Tasting A 1970s Dusty Cabin Still

Josh Peters' 1970s Cabin Still

A year and a half ago I wrote about how the Cabin Still brand was murdered by Norton Simon corporation. It had been the entry level product of Pappy Van Winkle's legendary Stitzel-Weller distillery. Norton Simon had struck out with Canada Dry Bourbon, their attempt to enter the Bourbon market in the 1960s. Canada Dry Bourbon was produced at the Nicholasville, "Camp Nelson" distillery in Jessamine county, KY and apparently there was a musty flavor because of a problem with storage. Stuck with the tax liability of whiskey they couldn't sell, they bought Stitzel-Weller in 1972 and proceeded to dump the problem whiskey into the base expression - Cabin Still. You can read the full post here:
http://www.cooperedtot.com/2014/04/the-tragedy-of-old-cabin-still.html

When, exactly, the dumping happened, isn't clear. I have had people tell me that higher proof examples of Cabin Still from after 1972 were perfectly good. I've been assembling samples and planning to try to nail down the date of the transition as best I can from taste alone (i.e. make an educated guess based upon tasting). Furthermore, the evidence is inconclusive about how the dumping occurred. Was Camp Nelson juice simply substituted for Stitzel-Weller? Were the two mixed together? If so, were the proportions constant or did they vary? I don't know. What I did know was that 1960s Cabin Still tasted like lovely Stitzel-Weller (cherry cola, dusty honeyed malt and light and sweet coffee) and the 1980s Cabin Still I knew from college and subsequent tastings was a musty, cardboardy, nasty pour. Those experiences were the visceral support that made me a real believer in the tale.

So, when Josh Peters of The Whiskey Jug blog offered a taste of 1970s Cabin Still I was anxious to participate and find out if it tasted the pre-1972 good stuff or the inferior later stuff.

First of all, let's date the bottle. Let's use the tips found on The Whiskey Jug's excellent page on dating dusties:

http://thewhiskeyjug.com/whiskey/how-to-date-a-bottle-of-whiskey/

Josh Peter's photos of the bottle are at left and below. We see:

• No UPC code - thus prior to 1985 at least
• Imperial measurement ("One Pint" impressed in the glass). This suggests the bottle was made prior to 1980.
• "Series 112" on the tax strip just below the eagle. No volume markings on the end of the tax strip. This narrows it in to 1973-1976.



Series 112 below eagle and no volume marks on the ends.

• As Sku notes in his post about this bottle: "a 1974 copyright appears on the label".  

This complex of attributes would put the date of this bottle pretty specifically to 1974-76.  That's just 2-3 years after the Norton Simon takeover of Stitzel-Weller.  If this stuff has the cardboard flavors of Camp Nelson / Canada Dry Bourbon then that lends more support to the notion that Norton Simon began the dumping right away.  Tasting is subjective, though, so it's circumstantial evidence at best.  But that's still evidence in my mind.  Here we go. 

Cabin Still 40% abv. Louisville 1974-76

Color: Medium amber.

Nose: sweet with hard candy, candy corn and cola with an earthy musky note.  Not bad

Palate: Opens sweet with citrus and cherry.  Good so far!  The expansion adds oak char and then it gets salty. It's more the suggestion of salt with a mineral and iodine aspect. At the turn a musty cardboard note enters. The finish has a bitter note that keeps calling up cardboard.  There is some heft to the mouth feel.  This feels very much like a vatting of Stitzel Weller and Camp Nelson juice to me.  But the Stitzel Weller flavors are in evidence in the cherry and cola flavors up front.  The opening is this whiskey's best part.  The finish, however, very much ruins it for me.  Prickly, bitter, cardboard... just unpleasant.  This is easily remedied by another sip which refreshes the pleasant flavors of the entry.  A real case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.  How do I score it?  The fore-palate is definitely four star / 80s territory, but the finish drags it way down in my opinion.

** 76

This stuff is clearly way better than the 1980s Cabin Still I tasted in my formal review in early 2014.  But with dusties the manner of storage matters.  Was the whiskey better in the mid 70s?  Or is this just a nice fresh bottle?  More tasting is necessary.  But this bottle confirms, in my mind, that:

1. Norton Simon was mixing Canada Dry bourbon into Stitzel-Weller, at least at first.
2. That they started this mixing pretty early after they acquired the brand.

Thanks again, Josh, for the opportunity to taste this fascinating whiskey and also be a part of a group whiskey blogging thing that involves some very distinguished bloggers.  Definitely check these guys out:

• Josh Peters of The Whiskey Jug: http://thewhiskeyjug.com
• Steve Ury (Sku) of Sku's Recent Eats: http://recenteats.blogspot.com/
• Aaron Kraus (of the West Coast branch of It's Just The Booze Dancing): http://boozedancing.com/
• Stephen of The Axis of Whisky: http://axisofwhisky.com/
• and Patrick "Pops" Garrett of Bourbon and Banter: https://www.bourbonbanter.com/

The four bottles Josh Peters sent samples of.

The Tragedy of Old Cabin Still

The history of American whiskey is full of stories with all the human drama of Shakespeare's plays.  There are triumphs and tragedies; tales of creation and destruction.  There are also skeletons in the closet.  This is one of those stories.  It's the story of a murder - but not the murder of a person; the murder of a historic brand of Bourbon.  Like in most murders the motive is mundane, indeed prosaic.  It is simply greed.  The general outline of the story is simple.  Old Cabin Still - a venerable brand originally from William LaRue Weller came, via Pappy Van Winkle, to Stitzel-Weller and was a respected brand for decades. Then a huge corporation, Norton Simon, that had been clumsily dabbling in Bourbon found themselves in a jam with a bunch of bad whiskey they couldn't sell so they bought Stitzel-Weller so they could gradually dump the boondoggle failure whiskey into their bottom of the line Old Cabin Still brand.  This ruined the whiskey - effectively murdering the brand.  When United Distillers dumped 70 brands to Heaven Hill in 1993 (who immediately dumped a bunch to Luxco) with Old Cabin Still listed among them, it fell away into the mists of obscurity.  Currently the brand name "Cabin Still" doesn't appear on either Heaven Hill's or Luxco's web site.  It's not distributed in my area (although it is still made and distributed in the midwest and Europe.  It's a moribund brand, while plenty of other brands with less excellence in their histories are still plugging along.  (Update - it is still made and sold - including in New York.  It's not wheater - but is a decent entry level Bourbon in it's current incarnation.  I'll do a comparison tasting in a future post).

A word about the brand's name.   Originally "Old Cabin Still" It gradually dropped the prefix "Old".  It started in the 1950s - with the word getting smaller and sometimes being replaced by "Weller's", until it fully disappeared sometime in the 1970s - apparently after the sale to Norton Simon.  I'll attempt to use the appropriate name for whatever historical period we are discussing.

Old Cabin Still was one of William Larue Weller's brands when Pappy Van Winkle joined the firm.  It wasn't one of the brands registered in 1905 and 1906, implying that it was previously registered - one of the really old brands.   Pappy clearly liked it.  He had A. Ph. Stitzel produce some as medicinal whiskey during Prohibition.  A nice bottle and photograph appear on http://www.historicbottles.com/miscellaneous.htm  They appear as follows:

"Here is a quite interesting - and quite rare and historically fascinating - early machine-made whiskey bottle with the label, original box AND is still fully sealed with around 85%+ of the original contents - all of which date prior (barely) to National Prohibition! The fully intact tax label (covering the cork stopper) notes that the whiskey was "made Spring 1915" and "bottled Fall 1919" - mere weeks before Prohibition was fully in effect in January 1920 (though most liquor was already off the market by early 1919)."

In "But Always Fine Bourbon" by Sally Van Winkle Campbell, Old Cabin Still appears one of the stable of brands produced by Stitzel-Weller Distillery at its inception in 1935.  It was the entry level expression.  The same juice as Old Fitz, but aged less.  It was marketed as the "sportsman's" choice (see the ads, above, sporty with hunting dogs).  I imagine the idea is that sportsman in the field might nip from the bottle or flask without the luxury of the long airing Old Fitzgerald needed.  Having had the opportunity to have tasted some of the Old Cabin Still made in the Pappy era very recently, I can attest it was very good indeed, but more about that later.

My first experiences with it were very different.  Personally, I came across Cabin Still in my Sophomore year of college, 1983.  My suite mate, Kenneth Kurtz, a dazzlingly intelligent man who is now the staff architect of The Brooklyn Museum, had a penchant for it.  But not, as you might expect, have a penchant for it because it was good.  Rather, because it was bad and fading.  His nickname for it was "Stab 'n Kill".  It was an Old Man's liquor - a foul rotgut, and a symbol of what had

Ken Kurtz (in a Belleville, NJ cemetery)

gone wrong in America.  You have to understand that Ken Kurtz is a connoisseur of America's decline.  He hails from Randolph, NJ and starting in 1982 when I first met him he led me on a series of excursions the likes of which have become a staple of "Weird NJ" magazine (but years before that magazine's founding).  We drove to abandoned or semi abandoned industrial facilities, insane asylums, and the like.  We drove to Allentown and Bethlehem PA to witness the rust belt first hand.  In recent years he leads walks into places like the abandoned rail lines of the Meadowlands swamps northern NJ and the rusting drawbridges of Jersey City.  We walk the vast cemeteries of Queens and the industrial decay of Maspeth creek.  There is beauty in such places - but an ironic beauty informed by the punk aesthetic.  It's about acknowledging the rust and the loss and irony.  This is Ken Kurtz's aesthetic.  So his selection of "Stab 'n Kill" for our Friday night 1980s poker 'n bourbon 'n all you can smoke sessions must be understood as an ironic selection too.  I don't remember much about the Bourbon we drank those evenings.  We were shooting it, with grimaces and mock toughness.  We were also just kids getting drunk and I don't remember much about those evenings at all, generally.  But the long term outcome was: 1) I never bought a bottle of Cabin Still ever again.  2) I stopped drinking Bourbon pretty much entirely for about 20

Jersey City
Drawbridge abstract

years.  I turned to single malt Scotch for the most part and never looked back until 2006 or so when Paul Pacult invited Wild Turkey to host a tasting at Keen's Steakhouse in NYC when my love affair with Bourbon properly began.

This all jibes with Mike Jasinski's (master dusty hunter) tasting notes for this 1972 Ducks Unlimited ceramic decanter.  When I first met him last autumn he walked me through a tasting.  I blogged about it and wrote this:  

"One of the most provocative things the Mike has said on line recently is that Old Cabin Still is both the best and worst Bourbon he's ever tasted. He attributes this to the fact that it was sourced from Stitzel-Weller glut stocks and, alternately, Seagram's lower end stocks. My impression of this brand is the yellow-label stuff from the early 1980s which my college buddies and I used to shoot. It's not a good impression so I was very curious to taste the difference. Mike lineup up drams of both. The 1980s Seagram NAS stuff was terrible. Insipid, thin mouth feel, harsh alcohol bite, and a flavor dominated by wet cardboard notes. The 6 year old age dated 1966-1972 Ducks Unlimited decanter Old Cabin Still, however, was very much in the mode of the contemporary Old Fitzgerald decanter I had just tasted - but if anything incrementally more honeyed, with a richer mouth feel. All the classic Stitzel-Weller wheated bourbon flavors were in play: caramel, toffee, butter braised brown Betty, demerara sugar and rum. Sandalwood perfume, and, on the finish, a clear note of light and sweet coffee and cream. Too much? Not a chance. Brilliance."

http://www.cooperedtot.com/2013/11/a-day-with-master-dusty-hunter-driven.html

(Notice the mistakes (probably my own) confusing "Seagrams" for "Canada Dry".  The whiskey that ended up conflated into Old Cabin Still is not Seagrams.  It's Canada Dry - a different company entirely with only the concept of "Canadian" in common.  That shows you need to take the factual content in this blog with a grain of salt.)

Ads for Canada Dry Bourbon start popping up in the mid 1960s.  Here's an example from 1967:

1967 Magazine ad for Canada Dry Bourbon - Nicholsville

The tone of the ad is one of apologetic regret for how poor the branding is.  The text reads "Fine sounding names are a tradition in the world of Bourbon.  But fine sounding names don't do anything for the taste of Bourbon.  Canada Dry has done something for the taste of Bourbon.  We made it smoother. ..." The tacit acknowledgement that the name (and the label and the bottle and everything) is completely lousy branding for Bourbon is covered by the bluster of their claims for the taste.  But having tasted it, and finding it among the most pathetic and forgettable Bourbons I've EVER tasted it's no surprise that the brand quickly disappeared.  But that left Norton Simon - the huge conglomerate that owned Canada Dry at the time, with a problem.  What to do with a bunch of Bourbon that had tax liability hanging over it?

Canada Dry was a soda company that had started in Toronto in the 1890s by druggist and chemist John J. McLaughlin.  In 1904 he created "Canada Dry Pale Ginger Ale" which began shipping to New York in 1919.  The timing was brilliant.  Prohibition meant that many drinkers were getting lower quality liquor and Americans found that most any liquor was pretty palatable when blended in with Canada Dry Ginger Ale.  Norton Winfred Simon (1907-1993), Californian food industrialist of tremendous success and market power (Hunts foods, Avis rental cars, McCall's publishing, Max Factor cosmetics, etc...) , merged his Norton Simon corporation with Canada Dry in 1964.  The bourbon appears the very next year.  I can only imagine some kind of competitiveness with Sam Bronfman (in the whiskey world in the 1960s everything comes back to Sam Bronfman so even though I don't have a shred of evidence for this I can't imagine it not being so).  The escapade was failure and soon Norton Simon is looking for a place to dump the inferior product that didn't sell.

On Straight Bourbon there is an old (2004) thread discussing the following bottle of what is labelled "Stitzel-Weller's Canada Dry Bourbon". There is a comment by noted Bourbon historian Michael Veach that speaks straight to this issue and backs up Mike Jasinski's account of Old Cabin Still being ruined by having Canada Dry Bourbon mixed in:

"Right after the [Van Winkle] family sold the [Stitzel-Weller] distillery the company [Norton Simon] also acquired a distillery in Nicholasville, Kentucky that made the Canada Dry spirits. They bottled Canada Dry Bourbon, Gin and Vodka. The whiskey from that distillery was not very good at all and they put most of it into Cabin Still, starting the downfall of that brand. - Mike Veach"

http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/showthread.php?3139-Stitzel-Weller-Canada-Dry-Bourbon

But I received dramatic and fully independent corroboration for the tale from an employee of Stitzel-Weller who made the shift to Norton-Simon and witnessed these events first hand.  The gentleman is named Dale Hamilton.  In his own words:

"I went to work for Stitzel Weller in October - 1970 as Controller/Accounting Manager. When the company was purchased on June 28, 1972 most of the accounting functions were transferred to the New York offices of Somerset Importers. I was asked to take a position in the Finance Offices at Somerset but since I had no desire to live in New York I didn't accept the position. I was allowed to stay in Louisville and set up a purchasing department. I remained as Purchasing Manager thru the mergers with the Canada Dry Distillery Nicholasville, ky. Later when Somerset Importers took over the operations of Distillers Corporation in the U.S.A.  Sometime later I took on the duties of packaging development in addition to the purchasing.  Thru the years the company name was changed to United Distillers Production and later with the purchase of Schenley the name changed to Schenley Distillers , Inc.
...
The distillery at Nicholasville or Camp Nelson, KY was originally the Curley Distillery and later the Kentucky River Distillery.
...
Paul Burnside was the President of Somerset Importers at the time and their production operation was the Canada Dry Distillery at Nicholasville, Ky. The operation distilled bourbon and bottled gin & vodka for the Canada Dry brand..They also bottled some brandy for the Domeq brand.
As I recall Burnside had produced more bourbon for the Canada Dry Bourbon brand than was needed and he also wanted to get Somerset into the bourbon business. I was told that some of the bourbon was not of a good quality (musty) due to some warehousing problems. I was not an expert on the quality of bourbon, but I didn't care for the taste of the Canada Dry produced bourbon made with rye ,since I had been used to the Old Fitz bourbon produced with wheat.
Somerset was owned by Norton Simon at the time and money tied up in inventory didn't fit their plan. So now the Stitzel Weller Distillery could cease production for some time and the excess Canada Dry bourbon could be used in the newly purchased Cabin Still brand. The bourbon that was produced for the Cabin Still brand could now be used for some of the other Stitzel Weller brands.
...
As I recall the Canada Dry Bourbon, Gin, and Vodka labels were only sold in the control states. I don't recall exactly ,but sometime near the end of the brands in seems to me that the soft drink company, no longer connected to liquor division, the Canada Dry named was dropped and replaced with the name "Stitzel Weller" for a short time."

- Dale Hamilton (in several private e-mails.  Emphasis is my own).

 But what about this "distillery at Nicholasville or Camp Nelson, KY - originally the Curley Distillery and later the Kentucky River Distillery"? The Curley Distillery was built around 1880. Sullivan notes it as

"The Boone Knoll DistilleryRD #15, 8 th District Jessamine County, KY"
with the following photograph:

http://www.pre-pro.com/midacore/images/inserts/dist_DST233.jpg

The photograph resides at The Kentucky Historical Society where it is described as follows:
"Curley Distillery at Camp Nelson Bridge, Jessamine County, Kentucky, ca. 1905."http://www.kyhistory.com/cdm/ref/collection/PH/id/1099

Of this distillery Sam K. Cecil writes: "E.J. Curley & Company RD No. 15, Kentucky River, RD No. 45 Canada Dry.  Built in 1880." But by 1889 Curley's horses and wagons were impounded for non-payment of taxes although it managed to stay open until Prohibition when AMS bought the brands and remaining stocks.  In 1923 the distillery building was converted into a resort.  It was converted back into a distillery after Repeal, operating as "Kentucky River" RD No. 45."  It ended up sold to Norton Simon "sometime in the 1960s".  "Norton Simon continued to operate the plant as Canada Dry until the late 1970s, when they bought the Stitzel-Weller Distillery RD No. 16 in Shively, Jefferson County."  (the actual year of the purchase was 1972, thus showing that you sometimes have to take Cecil with a grain of salt).  The narrative concludes "The distillery building burned, and the warehouses were leased for a time to Seagrams to house production from their Anderson County plant.  Since then, they have leased to Bourlevard of Anderson County for their "Wild Turkey" whiskey".
http://www.amazon.com/Bourbon-The-Evolution-Kentucky-Whiskey/dp/1596527692

Chuck Cowdery summarized the history in a post on Straight Bourbon in 2000 thus:  "Built in 1880. In recent times, Norton Simon owned it in the 60s and operated it under the Canada Dry name until they bought Stitzel-Weller in 1972. The distillery building burned down. Seagram's used the warehouse for Four Roses until they built Lotus, at which time they leased them to Wild Turkey."
http://www.straightbourbon.com/forums/showthread.php?64-Fire-at-Wild-Turkey-Warehouse!

A distillery building burning down happens from time to time, of course.  Still, I'm struck by the timing.  Norton Simon using this distillery to produce a failure of a Bourbon brand.  Then buying a struggling but well respected distillery (Stitzel-Weller) and then apparently camouflaging the bad whiskey by mixing it into Cabin Still - the bottom of the line expression from Stitzel-Weller starting in 1972.  Then, the now useless distillery burns down.  How convenient!  The warehouses still stand - serving a better purpose holding better juice.

So, given all this history, it probably comes as little surprise that when I came across a case or two of old, sad, dirty, somewhat sun-faded liter bottles of Cabin Still in a scary store in a scarier part of Roseville, NJ I bought a few of the better looking ones, bottle glass stamp dated "88".  I cracked one open and tasted deeply.  "Old Stab 'n Kill" truly.  I also shared a dram of it with Ken Kurtz himself.  Then I attempted to give him one of the liters.  He politely declined.  In light of having recently tasted 1966-72 Old Cabin Still and 1970s-80s Canada Dry Bourbon with Mike Jasinski and having recently completed a survey of Old Fitzgerald from the 1960s-1990s I felt ready to put this late 1980s Cabin Still in context:

1972 and earlier bottlings say "Distilled and Bottled by Sitzel-Weller Distillery".  Afterwards the wording is changed to "Distilled For And Bottled By Cabin Still Distillery" (emphasis mine).

Cabin Still Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey circa 1988 40% abv.  

Color: medium coppery amber.

Nose:  Initially a bit sickly sweet and watery, it opens with air. After about 20 minutes it is malty, and fruity (juicyfruit, and turkish delight) beneath toffee, solvent, and candy corn.  Not too bad.  I'm getting Stitzel-Weller richness in the maltiness.

Palate: off-sweet opening.  Given the fruity nose I was expecting more sweetness in the opening, but it pulls back.  In the expansion there are notes of cherry and malt that recall Stitzel-Weller as well.  But there is a watery mouth feel and lack of density and impact.  As the expansion proceeds there is a tinge of rye prickle - a kiss of Virginia blond tobacco chaw spit in a watered down glass of good S-W whiskey.  This is, after all presumably, a 4 grain vatting.  Then, at the turn there is a bitter cardboard note.  As the finish proceeds the bitterness and cardboard flavor (like a corrugated cardboard box smells) grows and grows.  The finish is disgusting with bitterness, glue, and dry brown paper.  A disaster.  Particularly bitter given the hints of malt and cherry and oak lurking around in there.  There was Stitzel-Weller juice being tossed into the cardboard bitter mess of Canada Dry bourbon even as late as 1988.  It's a crime.  It's a crying shame.   Getting rid of the finish by continually sipping  to keep those Stitzel-Weller flavors detectable in the front end of the palate is the way to go with this stuff.

Adding a drop of water greatly improves the nose which, after 10 minutes to settle down, becomes candied like a full wheater. But it ruins what little body or mouth feel this whisky had, while amping up the undesirable rye spices which don't fit with the wheater sweeter aspects.  Definitely do not add water.

Bottom line - a disaster both for what happened in the vatting and, especially, for the special juice that was squandered here.

*

(Updated to one star down from two as, in further tasting I can't stomach this stuff at all).

A Day With A Master Dusty Hunter ... driven by a pretty green liqueur and the Question of Bottle Maturation

Chartreuse, Bourbon, and Rye dusties.

Old dusties bring out the geeky and ornery as well as stupid and brave (all quintessentially American traits).   Part of the story might be best described by Steve Zeller's joke:

"How many whiskey snobs does it take to change a light bulb?  One hundred.  One to put in the new bulb, and ninety-nine to tell you why the old one was better."  

But what if the old ones really ARE better?  Not all of them.  Not all the time.  But some of them - a whole lot of them actually - and really, veritably better.  The question, as always, is WHY?  Production method changes?  Bottle maturation?  In the American whiskey world the story is complicated by the fact that the brands are shuffled around among corporations like playing cards at a poker game (which may be an apt analogy) and end up being made by one distillery after another - sometimes with respect for things like recipe and mash bill and at other times not.  In this situation it's very valid to say "Wow, I really liked Eagle Rare (for example) when it was made at the Old Prentice Distillery in Lawrenceburg Kentucky, but I'm not such a fan of the new stuff made at Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort Kentucky.  Other than sharing a brand name there's very little actually in common between them.

These facts drive dusty hunters into terrible neighborhoods to seek out the worst forgotten liquor stores to find hidden gems in the dust.  But old neglected liquor stores have a lot more than Bourbon lying around.  There's also other stuff - like Scotch & Chartreuse.  Chartreuse?   Chartreuse, the effete, French, and undeniably feminine after dinner liqueur that makes an excellent glass rinse when making high end Manhattan cocktails?  Yet Bourbon and Chartreuse all became wrapped up together this last week for me.  The tale involves dusties, ambition, and exploration and ends up in the living room of a new friend:  a man with whiskey knowledge, enthusiasm, and the kind of welcoming friendliness and whisky camaraderie that earns the twitter hash tag #WhiskyFabric in my book.

It starts with the tasting for the Sunday October 13th Bonhams whisky sale.  I was lured by a rumor that Joe Hyman might be pouring a bottle of Prohibition era Monongahela rye whiskey from Ruffdale PA brand Dillinger that was distilled 1913 and bottled in 1923.  FYI: Sam Dillinger's story and an amazing travelogue blog post describing a visit to the site today is amazing reading on EllenJay.com:  http://www.ellenjaye.com/hist_mono4ryewhiskey.htm#samdillinger

The rumor turned out to be true and that remarkable whisky deserves its own post - here I need only say that it is remarkable, delicious, historic and very interesting rye whisky both from a collector's and a whisky loving drinker's perspective.  But amazingly - in the face of this very compelling sip, I found my attentions yanked way to an unexpected flavor that I had never tasted before and wouldn't have expected to love: yellow Chartreuse.  Among the amazing things Joe Hyman was having the pretty Bonhams' women pour that day was a 1940s bottle of Yellow Chartreuse.  As later auction results showed - this is a pretty precious bottle.  But I wasn't thinking about that at the time.  All I knew was that I was bewitched by the rich dynamic liqueur that brought big notes of honey, exotic herbs, and an elegant balance that wasn't cloyingly sweet, but came close - packed with a dense, sophisticated, and delicious complexity.  I couldn't help myself, I kept going back for more.  I mean more of the 1940s Chartreuse, rather than the 1913 rye.  OK, I went back for more of both of them - but I tasted as much of the Chartreuse.  And let me tell you there were quite a few other compelling whiskies on that table, too, to distract a gentleman for even looking at a yellow liqueur from France.

I came to taste this: Dillinger Mongahela rye

Fell in love with this: 1940s Yellow Chartreuse

I tried to forget her.  She wasn't "my type".  For one thing, she isn't barrel aged (except that modern VEP editions that are allowed to mature for 8 years in oak.  For another - it's an herbal liqueur for goodness sake!  But I couldn't get it out of my mind.  A few weeks later Mike Jasinski put up some lovely pics of some old dusty chartreuse that he had found hunting for dusty Bourbon.  I got interested and ended up creating a whole pinterest board to help date the dusties.  

http://www.pinterest.com/cooperedtot/chartreuse/

I ended up bracketing the ages of Mike's bottles between 1965 and the late 1970s.  We struck up a conversation and proposed a trade.  But I knew I really wanted to taste Chartreuse from this era and compare it to the current stuff before going ahead with this madcap idea.  I described the situation to whisky/food blogger Susanna Skiver Barton and she suggested I visit an East Village bar called "Pouring Ribbons"  

1970s green & yellow Chartreuse at Pouring Ribbons

Jourdan Gomez executes precise pours.

Pouring Ribbons turns out to be perfectly suited for this exploration.  They have the full line of current production Chartreuse and an extensive selection of dusties by the ounce and half ounce.  They serve the good stuff in pro-level liqueur glasses.  The cheaper stuff come in shot flutes.  I brought Perfect Dram glasses (1/4 size glencairn shaped glasses).  All the Chartreuse was delicious, but the 1970s stuff was on a vastly different level than the current stuff.  All the areas where the current stuff runs a little hot or comes close to strident on the herbal flavors become honeyed, rounded, relaxed, and somehow better delineated - with tremendous flavor amplitude between the warm and honeyed backdrop an the powerful herb and fruit flavors that rise in sharp relief:  limes, bay rum, tarragon, lavender, oregano, rosemary, and verbena.

The barrel aged VEP version.

There have been quite a few recent discussions in the whisky blogosphere about the question of how much better whisky (generally Scotch - and blended Scotch in particular) was 40 and more years ago.  The questions tend to focus on the debate whether the public or the blenders bear the primary responsibility and whether production method changes or bottle maturation are why the old stuff tastes better.  Two blog posts that exemplify this debate to me are

• Billy Abbott (aka @cowfish)'s interesting view that consumer tastes are allowing these changes  http://bbblog.org.uk/2013/10/who-decides-what-we-drink/
• Oliver Klimek's essay on whether bottle maturation happens:  http://www.dramming.com/2010/03/21/does-whisky-age-in-a-bottle/
• And his refinement follow up with the compelling Kirschwasser example:  http://www.dramming.com/2010/03/27/learning-from-kirschwasser-a-new-look-at-bottle-aging/
• Oliver Klimek's post about why whisky has become less complex:  http://www.dramming.com/2010/09/06/has-whisky-become-better-worse-or-just-different/

Well, the Carthusian monks who make Chartreuse take special pains to make a constant product.  While history forced the monks to make their product in Tarragona, Spain for a while, the main French Voiron production's herbal component has been the same for centuries and the monks take special pains to keep it constant.  This is the antithesis of the situation with whisky- where distilleries modernized tremendously and changed production methods during the 1960s-1980s period both in the Scotch and Bourbon worlds.  Barreling proofs were raised.  Mashing periods were cut.  Higher yielding grain varieties were used etc...   Enjoying a Scotch from the 1960s entails a degree of uncertainty about whether the extra magic is in the old ways, or just half a century of bottle maturation.  Some debate whether bottle maturation even exists.  Oliver Klimek gives the excellent example of Kirschwasser as a place where bottle maturation is employed and is readily detectable.  Charbay's Marko Karakasevic famously devotes a portion of maturation time in this hopped whiskies to maturation in stainless tanks.  Presumably he has his reasons.  Well, Chartreuse is an excellent case study in the relative merits of bottle maturation because of the constant production methodology.   It does, however, enjoy the benefit of the way sugar enhances maturation according to Angus of Whisky-Online.  So the conclusion that I inevitably reached based on the Chartreuse tasting is that bottle maturation is a very real and significant improver of a given spirit given multiple decades to work its magic.

As Mike Jasinski and I spoke about old Bourbon - he kept pulling bottles out of odd corners and lined them up on the entry hall chest until it was packed solid (this picture was early in the process - less than halfway).  The bottles ranged in era from the 1940s to the 1980s.  An epic group of dusties.

So I paid a visit to Mike Jasinski out at his home in Pennsylvania to make our swap and to have a little visit.  Now, I've written about the warm and supportive #WhiskyFabric.  But the very active Bourbon community involves a cadre of dedicated dusty hunters and some of them come off as very business-like.  That's not Mike.  Mike is a true whiskey lover with an obvious depth of knowledge, experience, and passion for Bourbon and rye.  Mike isn't a hoarder (although his bunker is absolutely unbelievable).  No, first and foremost Mike is a drinker and lover of the juice.  He immediately welcomed me with unreserved generosity and a convivial whisky geekiness that we share and through which we instantly bonded.  And then ensued one of the best American Whiskey tasting sessions I've ever enjoyed.  And frankly it was about as luscious a tasting overall as any whisky from any part of the world.

We started with a nip of Old Ren, a bonded bourbon from Rockford, Illinios, distilled in the Fall of 1936 and  bottled in the Spring of 1944.  It has a rich, sweet, overloaded nose full of dark toffee, over ripe squash, parrafin, old books, and baking spice like pumpkin pie.  The palate is unexpectedly dry and lean, with a huge hit of rye spice.  The finish returns to the over-ripe caramelized squash note - but now it has morphed into malted milk balls and it's persistent.  The musky slightly winey malt flavor stays and stays.  Hour later - over huge burritos, Mike said, shaking his head, all I can taste even now is that Old Ren.  It is a titanic finish.  Schizophrenic?  Strange?  Yes - totally unique and kind of incredible.  I've since written a full post on this bizarre and compellingly drinkable mystery:
http://www.cooperedtot.com/2013/11/old-ren-bonded-bourbon-antique-and.html

Then on to Old Fitgerald Bottled In Bond 1966-1972 from a ceramic decanter (The "Irish Luck" bit of silliness).  Richly amber colored and a rich pudding of classic Stitzel-Weller flavors: caramel toffee baked apple with cinnamon, baking spices, and honey, rich sandalwood oak.  As it opens in the glass there are more layers of oak perfume and a complex interplay between the sweet candy and fruit flavors on the opening and the influence of tannins in the turn and the finish.  The mouth feel is rich and thick.  The wood management is a clear contributor to what was going right at Stitzel Weller at this time.  A wonderful and delicious dram.

1966-1972 Cabin Still decanter.
Stitzel Weller at its best. 

One of the most provocative things the Mike has said on line recently is that Old Cabin Still is both the best and worst Bourbon he's ever tasted.  He attributes this to the fact that it was sourced from Stitzel Weller glut stocks and, alternately, Seagram's lower end stocks.  My impression of this brand is the yellow-label stuff from the early 1980s which my college buddies and I used to shoot.  It's not a good impression so I was very curious to taste the difference.  Mike lineup up drams of both.  The 1980s Seagram NAS stuff was terrible.  Insipid, thin mouth feel, harsh alcohol bite, and a flavor dominated by wet cardboard notes.  The 6 year old age dated 1966-1972 Ducks Unlimited decanter Old Cabin Still, however, was very much in the mode of the contemporary Old Fitzgerald decanter I had just tasted - but if anything incrementally more honeyed, with a richer mouth feel.  All the classic Stitzel-Weller wheated bourbon flavors were in play:  caramel, toffee, butter braised brown Betty, demerara sugar and rum.  Sandalwood perfume, and, on the finish, a clear note of light and sweet coffee and cream.  Too much?  Not a chance.  Brilliance.

National Distiller's Old Grand Dad 114
 from the early 1990s

Next up was a shift into high rye mash bill Bourbon with an astounding duo of classic Old Grand Dad dusties distilled at the old National Distillers Old Grand Dad Distillery DSP-KY-14 (which is used solely for bottling by Beam these days): an 8 year old bottled in bond 100 proof from the late 1980s and an early 1990s bottling of the 114.  I've heard great things about the old Old Grand Dads but hadn't ever tasted them.   Rich, honeyed, with a complex and rich palate that melds herbal floral rye with bourbon caramel sweetness and blessed by a rich mouth feel.  The 114 was superb but the Bottled In Bond actually edged it with a more vivid presentation of the flavors and a bit more rye spice kick.

Not content to rest there, Mike brought out the imitation Old Grand Dads.  Check out Barton's Colonel Lee's label side by side with OGD.  Notice a resemblence?

Old Grand Dad BIB 8 year old versus 114 versus Barton's homage: Colonel Lee

Colonel Lee, represented here by a half pint with a tax strip and a "79" date mark in the bottom of the bottle was astounding.  Clearly a high rye mash bill, this had the same rich sweetness (caramel, honey, leather and tobacco) and iterated fully delineated rye flavor profile but with a bit richer mouth feel; more honey; and more vanilla.  We discussed the irony that Colonel Lee was a cheap knock off with bottom shelf pricing and, yet, in the right era with the right bottle maturation it emerges as an incredibly delicious pour - very close to the dram of the night because of the shocking surprise.

Ezra Brooks 7 yo 1979 from Medley

Next Mike produced a 1979 (by bottle mark) sealed tax stampled Ezra Brooks 7 from Medley distillery as another example of a high rye mash bill bourbon intended to play in Old Grand Dad's sandbox.  On the nose the wood quality was clearly inferior to me: with some "kiln dried" notes that I associate with craft whiskey small barrels.  But as it opened the nose evolved into a musky musty place and the palate became astounding: with tremendous flavor amplitude that exploded in the mouth with the many of the same flavor notes:  delineated rye spice, rich bourbon sweetness - but overlayed by a darker aspect with more leather, old barn, bottom of the pot caramel, and char.

Wild Turkey 8 year old - circa early 1990s

The turkey molded into the octagonal jug.

No discussion of high rye mash bill bourbon can be complete without including Austin Nichols' Wild Turkey 101 - which we tasted and which then led to a discussion and tasting of ITS imitators:  Eagle Rare and Fighting Cock.  The pour of Wild Turkey 8 was from an octagonal jug handled 1.75 L bottle from the early 1990s with magnificent molded panels depicting the Turkey.  This was my first taste of 8 year old age statement standard OB Wild Turkey and it was a revelation.  Really really big.  Oak char, herbal rye sweetness, big musky bourbon with tons of toffee, corn, peach compote, and a big fragrant sandalwood oak finish.  Despite all the steep competition that came before, Wild Turkey 101 stands tall and absolutely earns its reputation and popularity.

The original 8 year old age statement
Fighting Cock.
Yes, it's all that.

Fighting Cock is one of those underrated Heaven Hill 6 year old bourbons that is seen more, it seems, in shooter bars than in whisky snob environs.  It currently rocks 103 proof.  But in its original incarnation it was an 8 year old 101 proof - just like the Wild Turkey it was clearly meant to imitate.  Here, in its original form as a 1990s dusty it shows all those delicious flavor of "whit if Heaven Hill did a high rye mash bill" - a bit lighter and sweeter palate than WT101 - with more citrus and a cleaner brighter rye spice and less musky musty notes and darker caramel aspects.  Mike actually prefers it.

Probably the most famous imitation of the Turkey is Eagle Rare - which exists in a bicameral existence in Buffalo Trace's line up as a very inexpensive 10 year old, sold at a sleepy 90 proof, with a reputation for sweetness, softness, and simplicity, and an ambitious 17 year old that is part of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection.  But Eagle Rare has a long history - that begins with a Sam Bronfman marketing decision at Seagrams and master distiller Charlie Beam creating a WT101 killer in 1975 at Seagram's Old Prentice Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.  As the sepia photograph neck tag makes clear, Old Prentice is what we now know as the Four Roses distillery.  Sazerac aquired the brand in 1989, thus the labels with New Orleans - and that's how it ended up in Buffalo Trace (which is part of Sazerac).

Original Seagrams Version of Eagle Rare:
 Old Prentice, Lawrenceburg KY.

...better known as Four Roses Distillery

Left to right: Eagle Rare made at Four Roses, Ancient Age (Buffalo Trace), and New Orleans

We were drinking the Lawrenceburg, KY bottling (late 70s through late 80s).  It had a large molded decanter top.  This is utterly magnificent Bourbon.  Dram of the night?  The mouth feel is epic: thick, mouth coating, and rich.  The nose and flavors are loaded with malt, cognac, molasses, burnt caramel, leather,  and a huge finish of iterated genius boxwood and sandalwood oak that brings a whole barrister's world of overstuffed brown leather chairs with black brass nails and huge dark brown polished oak surfaces into your olfactory system.   I have to stop writing for a moment.  I've become speechless...  So this big thick malt candy loaded flavor signature is giving me deja vu.  It's Old Ren!  Where the evening began.  This stuff tastes like Old Ren - but better.  Better balance and bigger mouth feel.  Old Ren has the bigger finish, though - and distances itself by being utterly weird.

Old Overholt 4 yo rye - made in Pennsylvania

My interest in rye dictated a taste of Pennsylavia Old Overholt 4.  Suffice it to say it's a whole different animal than the current Jim Beam Old Overholt.  This, too, needs to be its own post.  Old PA Old Overholt drinks much more like Rittenhouse 100 - which really managed to make a convincing replica of that old PA style of red rye.

Willett 25 yo single barrel rye 50% abv. v.s. Hirsch 25 yo rye 46%

How do you end a tasting like that?  How about a head to head between two legendary recent bottlings of hyper mature rye that are rumored to be juice of the same distillery?  Willett Family Estate Bottled Single Barrel Rye 25 year old Barrel 1767, 50% abv. versus Hirsch Selection Kentucky Straight Rye 25 46% abv.  These beauties are dark walnut in the glass.  Freshly poured, their palates seem quite distinct: with the Hirsch going to darkly mulled wine: grapey and loaded with cloves; spiked with St. Joseph's baby aspirin.  The Willet tending more towards a baked apple loaded with the same spiced as the mulled wine.  As they open up with extensive time in the glass, the noses converge.  These are both really big flavor signatures - but weird.  The rye is showing signs of noble rot with the good things that implies (like rancio, density, and character) but also some of the bad things:  weird, intense, loaded with oak, hard to drink.  While the Hirsch lost the baby aspirin and settled down into a big dark presentation dominated by dark purple fruits and cloves... (wait, that's not it...) CLOVES!!!.  The Willetts edged it by doing a strong essence of the hard red candy on a candy apple combined with cinnamon, baked apple loaded with allspice, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon.  Titanic tastes with epic long finishes.  Both unique and fascinating examples of the vanishing glut era.

The finishing pair was apropos as well because it help highlight the differences between barrel and bottle maturation that run like a central thread through the conversation.  The object lesson of the Chartreuse was the undeniable fact of bottle maturation - and its way of relaxing the flavor elements and allowing them to balance better with each other, all while bringing in a sweeter and more vivid presentation of the flavor elements.  I kept getting that feeling with the many examples of young (4-8 year old) Bourbon we were tasting that had sat around in the glass for 20-50 years.  Barrel maturation is, of course, a vastly different animal: concentrating flavors, adding wood influence.  Tonight, was all about how long bottle matured younger whiskies can be amazing.

And I haven't tasted any of the 40-50 year old dusty Chartreuse bottles from Mr. Jasinski's collection yet...