarily, at least until they dug the channel around the Falls of the Ohio and built the locks.

This was still true in the Kentucky whiskey industry's late 19th century prime, even as the railroads were growing in importance. No matter where their distilleries were, virtually every Kentucky whiskey producer, rectifier, and dealer had a presence on Main Street in Louisville. They called it Whiskey Row. They were there because they needed easy access to the River and to each other.

Main Street was the first street at the top of the river's south bank, running parallel to it. Many businesses on the north side of Main Street built ramps so they could roll barrels of whiskey from their back doors straight down the bank to the river and waiting paddle wheel steamers.

Most of the buildings along Main Street had pre-fabricated cast iron facades, cast in Pittsburgh and floated down the Ohio on barges to be assembled on site. This was a new building technology at the time. Main Street in Louisville has the largest concentration of cast iron facades outside of New York City.

Several blocks at the western end of Louisville's Whiskey Row were preserved years ago but this is the last chance to preserve a long-neglected but equally historic block on the Row's eastern end, which also just happens to be one block from the new downtown arena.

Here is a good, short article about it from Preservation Magazine. Here is a lengthy op-ed piece in the Courier-Journal by Rachel M. Kennedy, Executive Director of Preservation Kentucky.

Who Was John E. Fitzgerald?

Old Fitzgerald Bourbon is an old brand with genuine 19th century roots. Today it is made by Heaven Hill. The whiskey itself is unusual because it is one of a handful of bourbons that use wheat instead of rye as the flavor grain. The best known 'wheater' is Maker's Mark. W. L. Weller is another.

I like wheaters and Old Fitz is good bourbon. This isn't about that. This is about the name and the man behind it.

The Old Fitzgerald brand originated with Charles Herbst, an international wine and spirits dealer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Among his various holdings was a Kentucky bourbon distillery which to locals was known by the name Old Judge, on Benson Creek near Frankfort, Kentucky. Members of the Bixler family were distillers there.

That is where Herbst made all of his bourbons and ryes, including Old Fitzgerald. It closed with Prohibition and never re-opened.

Herbst, in his marketing of Old Fitzgerald Bourbon, claimed the distillery was built by John E. Fitzgerald who, after selling it to Herbst in about 1900, moved to Hammond, Indiana (a suburb of Chicago) to run a distillery there. Under Herbst, Old Fitzgerald became a successful brand. During Prohibition, Herbst sold it to Julian P. 'Pappy' Van Winkle. After repeal, Old Fitzgerald became the flagship brand of Van Winkle's Stitzel-Weller Distillery.

Back when the Old Fitzgerald brand was created, just like today, producers thought nothing of creating completely fictitious origin stories for their products. Evidence that only emerged about ten years ago reveals the true story of John Fitzgerald. I shan't go into every twist and turn here. Suffice it to say that based on the evidence I've seen, this is the most likely story.

John E. Fitzgerald was neither a distiller nor a distillery owner. He was a Treasury agent with a powerful thirst who also happened to be a good judge of whiskey. Not only was he known to help himself to a sample now and then, he supposedly only poached from honey barrels. As a result, Herbst and his associates got into the habit of calling any particularly good barrel of whiskey 'a Fitzgerald.' Naming a brand in his honor was for them a wonderful inside joke, which Herbst revealed many years later.

Some people, in telling this 'new' story, have taken to referring to Fitzgerald as a ‘security guard.’  Perhaps they are doing this to avoid offending the Feds. The story is that Fitzgerald had the ‘keys to the warehouse,’ which they interpret as 'security guard.'

The problem with that interpretation is that this was a bonded warehouse and in that era the only person who had ‘keys to the warehouse’ was the assigned Treasury agent. Even the distillery owner didn’t have keys. This was true from passage of the Bottled in Bond Act of 1897 until the system was changed in the early 1980s. Every distillery had a 'government man' on the premises who controlled all access to the warehouses. If Fitzgerald had keys to the warehouse, he had to be a Treasury agent. That's all there is to it.

What's In A Name: White Whiskey.

One of the ongoing dramas in the epic saga of America's fledgling micro-distillery industry is between producers and the calendar. Most have just not figured out how to make fully-aged whiskey products.

I recognize that this whole definitional terrain is a minefield and even a term such as 'fully-aged' can be considered unfairly value-loaded. Maybe 'traditional' is more acceptable. Traditional American straight whiskeys, such as bourbon and rye, are typically aged for between 4 and 8 years. Scottish-stye whiskeys typically spend 8 to 12 years in wood.

You don't have to think very hard to see how ridiculously expensive that is, especially at the beginning. You're spending money every day to make the whiskey -- grain, water, yeast, barrels, energy, salaries -- and you can't sell a drop for four or five years, minimum.

Like actors who hope to direct, most micro-distillers say they want to make whiskey, but most haven't figured out how to manage the whole aging problem. And while age is objective the real issue isn't age but maturity, which is subjective. When is a given whiskey 'ready'?

Because of the aging conundrum, it is rare to find a micro-distillery whiskey that is at least 2 years old, and many are sold with no aging at all as 'white whiskey.'

This is problematic, however, because U.S. law says something called 'whiskey' has to be wood-aged. On the other hand, it doesn't say for how long. In most places outside the United States, the law does say for how long, typically a minimum of three years. You can imagine the possibilities.

All this keeps alive the subject of what to call such products, considering all issues of production, consumer awareness, and regulatory compliance.

Although 'whiskey' is a word people recognize, some producers use alternatives such as 'moonshine,' 'white dog,' and 'new make.' Others propose 'American whiskey' as a catch-all for anything that's not bourbon, rye, corn, Tennessee, etc.

Here are a few of my thoughts.

The traditional term in the United States for unaged whiskey was 'common whiskey,' but that was long before the first Standards of Identity came into being with passage of the Bottled in Bond Act of 1897. It was called 'common' because most whiskey then wasn't aged, which is not the case today.

Of all the terms mentioned above, 'whiskey' is the only one that is regulated. It's probably the most desirable word to use, with or without a modifier, for any flavorful grain spirit. Since whiskey must have contact with oak by law, we might have to teach people that very young wood-aged whiskey can be clear. That doesn't seem like a huge obstacle. That makes 'white whiskey' a good term. The average person's intuitive sense of what it means is largely correct, which is a great recommendation for it, and rare.

'Moonshine' is tough to resist because it resonates with the consumer, but using it on a legal product undermines the true meaning of the word, leading to confusion. Many people mistakenly believe that moonshine is a type of distilled spirit when, in fact, it is any distilled spirit produced illegally. Using the term 'moonshine' on an unaged whiskey product is doubly wrong since virtually all true moonshine is sugarjack.

I don't like 'American whiskey' as a catch-all category, although 'other American whiskey' is fine. The natural meaning of 'American whiskey' is a whiskey made in America, an umbrella term that includes bourbon, rye, corn, blended, Tennessee, i.e., everything not everything except the major categories. It has never been all about bourbon in the USA and even Tennessee whiskey has to be respected as a de facto type even if it's not de jure.

'White Dog' is nice because it is colloquial and sounds vaguely 'bad' (like 'moonshine') but it's also traditional and authentic. I've been hanging around American distilleries for the past 30 years and folks in the industry probably use the term 'white dog' most often. It seems to naturally roll off the tongues of distillers in Kentucky and Tennessee.

'New make' is similar but doesn't have any tang to it. It's bloodless, but equally authentic. 'New make' is for use in company that might not get 'white dog,' such as non-native English speakers. Both terms also get around the need to have oak involved.

You can't realistically make any of these terms proprietary so there's still some value in trying to think of a term that communicates what your product is as effectively as 'white whiskey' does, but that you can own.

Back at the beginning of my career I heard the term 'high wines' a lot but almost never now.

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.

Looking For A. H. Hirsch Bourbon? Good Luck.

Today I got a call out of the blue from a guy looking for A. H. Hirsch Bourbon, specifically the 20-year-old. I couldn’t help him. No one can help him unless they have some of it in their bunker. I don’t. I’ve never owned a bottle of the 20 and only ever had a few tastes of it.

This got me reviewing some of the research I’ve done about Hirsch. Here are the highlights.

The bourbon was commissioned by Adolph Hirsch, a former Schenley executive. It was 400 barrels of bourbon made in the spring of 1974 at the Pennco Distillery in Schaefferstown, PA.

Pennco was a small, independent contract distiller, mostly of rye whiskey. That order represented about eight days of production.

It is unknown why Hirsch commissioned the whiskey. It may have been a way to infuse some capital into a struggling company, which he had once owned. He apparently had no use for the whiskey as he left it there to age for the next 15 years.

This batch of whiskey was not the “last pot still bourbon,” as has often been reported. It was a conventional double-distilled bourbon, but it did age out very nicely.

Pennco, which had history back to 1753, folded shortly after the Hirsch bourbon was distilled. The plant was purchased in foreclosure and renamed Michter’s. It soldiered on for another decade but never stabilized. By 1989 the owners had skipped town and the bank was ready to shut the place down. They told Hirsch to get his whiskey out of there or risk losing it in the chaos that was sure to follow.

Hirsch sold the lot to Gordon Hue, who moved the barrels to a distillery in Cincinnati and began to bottle the whiskey as A.H. Hirsch Bourbon, mostly for sale in Japan. The first release was a 15-year-old, followed the next year by a 16-year-old.

At that point most of the whiskey was dumped and held in stainless steel tanks for subsequent bottling as a 16-year-old. A few barrels were allowed to continue aging. That produced 37 cases of an 18-year-old in 1992, 121 cases of a 19-year-old in 1993, and 500 cases of a 20-year-old in 1994-95.

Then the Hue family sold the brand and remaining, tanked 16-year-old bourbon to Preiss Imports which in 2003 had the rest of it bottled, about 3,000 cases. In 2009, Preiss created a boxed set priced at $1,500. That's the end of it.

The boxed set is still around at retail as are a few bottles of the final 16-year-old (distinguished by its gold foil capsule), reportedly at prices north of $250. I don’t know where they are exactly, but sightings have been reported.

Tried It? I Made It!

Someone asked me today if I'd ever had the George Washington Distillery Limited Edition Vatted American Whiskey?

"Had it?" I said. "I made it!"

When the whole project to restore George Washington's Mount Vernon distillery began, each DISCUS member donated a full barrel of their whiskey. It was delivered with much fanfare and then left to age a little longer at Mount Vernon.

The original bottling they did from that whiskey was special bottles of each brand, which were auctioned or otherwise sold at ridiculous prices to benefit the restoration project.

After that they still had a lot of it left and some of it was getting pretty old, so they came up with this idea to mix it all together. I was on hand for that event in the summer of 2005. The plan was to empty all of the barrels into a big plastic tub, mix them together, then put them back into the barrels for another six months.

As you can imagine, getting whiskey out of a barrel is pretty easy but getting it back in is not. The only way in is through the bung hole, which is about 2.5 inches in diameter.

Joe Dangler, from A. Smith Bowman Distillery, brought a small lab pump, which was too slow. This part of the plan had not been thought through. Because we all had planes to catch we started to improvise. My innovation was cutting some plastic water bottles into scoops and funnels. We were all dipping and dumping as fast as we could (including a female DISCUS lawyer wearing a Chanel suit...what a sport!) and we were in the tub up to our elbows.

I'm sure there is part of me in every bottle.

I managed to clean up a little bit at the airport but I'm sure we all smelled like...well, you can just about imagine.

I was also there when it was bottled a few months later and that's a good story too, but for another time.

(In the picture, that's Joe Dangler on the left and Dave Pickerell on the right. Ron Call is in the background. I don't recall the woman talking to Ron.)

New Rye Has 200+ Year Pedigree.

America's newest rye whiskey has a famous name on the label, George Washington.

Yes, that George Washington.

After his presidency, George Washington's Mount Vernon estate included among its many enterprises a distillery, which made whiskey and other spirits from the farm's grains and other produce.

This Thursday, July 1, for the first time since Washington's distillery burned down in 1814, the public will be able buy rye whiskey made there.

And, thanks to a new law in Virginia, they can taste it before they buy it at this special public event.

The extremely limited edition whiskey (550 bottles) was produced in the reconstructed distillery in 2009 according to the General's own recipe discovered by historians in the mansion's extensive records.

Starting at noon, the public will be able to sample small amounts before purchasing one of the unique 375 ml bottles for $85. Proceeds will benefit Mount Vernon's education programs.

The distillery and gristmill are located at 5514 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway (SR 235), about three miles south of the Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens main entrance.

Go here for more information about George Washington's distillery.

The restoration of George Washington's distillery has long been a pet project of the Distilled Spirits Council.

Beam's "Distillers Tree" Is a Major Contribution to Whiskey History.

The Beams are the Kennedys of American whiskey. Members of the Beam family have worked at dozens of different distilleries. Virtually every major brand on the market today can find a Beam somewhere in its history.

This heritage, of course, reflects most proudly on Jim Beam Bourbon itself, which is why they have produced the interactive Distillers Tree. Naturally they highlight those family members in Jim Beam's direct line, but they don't short the others, with one exception.

In addition to David M. and Joseph B., David Beam had a third distiller son, John, better known as Jack, who started a Nelson County distillery called Early Times. That brand is owned today by arch rival Brown-Forman, which also owns Jack Daniel's.

But I won't let that blemish spoil my enjoyment of this wonderful contribution to the preservation and dissemination of American whiskey's true history.

Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame Inducts U.S. President William Howard Taft.

Kentucky’s signature Bourbon industry last night marked the 100th anniversary of a landmark decision by President William Howard Taft at a ceremony to induct the former leader into the prestigious Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame.

In December 1909, President Taft released an official decision that defined whiskey standards in the United States. Before that time, imitators trying to capitalize on the growing success of Kentucky Bourbon often made counterfeit whiskey using artificial colors and flavors.

But Taft’s decision set the standard for how whiskey is labeled – straight, blended or imitation – and protected the time-honored process of Kentucky Bourbon. “By such an order as this decision indicates,” Taft wrote, “the public will be made to know exactly the kind of whisky they buy and drink…

“It injures no man’s lawful business, because it only insists upon the statement of the truth in the label.”

In recognition of the anniversary of his historic act, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association Board of Directors unanimously voted to induct Taft into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame. The ceremony took place last night at the Governor’s Mansion in Frankfort, hosted by Gov. and Mrs. Steven L. Beshear.

Taft, born in 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, was President from 1909-1913 and later the 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He died in 1930.

Correct Location of Pre-Prohibition Beam Distillery Identified.

This is a correction to a story in the most recent issue of my American whiskey newsletter, The Bourbon Country Reader.

In that story, "25 Stops That Should Be On The Kentucky Bourbon Trail," I identified a cluster of warehouses owned by Heaven Hill and located where the railroad tracks cross Bloomfield Road northeast of Bardstown as the location of Beam and Hart, the pre-prohibition distillery operated by Jim Beam, his brother, Park, and their brother-in-law, Albert Hart. I was mistaken.

The cluster of warehouses owned by Heaven Hill (pictured above) that is the pre-prohibition location of the Beam and Hart Old Tub Distillery is on Old Nazareth Road, also near railroad tracks, due north of Bardstown near the religious community of Nazareth. The Beams sold it during Prohibition and purchased the old Murphy, Barber & Co. Distillery, where they quarried gravel during the drought. That's the Beam plant known as Clermont today.

The Bloomfield Road site was previously a Schenley plant known as the Fairfield Distillery (even though it's several miles from Fairfield). They made Pride of Nelson and Old Jim Gore Bourbon there.

There are several similar sites around Bardstown and other Kentucky whiskey-making centers. They are the remnants of old distilleries, now owned by current producers who use the whiskey aging warehouses and occasionally some other buildings, but the distillery part and most other structures were demolished a long time ago. There is nothing much to see at any of these places and what there is you can see from the road, so please no trespassing.

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.

New Jeffersons Is Stitzel-Weller Whiskey.

McLain & Kyne Distillers has announced that its new Jefferson's Presidential Select Bourbon is whiskey distilled during the last years of production at Louisville's Stitzel-Weller Distillery. Bottled at 94 proof, "this ultra-rare, ultra-premium, 17-year-old bourbon is a limited offering complementing the existing line of Jefferson's bourbons, Jefferson's and Jefferson's Reserve."

The press release continues: "Produced by what many consider to be history's finest bourbon distillery, Stitzel-Weller, Jefferson's Presidential Select is a truly superlative offering. Trey Zoeller, founder of McLain & Kyne, comments: 'The discovery of these rare Stitzel-Weller barrels is a coup for bourbon connoisseurs everywhere, who will undoubtedly discover in Jefferson's Presidential Select a spirit that more than lives up to the fine reputation of its distillery.'"

Although a new bottling of Stitzel-Weller whiskey is genuine cause for celebration, McLain & Kyne has overdone the superlatives. The last few very old Stitzel-Weller barrels that have hit the market haven't been the distillery's finest. Mostly they have had a little too much wood, although the unique Stitzel-Weller character is still evident.

Although I haven't had the new Jefferson's yet, others who have have given it that sort of report. Woody but good.

Stitzel-Weller stopped production in 1992. It was owned by the Van Winkle family from its inception at the end of Prohibition until 1972. Its lead brands were Old Fitzgerald and W. L. Weller. All of the Stitzel-Weller bourbons used wheat instead of rye as their flavor grain, a practice later adopted with great success by Maker's Mark.

Some of the most notable bottles produced there were of whiskey distilled before 1972 and bottled at 10 to 12 years old, such as the legendary Very Very Old Fitzgerald.

It's great that McLain & Kyne is telling us where this whiskey was produced. There is nothing wrong with being a non-distiller producer (NDP), which McLain & Kyne is (most NDPs like to pretend they have a still). Now I wish they would tell us how they got these particular barrels.

The company now known as Diageo was the last operator of Stitzel-Weller. It still owns the facility and uses the warehouses. Both Heaven Hill and Buffalo Trace got some Stitzel-Weller barrels when they bought Old Fitzgerald and W. L. Weller respectively. No one has ever been quite sure how much Diageo retained. Did they really mean to age it 17 years or more? How did McLain & Kyne get it?

And, most important of all, is there any left?