Chuck Cowdery's "Bourbon Strange" Is Now Available For The Kindle

One of the most important books to me in discovering about Bourbon is Chuck Cowdery's "Bourbon Straight".

But as the years have passed since its first printing in 2004 a lot has happened (such as the ascension  of the Craft movement with the rise of the NDP issue, the demise of the age statement,  stocks of Stitzel-Weller drying up, etc...  I've consistently recommended "Bourbon Straight" to people looking to know more about Bourbon, but usually with a small apologetic about some of the information being a little dated.  It's been a well known fact that Chuck has been working on a new version.  Today Chuck announced that it was out on Kindle, with the print version to follow in a few weeks.  

It's called "Bourbon Strange".  As of now it's my current read.  I'll review it as soon as I've devoured it.

This is the link to purchase the Kindle edition:
http://www.amazon.com/Bourbon-Strange-Surprising-Stories-American-ebook/dp/B00MNWKS1Y

*Chuck Cowdery is the author of the Bourbon Country Reader magazine and the indispensable Bourbon news blog http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/

He is also the author of other important whiskey books including

The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste
http://www.amazon.com/Bourbon-Reserve-Straight-Whiskey-Distilled-ebook/dp/B008076O6E
and
Small Barrels Produce Lousy Whiskey
http://cowdery.home.ix.netcom.com/~mbky/smallbarrels.htm

A Large Scale Tasting Of Dusty Old Weller Antiques 1998-2008 Tasted Blind & Compared With The Current Stuff.

11 Years of Old Weller Antique from 1998 (left) to 2008 (right).

The invitation came a couple of months ago.  Mike Jasinski - master dusty hunter and a great lover of old bourbons - had assembled a flight of Old Weller Antique paper labels bottles from 1998 to 2008: a full 11 years that chart the brands movement from Stitzel-Weller to Buffalo Trace.  These dusty bottles have become extremely popular these days and hard to find.  In the past few years the 7 year old age statement was dropped and the bottle design was changed from a stock cylinder with an antique looking paper label to a rounded ball shaped bottle with the ink printed right on the bottle (pictures of the current bottle are at the bottom).   Mike wanted a group of whiskey people to come out and taste them all blind - reporting our findings with numerical scores on the 100 point scale.  

We, however, tasted them blind - self poured from these flasks marked only by a number.

1940 BIB
(photo from Bonham's)

The brand, "Old Weller" harkens back to Pappy Van Winkle's original employer, William LaRue Weller who started his famous whiskey company in Louisville, KY in 1849.  The legendary inventor of the wheated whiskey mash bill (where wheat is used instead of rye as the flavoring grain, above a corn base and bit of malt to add enzymes).  Stitzel-Weller sold the wheated mash bill in a number of expressions, notably Rebel Yell, Cabin Still, and Old Fitzgerald.  Sam Cecil (in The Evolution of Kentucky Whiskey) reports that "Old W.L. Weller" (along with Mammoth Cave and Cabin Still) were brands that Pappy Van Winkle bottled after W. L. Weller's death in 1899 and before partnering with A. Ph. Stitzel during Prohibition using whiskey sourced from the Stitzel Bros.distillery in Louisville and the Old Joe distillery in Anderson.  Looking over old auction records I see the Old W. L Weller Special Reserve expression at 100 proof (as a Bottled In Bond expression) in the Repeal era (see photo at left taken from the October 2013 Bonham's NY Whiskey sale).  The "Old Weller" brand name doesn't seem to appear until the gold veined paper label incarnation apparently born in the early 1970s.  The earliest ad I could find showing it is from 1979 (below):

Ad from 1979 talks about the gold veining.
The word "Antique", however, is absent.

Chuck Cowdery lauds Old Weller Antique as a great value at $16 for a 7 year old in the back of his essential book Straight Bourbon (highly recommended) without reference to the brand's history. Sally Van Winkle Campbell doesn't mention the "Old W.L. Weller" or "Old Weller Antique" brands by name in "But Always Fine Bourbon".  Although she relates a story that "the reason that the distillery came out with 107 proof was because Pap's doctor said he could only have two drinks a day!"  If that's true then the Old Weller Antique expression dates to the mid-1960s (Pappy died in 1966), which jibes pretty well with the fact that I can't find a bottle or mention until 1970 or so.
(Update.  John Lipman (of http://www.ellenjaye.com/) has a much better explanation.  I posted it here:)
http://www.cooperedtot.com/2014/07/john-lipman-explains-why-there-is-107.html

That said, the expression existed through some very solid glory years of Stitzel-Weller (S-W) and then through a transition to production at Ancient Age / Buffalo Trace.  Experience tasting the Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve bottlings from 2009-2013 have shown me that Buffalo Trace has a good handle on the Stitzel-Weller wheated mash bill flavor component.  The first in the series we'd be tasting at Mike's house would be a 1998 Stitzel-Weller Old Weller Antique (abbreviated "OWA" henceforth) - labeled "Louisville".  The rest would be labelled "Frankfort" but, presumably there would be a transition period where Stitzel-Weller stocks would still be used until Buffalo Trace's Frankfort stocks took over.  The Old Weller brand was sold by United Distillers to Sazerac in 1999 (which renamed the Frankfort, KY Ancient Age distillery  Buffalo Trace (BT)  in that same year, 1999).

Update: I'm wrong here.  I left out the period of time the Old Weller wheater recipe was made at New Bernheim where United Distillers (later to become Diageo) had consolidated Bourbon production - leading to the closing of Stitzel-Weller.  Thanks, Mike Jasinski, for setting it straight, in the comments on this post.  Also, in the comments below, Mike adds tasting notes: "The noses are dead giveaways as to which bottle is which. 98-01 had the typical green apple SW nose it is very muted but it is there. The 02-05 have they typical cherried sweet nose that Bernheim distilled wheated bourbons have. The 06-08 bottlings are very typical of the BT wet cardboard nose."

Mike (right center) and Claire Doorden,
(left center), welcome guests

Could we pick out the S-W 1998 stuff blind?  Could we taste a clear demarcation to BT?  Because Mike asked everyone to use a 100 point numerical scale I will be using that grading system for these.  Mike could swear he could identify BT by an aroma that I was classifying as "linseed oil" but which Mike called "cardboard".  Once he used that word I couldn't help but use it myself.  Cardboard - like sniffing the inside of a brown cardboard box is a good description of the aroma.  You'll see it mentioned in my nosing notes quite a bit below.  It's not as bad as it sounds. It's earthy and woody and sits among the floral and deep sugar notes.  As you can see by the scores below, all this stuff ranges from very good to excellent.

Josh Camerote pours himself a blind.

Jo

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 1998 Stitzel-Weller.  Blind #4

Color:  medium amber
Nose:  Honeyed, fruity, oily, mossy, flinty.  Hint of tobacco.
Palate:  Sweet, fruity honeyed.  Maple, treacle shoo fly pie.  Cherry, citrus.
My score:  87  Mike's composite score:  87.

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 1999 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #9

Color: dark medium amber
Nose:  honey toffee, cherry, cola, juicyfruit, oil, sandalwood.
Palate:  Intense sweet sandalwood and rancio.  Chewy mouth feel and long sweet oaky finish
My score: 91  Mike's composite Score: 92

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2000 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #1

Color: Dark amber
Nose: maple syrup juicyfruit.  Brown sugar toffee
Palate:  honey, malty toffee.  Cornflower, apricot bark.  Cherry, root beer
My score:  92  Mike's composite score: 92

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2001 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #8

Color:  dark amber (darkest yet)
Nose: Beautiful nose, floral cardboard
Palate: Honey, ripe cantaloupe, Turkish delight. Candy oak perfume
My score: 89  Mike's composite score: 88

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2002 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #2

Color:  dark amber (a shade darker than blind #1).
Nose light dusty musty oaky malt cherry cocoa.  Trace of iodine.
Palate, sweet cherry cola, char, tannin bitterness.
My score: 87  Mike's composite score:  87

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2003 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #11

Color:  dark medium amber
Nose:  Cardboard, malt toffee rancio brown sugar
Palate: Candied, toffeed, sandalwood perfumed glory.
My score: 91  Mike's composite score: 91

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2004 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #6

Color:  dark amber like 3
Nose: floral sandalwood, cherry, cardboard
Palate: Sweet, cherry, toffee, char and oak tannin.  Longer oaky maple finish with a bitter edge.
 My score 86 (bitter finish knocked it down)  Mike's composite score:  87

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2005 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #3

Color: dark amber, shade darker than 2 and 1
Nose: Oily, char. A little meaty
Palate: Fruity.  Tiny bit sour
My score: 88  Mike's Composite score: 88

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2006 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #7

Color: dark medium amber
Nose: Cardboard cherry juicyfruit
Palate:  honey, cherry toffee juicyfruit.  Oak tannin
My score: 88  Mike's composite score: 87

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2007 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #10

Color: almost as dark as 8/3
Nose: Cardboard, dark, sweet toffee, char, a hint of mildew
Palate: Sweet, cherry, cocoa, dark malt, cocoa, root beer.  Fruity, dark brown and delicious.  Char & edge of bitter char on finish.
My score: 90  Mike's composite score: 89

Old Weller Antique 7 yo. 53.5% abv. 2008 Buffalo Trace.  Blind #5

Color: light medium amber
Nose: Linseed nose, honey, yellow flowers
Palate:  honey, treacle, mint notes, honeysuckle,
My score: 88  Mike's composite score 87

Conclusion:  The Stitzel-Weller in the group wasn't the highest rated and it wasn't apparent to me at the time that it was the Stitzel-Weller one.  I like to think I can see some of the tell tale signs in my tasting notes and that if I were really paying attention I might have caught it.  Coulda Woulda Shoulda.  The bottom line is that it's all delicious Bourbon - with some significant variation between a dark and malty rich variety and a lighter amber more floral and fruity variety.  These varieties don't seem to correlate with year at all.  I suspect it's about barrel variation and rickhouse location.  While my 3 top rated ones were all dark and rich, the lighter ones were excellent drinking in their own right.  And notice that the Stitzel-Weller one was one of the lightest ones.

It makes a lot of sense to compare these experiences of tasting an extensive group of dusty Old Weller Antiques against the stuff you can buy today.  It's extremely popular and lauded.  So popular, however, that it has gone on allocation (i.e. a rationed limited supply to distributes).  It can still be readily found - particularly earlier in each month.  It's the same Buffalo Trace stuff, just now without an age statement.  Does that matter?  I tasted the bottle of Old Weller Antique that I have open at the moment (purchased late 2013) the following day at home - in the open (i.e. not blind).  This was a completely different tasting.  But just one day later the flavors of the paper label OWAs were fresh in my mind.

New Old Weller Antique 107 - no age statement.  53.5% abv. Bottle purchased 2013

Color: Medium light amber
Nose:  Vanilla, floral, hints of mint and lilac.  Light linseed oil/cardboard note.
Palate:  Opening is hotter and less malty than any of the examples tasted at Mike's.  It is grassy sweet with corn and apricot-citrus and cherry fruity notes along with some acetone notes.  The mid palate turns to oak and char, but with a more bitter presentation.
My score: 82

Conclusion.  It's still a wonderful Bourbon for the money, but it has lost a measure of depth of flavor, malty richness, and candied intensity.  With youth it has gained floral, herbal, and fruity notes - but the overall balance is thinner and less lush.

Phil Simon checks Mike's treasures

Phil Simon brought treasures
of his own too. 

The after party to this event was epic.  Major events included Phil Simon bringing a bottle of the legendary Hirsch Rye 13.  This epic bottle will be the topic of it's own post soon, but for the moment here are quick tasting notes taken at the event (when my palate was, admittedly, a bit toasted):

Hirsch 13 rye 47.8 % Medley bottled for Priess by Julian Van Winkle

Color: Dark coppery amber
Nose: caramel toffee, soft lanolin, cut daisy, cilantro flower
Palate;  Gentle, effervescent, malty, caramel, brown sugar, rum rancio, herbal, cinnamon.  Complex, rich, and superb.

Mike then opened a Louisville bottling of W. L Weller Centennial
Then people started getting goofy.

Other highlights included Mike's Louisville bottling of W. L. Weller Centennial, the last of his open bottle of 1916-1922 Old Bridgeport Mongahela PA rye (the topic of an upcoming post), the excellent Diageo bottling of Rosebank 21, and an amazing 1940s Old Taylor (that also needs its own post).  What a wonderful evening!  Thanks Mike and Claire!  Looking forward to our next 2am drive to Waffle House!

Considering Michter's.

I love Michter's.  But which Michter's?  There are two.  There is what we'll call "old Michter's" the Pennsylvania distillery in Schaefferstown that people known as Michter's - and which marketed itself as Michter's but was actually named Pennco for most of the recent past and Bomberger's Distillery before that.  That distillery has been closed since 1990.  It is most famous for one particular 1974 contract run of Bourbon made for a guy named Hirsch and aged for a heck of a long time.  This became the subject of a fantastic book called "The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste - The True Story of A. H. Hirsch Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey.  Distilled in the Spring 1974.  Made and Bottled in Kentucky" by Chuck Cowdery.  This book is a miracle, which somehow tells something profound and universal about the Bourbon business, the craftsmanship, and history by focusing on one particular legendary run of juice.  I cannot recommend this book more highly - it is a sweet and compulsive read and will teach you lessons about Bourbon that any enthusiast must know.  It will also make you crave a taste of A. H. Hirsch's Bourbon - and that's a bit of problem as it is not around except at auction and then at stratospheric prices - dozens of times what it sold for even half a decade ago.

Meanwhile, there is a brand of Bourbon, whiskey, and rye sold in many stores called Michter's which is made by an unrelated company - owned by Chatham Imports, a middle-tier importer/wholesaler.  We'll call that "new Michter's".  New Michter's has extensive distribution for a company producing small quantities - and an excellent reputation for quality offerings at the high end of their line.  You frequently see particular issues highly sought after in the Bourbon enthusiast community.

A few months back I visited the home of New York American whiskey enthusiast Jared Zuckman.  While his newborn son slept next to us, Jared graciously and generously led me through a tasting which spanned such Bourbon stellar bottlings Four Roses Small Batch 125th Anniversary, Jefferson Presidential Select 18, A.H. Hirsch 16 foil top ("old Michter's"), and Michter's 20 ("new Michter's") among others.

Jared Zuckman's bottles of new and old Michter's

My quick notes from that tasting for the two Michter's are as follows:

A.H. Hirsch Reserve 16 gold foil top Straight Bourbon 45.8% abv - 91.6 proof

Dark amber color
A beautiful big rich nose of Vanilla florals, brown sugar, sandalwood oak
The palate is thinner than you'd expect given the nose.  Thinner mouth feel.  Sandalwood perfume, citrus, and toffee bourbon flavors.  In the mid-palate there is a a pervasive but gentle mustiness.  The finish all about astringent oak.

Michter's 20 Single Barrel Bourbon 57.1% abv Barrel 2368, bottle 12 of 220

Hazelnut Chestnut color
Huge nose of dark oak perfume, deep musky loam, rich molasses and dark chocolate.  With air and a drop of water, raw chocolate chip cookie dough and pancake batter notes.
Huge sweet palate with thick mouth feel. Toasted & burnt coconut,  dark roasted cocoa, maple glazed roasted pecans.

In some ways it's not a fair comparison - the Michter's 20 is a barrel proof product.  But there's no point actually denying the fact that the "new Michter's" 20 is a superior pour - for whatever that's worth.  And pretty dramatically so.  Jared would be the first to say so.  He called the Hirsch 16, "historically interesting but overrated".  He called the Michter's Single Barrel 20 "the pour of the year" for him.  I had to concur.  Obviously the A.H. Hirsch is something more than just what's in the glass.  It's a "one year type" - like the 1793 Chain Cent is a one year type - rare and unique as a type - beyond just rare as an issue - functioning as a vanished symbol of something beautiful and gone.  Pennsylvania's demise as a distilling center is all tied up with the death of rye, the death of distilling in the North-East, and the decline of American Whiskey in general in the dark days of glut.  A.H. Hirsch's batch represents the "jewels in the darkness" - which came out of the rickhouses in the 90s as forgotten treasures, like the gold of King Tut's tomb.  More on Tut and Michter's later...  But for all that, what's in the glass (i.e. what you'd taste blind) is vitally important too.  And the takeaway here is that new Michter's 20 is a stunning pour - and a true leading product.

So, what is "new Michter's" and how does it relate to "old Michter's"?  I have my take on it, but here's how Cowdery describes it in "The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste":

http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com
/2012/09/print-edition-of-best-bourbon-youll.html

"What about the Michter’s bourbon, rye and other whiskeys on store shelves today? What’s that and what is its relationship to the Michter’s Distillery and A. H. Hirsch Reserve Bourbon? After Michter’s closed, the Michter’s trademark was abandoned. A few years later, a Philadelphia company called Chatham Imports re-registered the abandoned mark and began to sell a line of Michter’s bourbons and other whiskeys. None of the whiskey they sell was made at the Michter’s Distillery in Pennsylvania. They are a non-distiller producer, which means they buy bulk whiskey made by one or more of the usual suspects and bottle it under the Michter’s brand name. Because they control rights to the Michter’s name, they can and do claim what is now (as of 2012) 259 years of Michter’s history as their own, even though they have just the name and nothing else that connects them to the distillery in Schaefferstown. Ironically, the Michter’s name itself is only about 60 years old. Over the years, the distillery was known by many different names."

"In 2011 , the new Michter’s announced its intention to build a micro-distillery in downtown Louisville, and they joined the Kentucky Distillers Association. That Michter’s had nothing to do with A. H. Hirsch Reserve and has no further role in its story."

Cowdery, Charles (2012-05-02). The Best Bourbon You'll Never Taste. The True Story Of A. H. Hirsch Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Distilled In The Spring Of 1974. Made and Bottled in Kentucky.

Everything that Chuck says in that passage is factual and these facts have led some people to be angry at the new company selling whiskey with the brand name Michter's.  But, as I'll explain later on, it's not quite the whole truth.  Yet the anger in some quarters is quite real.  For an example of this angry reaction you can't do better than the anonymous blogger of http://thebourbontruth.tumblr.com/ who writes under the pseudonym "Lloyd Christmas".  He rages at Non-Distiller-Producers (NDPs) like Jefferson's and others.  but he reserves a special vitriol for new Michter's:

"The distillery closed in 1990 for good and when the abandoned name finds its way into the public domain for Mr. “Sleaze of the Year” to take it as if it’s been his forever. The new Michter’s starts releasing Michter’s Rye, Bourbon and Whiskey under a very fake, very dishonest story. Washington’s troops drank it, you say? Bullshit, I say."

"Makes up a bunch of more crap that only a con man comes up with. Obviously this sleaze has never taken — or at least never paid attention in — an ethics class while at Yale, but I bet he aced Lying 101 and Advanced Greed."

"I’ll be honest and say I don’t know if he owns barrels he sourced, aged or if he bought them ready for bottling. What I know is that Kentucky Bourbon Distillers bottled most/all of it and, I believe, supplied the barrels. Many, if not all, are being bottled by someone new, I believe in California."

"To give some credit, there were some older batches of 10 year Rye and Bourbon that were great. Incredible 25 year and first batch 20 year bourbons as well. The rest is stuff you try at a bar and are glad you didn’t get a bottle. Chatham imports is not even second rate but they beat the Michter’s name they adopted from the scrap heap as the gift that keeps on giving."

http://thebourbontruth.tumblr.com/post/41798018064/whisky-sleaze-of-the-year-and-sinking-to-the-bottom-of

Actually - "Lloyd" says some much worse things in that post.  His rants peel paint and often go way over the line.  I actually picked some of the more gentle areas to quote from.  I have issues with many of the things "Lloyd" says, but there are some legitimate beefs here.  If you go to Michter's web site the first thing you see (before giving your birthday) is the caption "Wine Enthusiast Distiller of the Year" and the following image:

Photoshopped barrel heads - see missing support cables at right and just left of center.

Michter's is, as Chuck reported, building a pair of distilleries - one in Shively, KY and another in urban downtown Louisville on the strip.  The one in Shively already has a pair of small test stills and a large 60' column still from Vendome is being fabricated and is expected to be delivered and installed this coming summer.  It will have a pot doubler - or "thumper" - as the old Michter's distillery did.  But Michter's isn't in full production yet - and that group of barrels in the photograph on the web site are a dream for the future rather than an actual group of physical barrels with that printing on the barrel ends. Michter's was, indeed named "Distiller of the Year" by Wine Enthusiast in 2012.  But those barrels in that photograph are photoshopped.  Lloyd rages that this photograph is a deliberately constructed lie - calculated to mislead people into believing that the whisky they buy is actually distilled, barreled and aged by Micther's.  That's clearly where Michter's intends to go - but they aren't there yet.

 Let's deal with "Lloyd"'s objections.  They are, to summarize:

• Willie Pratt given the title "Master Distiller" while Michter's still isn't distilling
• Wine Enthusiast awards Michter's "Distillery of the Year" in 2012 before their distillery operations are in production.
• Michter's Celebration sold in a fancy box for $4000.  The idea is that is like Dalmore: elitist and ultimately based on hype.
• new Michter's chose to base operations in Kentucky, rather than in Pennsylvania where old Michter's was located.
• The assertion that early releases were wonderful - and had Stizel-Weller stocks, and have gone down hill as those stocks disappeared leaving current bottlings inferior to older ones.
• new Michter's claims the mantle of centuries of history in their advertising, but are totally unrelated to old Michter's .  

Some of these points are straight up correct, and some are just wrong.

• Willie Pratt's title is "Master Distiller" and he is already doing test distillation batches, and he is doing barrel selection and is vatting.  That's all some master distiller type stuff.  But the whiskey you buy on the shelves wasn't distilled by Willie Pratt.  So this is ambiguous at best.
• The text accompanying Wine Enthusiast's award is a well written restatement of Michter's marketing literature.  It commits the mistake of confusing old Michter's and new the same entity.  It states that Michter's was "restarted".  This simply isn't true.  While the award text describes both of Michter's distilleries which are under development in the present tense - it also talks a lot about Michter's "making" whiskey.  This is clearly misleading.   It reminds me of the Nobel committee awarding Obama the Peace Prize - presumably in the hopes that he would be a force for world peace going forward.  Clearly new Michter's has some very well defined ambitions about being a distiller that they are sinking capital into.  But that's the future.  What you are drinking now wasn't distilled by Michter's - although some was contract distilled for them - and to their specifications including some unique mash bills.  I don't know if you can blame Michter's for the wording of the award - but it clearly confuses the truth of the matter.
• Michter's Celebration is an exercise in fancy decanter type "ultra-premium" marketing, like you usually see high end Cognac or single malt Scotch whisky engaged in.  It's an ominous development for American whiskey - primarily from the price pressure perspective.  I don't like the decanter business, in general, in any market.  However, it was a tiny production run.  No one forced you to buy it.  It sold out quickly.  Who really cares?  If it's a matter of principal to you, then you do.  Otherwise, not so much.
• Joe Magliocco, Michter's President makes clear that the decision to locate their new distilleries in Kentucky was a business decision based primarily on the culture and labor resources there.  It's hard to argue with that.  They didn't attempt to resurrect the old Michter's site because it's a rat's nest of liability. 
• While Lloyd Christmas regularly asserts that Michter's is going downhill, I took part in a blind tasting held by Steven Zeller - The Smoky Beast - where we had three different bottlings of Michter's Single Barrel 10 year old Bourbon (and a Pappy Lot "B" thrown in for confusion).  I ended up picking the newest one as the best and, in fact, ranked them in inverse order of date.  In other words I liked the oldest bottling the least and the youngest the most - in order.  And that was tasting blind:  http://smokybeast.blogspot.com/2013/10/going-vertical-history-of-michters.html
• Lloyd's complaint about new Michter's deliberately stating that they have a multi-century history in their marketing (which is not true) is absolutely correct and is certainly troubling.

Joe points at old Michter's King Tut decanters.

A little while back, New York food and whisky blogger Susanna Skiver Barton of http://whattastesgood.net/ and I spent a very nice evening with Joe Magliocco, President of Chatham Imports and Michter's and Emily Malinowski who works with him.  (She blogged about the evening here).
Over the course of the evening we discussed a few of these issues, but mostly we talked about history and drank most of the Michter's line (and then kept drinking various other things late into the evening).  The first thing that popped out at me was that Joe Magliocco has a long history with old Michter's whiskey and has a real affection for it.  He tells a story about his first job, when starting at Chatham - his father's wine and spirits import and distribution business in 1976, was to move a large number of surplus King Tut decanters which old Michter's had produced to catch the fever of "Tutmania" that accompanied the traveling exhibition of King Tut's treasures.  He still has a good collection of King Tut decanters - among his extensive collection of Michter's decanters generally.  For example I had never seen some of these Michter's decanters before:

Some unusual 1970s Michter's decanters.

Joe Magliocco and Old Michter's
American Whiskey

Magliocco shows plans for the Louisville distillery.

Joe began our conversation by putting a tax stamped 1970s-80s dusty of old Michter's whiskey on the table and cited it as a frequent pour of his father's and an inspiration for a number of the things they are doing today.  This is the odd extremely high rye and high-malt corn whiskey that was almost but not quite Bourbon (because the mash was 50% corn.  1% too low to be legally Bourbon).  Joe said that his father drank and enjoyed it.  This old, unusual, classic Michter's form of American whiskey continues to be an inspiration for new Michter's today and is found in at least two of their expressions US1 American Whiskey and the Celebration bottling.  This effort at continuity with Michter's past is admirable.  Over the course of the evening we tasted much of the Michter's line up.  I'll post tasting notes for a few of those expressions below (the ones I took samples of, and/or have bottles of), but suffice it to say, there's some excellent cask selection and some very good palates on display at new Michter's.  The whiskeys, Bourbons and ryes in the US1 line are quite good and some of the single barrel offerings are state of the art.  Furthermore, as Joe made clear, and already noted Michter's isn't just an NDP and a bottler of contract runs made elsewhere.  They are actively developing two distilleries in Kentucky.  They aren't alone in independently bottling other distillery's whisky while developing their own distillery.  There are a range of examples. from Willett's (Kentucky Bourbon Distillers), to Smooth Ambler, Old Pogue, Widow Jane, and many others.  The fact that they are developing their own whiskey production and are members of the Kentucky Distillers Association should give them a degree of legitimacy and respect.

One of new Michter's test stills in their new Shively distillery.
image from:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/
forget-scotch-rye-whiskey-comeback-packs-100-proof-punch.html 

The US-1 line up.

By the way, when we tasted that homage to old Michter's Sour Mash Whiskey, the US1 American Whiskey - I found that the new batch was considerably better than the one I had tried before.  It is butterscotchy, grassy, with nice jujubee juicy fruit flavors.  The other entry level expressions were good too. US1 bourbon was light, floral (marigold) with nice balance.  The US1 Rye (6 years old) had floral herbal spice but also a characteristic toffee note you'll find in all the Michter's ryes.  Michter's US-1 Sour Mash (little over 6 years old) is very nice with floral sweetness, but also some sophisticated notes of clay, dust, butterscotch & spice.

Michter's 10 (barrel 2340) 47.2%a abv

Color: dark amber with coppery glints.

Nose: Candy corn, blackstrap molasses, herbal rye, bourbon vanilla pods and char. Nosing deeper you get coconut, and beautiful sandalwood incense perfume. Musky, musty, earthy and spicy.

Palate: syrupy mouth feel, dark molasses sweetness, deep char, beautiful vanilla and coconut from white oak, and a lilting refrain of herbal rye spice dancing above the dark heavy brown cooked sugars and bitter char foundation.  That dark vanilla extract leads - with plenty of vegetal treacle and brightly acidic citrus preserves.  Notes of aspirin and ivy herbals speak to old rye.  The expansion is big and bold with dark toffee, caramel, and rich sandalwood oak.  The oak tannins wax on the turn - getting spicy and drying.  The finish is long, and complex with big old wet oak dominating, but also molasses, dark chocolate, black coffee, and aromatherapy oils hanging around.  It's a big, rich, darkly brown old style whiskey.  In some ways it's bigger, more darkly wooded, and more displays more dark cooked sugar Maillard reaction flavors than the 20.  But the 20 has greater complexity, bigger rounder sweetness, and more going on to tease apart.   It's oily heavy dark flavored whisky that feels like old fashioned whisky. It is very reminiscent of the style of the big Old Fitz's of the 50s (not the candy notes of a wheater, but the same dark malty feeling and balance).

Michter's Celebration 112.3 proof 

A vatting of 30 yr bourbon and 30 year old rye plus younger favorite casks
Color: medium amber
Nose: Honey, pecan, old musty oak.
Palate: Honey, citrus floral, rye spice.
Intensely floral, herbal, sunny and balanced.  There are sunflowers, lemon and candied orange peel.  Canola oil, almond oil, and orange rind.  Old rye's dark green aspirin and complex old herbal bitters flavor hang as a backdrop behind the sweet and sunny.  Added air brings out the sweetness and a bit of mineral dust.  This is big, complex, flavor dense stuff - but with a balance that is much brighter, sunnier, and less brown than the Single Barrel 20 or the 10.  The story is the vatting in of plenty of rye - both hyper mature and vibrantly young.  It's unusual, very good, and yet very much of a piece with the rest of the Michter's line.  It is, however, sold at a very silly price.

Michter's Single Barrel Bourbon 20 57.1% abv

Color Dark amber,
Nose: oak forward, qumquats, ambergris, caramel, marigolds and daisies, cooking oil
Palate:  Beautiful rich toffee and rancio roundness like old cognac, enlivened with tart acid citrus, which melds into rich sandalwood perfume and darker, mossier, old wet oak aspect.  Dark chocolate blooms at the turn which waxes into tannin spice.  This is a big bold dark brown flavor.  With extensive air, a beautiful sweet herbal flavor asserts itself - perfumed, darkly green, and complex.  This is a monster that opens with a drop of water too - becoming sweeter and more floral.  It's beautiful both neat and with a drop.

It's quite clear there there is a definite set of flavor preferences here.  There is a clear sense of aesthetic regarding  flavors across the line.  The preference is for full flavors - rich and dark and old fashioned.  There is also some excellent palates at work in barrel selection, batching, and filtering.  Why is it so good?  Joe Magliocco, not surprisingly, has some things to say on the topic.  Stuff they have contract distilled is barreled at 103 proof.  125 proof is standard.  They have barrels made using yard dried wood exposed to the elements for 18-36 months.  With their barrels they have them toasted them before being charred.  Their barrels come from Mcinnis in Cuba Missouri, Independent Stave in Lebanon Missouri and a 3rd source he cannot name.  They do a lot with filtering - which sounds like a dirty word to whisky enthusiast me - but Magliocco assures me that filtering a creative paintbrush that Willie Pratt can use to change the balance of flavors - executing creative control.  The unavoidable impression of all that is that there is some knowledge, palate, and crafting going on.  Good whiskey is seldom an accident.

Yet I find reactions like the one I got from EMT paramedic and bourbon afficionado, Ari Susskind, earlier this week at a whisky event who said that he doesn't buy Michter's because he doesn't like that they muddy up the identity of Michters.  Mr. Susskind is a leader of a whisky group, as well as someone who makes private cask selections for liquor stores in his area, not just a casual drinker - so this presents a troubling aspect.  It's not the whiskey - it's the branding story and it isn't just "Lloyd Christmas" howling in the wilderness over at BourbonTruth.  But many of the other examples I previously gave (Willet's Old Pogue, etc..) are apparently in the same boat:  old distillery brands resurrected with newly built distilleries, selling someone else's juice until their own is in full production and ready for market after barrel maturation.  You don't hear this complaint much about them?  So what's the deal?  Is it that Chatham Imports is a middle tier distributor  Shouldn't be.  There is a grand tradition of whiskey merchants becoming distillers.  Pappy Van Winkle himself was a wholesaler and distributor before he partnered with Stitzel and built a new distillery to resurrect a beloved old brand.  So what is it?

Part of it is that it's Michter's.  Chatham took the brand name because Joe Magliocco loved it legitimately and it was abandoned.  He might have bought it but the owners had literally fled the liability of the busted down site of the physical distillery.  Picking up that abandoned brand name looks like good business and Joe is certainly a good businessman.  But the story is deeply connected to a sense of Bourbon's history and new Michter's connecting piece to that history is lacking.  With Willett's, Drew Kulsveen is a 2nd generation member of the Willett family and the distillery is the same one.  With Pogue - it's the same blood of the old family name.  With Smooth Ambler it's a new brand with no baggage.  But with Michter's the ghosts are thick and Michter's marketing talk that attempts to blur the very real line between old Michter's claims to history (already a bit fanciful - even when they were in PA) and the new project.  Michter's is special because it's about the tragic death of Pennsylvania's distilling tradition - deeply connected with rye whiskey in America.  It's about A. H. Hirsch and the story of that one amazing batch that has come to symbolize the dark tomb of the Bourbon glut era in the way that King Tut's glorious golden death mask has come to symbolize the vanished glories of ancient Egypt.

Should you care?  I'm here to tell you straight up that Michter's Single Barrel 10 is one of the best Bourbons on the market you can actually find on a store shelf.  I actually picked it blind ahead of Pappy (thanks again, Steve Zeller).  You have to decide for yourself whether what's in the glass is more important to you than a marketing story that blurs the truth that old and new Michters are separate things.

Michter's 25 yo rye. Toffee, dark spice, kiss of baby aspirin. Caramel, ivy, rich

Update:  Great post from "Lloyd Christmas" @Bourbontruth about Michter's:  loaded with scholarship and detail about specific editions.  It's also loaded with a point by point rebuttal of this post.  But he tempers his tone, and loads the post with some much empirical and useful data that I'm left only feeling grateful.   I readily concede that Bourbon Truth's post has a lot more specific information that this post provides.  It's also among the best writing that he has done to date:

http://thebourbontruth.tumblr.com/post/79568476215/deceit-vs-deception-the-heroes-and-hobos-of-whiskey

Smooth Ambler Yearling Bourbon - An Infant of Power and Grace.

Smooth Ambler is an exciting, relatively new whiskey project in the heart of West Virginia.  Unlike a lot of craft distillers these days, John Little, Master Distiller, wants to make good bourbon in the classic style.  This is almost a rarity in the Wild Wild West of craft spirits where everyone is trying to do something wildly inventive, iconoclastic, and "break the mold" in one domain or another.  For many craft distillers this mean rapid maturation in small barrels, and sometimes even additional tricks to enhance rapid maturation ranging from high heat, low frequency sound, wood chips and stave chunks to enhance surface area or even mechanical pressure to force the whisky through the wood.  There's also a diverse creativity in mash bills and experimentation with what should go into the mash.  Smooth Ambler doesn't do any of this.  They make traditional spirits in the traditional way.  And they do it well.  The biggest novelty here is that they are doing it in the mountains of West Virginia.

Now a big reason that so many other craft distillers are all about rapid maturation is that they want to start selling whiskey sooner.  Smooth Ambler, like many other craft distillers, also sells a variety of white (unaged) spirits, specifically Greenbriar Gin and Whitewater Vodka (and a barrel aged gin as well).  But whiskey is the primary angle.  Instead of selling young whiskey that has been rapidly "matured", like so many others, Smooth Ambler went the route of bottling casks of bourbon and rye selected ("Curated") from other distilleries to tide them over until their own distilled bourbon was ready.  Many other craft distillers sell bourbon or rye they got from another distillery too (and many of them do not actually distill anything of their own either) - and there has been a bunch of controversy about dishonesty among what Chuck Cowdery has labelled "NDP" Non Distiller Producers because many of them play games with the labeling laws and hide the fact that they are selling someone else's juice.  Chuck asked:

"why do business with someone who makes you play stupid guessing games about the basic question of who made their product?"
http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-rational-way-to-regard-ndp-whiskeys.html

Smooth Amber doesn't do this either.  About a year ago I wrote about Smooth Ambler's "curated" bottlings of bourbons and ryes from Lawrenceburg Distillers of Indiana, now MGP.  They have taken pains to separately brand and label their "curated" whiskeys - labelled "Old Scout" and "Very Old Scout".  They are completely, refreshingly, honest and up front about acknowledging what and where.  In that post I pointed out that Smooth Ambler did the whole brokered bourbon thing the right way - and for the right reasons (i.e. to help finance the development of a native West Virginia true straight bourbon whiskey.)  I said that buying Smooth Ambler was essentially a "patriotic act".   I stand by that assessment just as much today as I did a year ago.

John Little - nice guy - but lethal to fish

John Little, himself, is extremely appealing, by the way.  Craftsman, redneck, intellectual, and what the Yiddish call "Mensch".  Little is a complete person: family man, thinker, passionate, full of integrity.  I enjoy every interaction I have with him.  And I've had quite a few thanks to social media.  John is a redneck who loves to shoot (and teaches his kids to shoot), fish, and build stuff.  He also likes to argue politics.  Being at the nexus of a number of communities (i.e. whisky epicures, drinkers, and his West Virginia small town community) these debates tend to bring together people from across the usual cultural and political divides.  Little is Solomonic in these things.  He sees the good in every position.  In the polarized world of American politics people who can do this are a rarity.  I must confess I have come to like him quite a bit.

But what about Smooth Ambler's native West Virginia bourbon whiskey?  Over the past year or so they have released a product called "Yearling" which is a young taste of their bourbon.  This is analogous to many other new distillery's "work in progress" bottlings like Kilkerran's "Work in Progress"; Ardbeg" "Young" and "Still Young", Kilchoman's "Inaugural", and Mackmyra's "Preludium".  Yearling is Smooth Ambler's "Preludium"

It's made with a wheated mash bill (corn, wheat and barley) and the new batches (batch 11 is the current one) are aged in full size new oak barrels.  Older batches reflect Smooth Ambler's evolution.  Early batches were aged in  small kiln dried barrels and a mash bill with more wheat and less corn .  As they went along they tuned the mash bill, upping the corn, and changed the barrel management to exclusively large sized barrels.  (Specifics of the mash bill follow in Little's comments at the end of this post).   The bottle I picked up and carried around for months and months is one of the old ones.  It's under two years old - too young to be called "Straight Bourbon".  Young wheaters aren't supposed to be particularly tasty - but the proof is in the glass.

Smooth Ambler Yearling Bourbon Whiskey 46% abv.  

375ml bottle.  Aged 1 Year and 10 Months.  Batch 4, Bottled 5/28/12 by TJH.

Color: light amber and dark gold with russet glints.

Nose:  Gentle bourbon aromas of stewed stone fruits, citrus, and candy.  Lightly floral with elements of violets and mint, with a vegetal and nutty quality like unroasted peanuts.  Underneath is a lovely exotic oak aromas that come off like patchouli or sandalwood incense.   The nose is lovely.  It takes 20-30 minutes to really bloom in the glass but when it does it gets bigger and sweeter than you'd think it could.

Palate:  Sweet and gently spicy.  The opening is sweet with treacle, peach, solvent, and corn syrup and spicy with red pepper flakes.  The expansion follows quickly with a prickly warm earthy musky quality I find reminiscent of Beam: loamy and farmy - like digging in the earthen floor of an old barn.  The whole mid-palate has an elegant lean lithe quality that reads "sophisticated spirit" to me.  There's some bready yeasty notes in the late expansion.  This is the area where I most notice the youth.  At the turn to the finish there's a bitter herbal turn that curbs the sweetness of the opening.  There are notes of new leather and classic herbal bitters here.  The finish is gentle with oak and char and earthy glow.  The herbal bitter aspect lasts longer than you'd expect for such a young whisky.

 The mouth feel is gentle and light - but flavor dense and never thin.  Despite the sweet opening the whole balance is almost dry.  This is lovely, nuanced, elegant bourbon already.  At 46% there's head room to experiment with water.  Water adds to the musk on the nose, but notches down the attractive incense aspects.  A few drops amps up the heat and spice on the palate, slightly enriches the mouth feel, but also adds to the bitters on the finish.  I prefer it neat - without water.

Final verdict:  delicious.

****

It's fine bourbon now and it shows enormous promise for the future.  Wheated bourbons, in particular, tend to age well.  This is a fine distillate.  With John Little's shepherding, there is no reason to expect anything less than great things from Smooth Ambler's own bourbons in the future.  

I discussed these points explicitly with John Little.  He described the evolution of Yearling's mash bill and barrel management as follows:

"Yearling started off as 60% corn, 20% wheat, and 20% malted barley. It was all originally barreled in small casks (5-15 gallons). It was kiln dried, I believe. I think it adds to the one real negative in small casks...popsicle stick or sawdust notes. Now the recipe is 73% corn, 15% wheat, 12% malted barley....all in big barrels. So, the first stuff we release will be the old recipe and we will transition into the new recipe...but all will be from big barrels."

My bottle here is the early mash bill small barrel stuff.  That means that later batches of Yearling should be even better.  I'm going to seek out a later sample and do a head to head.  As for when the flagship Smooth Ambler native bourbon will be coming out, Little says:  

"I think it's good now but we are going to wait until 2015 for the release of our "flagship". It will be named something else, but we can't quite nailed the name yet. Suggestions?"

I'll be thinking of names.  If you have any suggestions put them in the comments below and I'll be sure to pass them along.