James E. Pepper Rye 1776
Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:07 pm
I'm not sure how to enter an actual review here (I'm normally only a phorum phreak), so perhaps the moderators can add this to the official "reviews" section. Anyway, I picked up a bottle of James. E. Pepper 1776 100% rye, 100-proof whiskey today in Ohio and I'm really REALLY impressed with it. It's a sourced bottling, from Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana (LDI) through Kentucky Bourbon Distillers (KDB) (at least I believe, since they list their bottling as Bardstown, KY). The actual bottler is Barrel House Distillery. And it is very VERY good.
Barrel House Distillery has been around for awhile. Apparently they reside in Lexington, Kentucky in a warehouse once owned by Schenley, when Schenley owned the James E. Pepper brand. Now Jeff Wiseman and Peter Wright have gained ownership of the brand and are producing "James E. Pepper 1776 Straight Rye Whiskey". Okay, they're not REALLY producing the whiskey, at least kinda-sorta... the juice is distilled at LDI, as is true of about a dozen or more "sourced" whiskies. But one could certainly find a lesser-quality vendor than LDI (and many have). What Wiseman and Wright have done is kind of interesting, especially to someone like myself who appreciates the desire to revive a fine old whiskey, which is apparently the goal of these gentlemen.
Their original idea was to revive the brand. In internet forum postings one of them made it very clear that they were not distillers, but rather marketers with a special interest in this brand and its history. I won't go into much more here, because we'll have a page coming out on them soon that will cover a rather fascinating story of a side of modern brand development that rarely gets the attention it deserves. Suffice it to say that they established what they wanted to do, and then went about finding a distiller who could do that for them. Lawrenceburg Distillery - Indiana (LDI) couldn't have been a better choice.
Barrel House didn't start out with a Kentucky (style) bourbon. As is true of most startups, their first products were gin and "moonshine". And there is some abiguity as to whether they can market a "Bourbon" called James E. Pepper, as Diageo may still own rights to that brand. But not to James E. Pepper "Rye". And this is really good rye whiskey. They claim to own the original mashbill recipes, and that might be true, although I suspect what they're doing is selecting what they consider to be excellent examples from LDI 100% rye whiskey originally purchased by Kentucky Bourbon Distillers in Bardstown. Drew Kulsveen is no slouch when it comes to selecting honey barrels, and since this whiskey is bottled in Bardstown, I'm assuming Drew had something to do with selecting the sort of rye whiskey that Peter and Jeff wanted to present to the world as their version of James E. Pepper rye.
Good choice.
Okay, my "tasting notes" aren't like y'all's. I'm not good at nuances, or at least the accepted NAMES of nuances. To me, "chocolate" is such an ambiguous term as to be laughably inept as a descriptor. Did the taster mean Godiva? Hershey? White chocolate (which isn't even chocolate), M&M's? See's? Oh, come on; give me a break. And "dark, pitted fruit"? Uh, y'mean like... olives? I don't think I'd like a whiskey that tasted like olives. So, I'm not knocking folks who can identify lavender, or smokey rosemary, or rutabagas; I'm just unable to do that myself. What I CAN do, is tell whether a whiskey's flavor matches that of another whiskey. I'm pretty good at that (1st place in every Bourbon Academy tasting contest I've participated in). And, when I compare the new James E. Pepper rye to a sample of Old Crow Rye (bet ya didn't know Old Crow made a rye, did you. Well, they did) bottled for H.B. Kirk & Company back in the late 1800's, guess what? It doesn't taste like that. But it tastes a lot more like that than, say, Heaven Hill's excellent Rittenhouse Rye (also 100-proof), or my beloved Sazerac Thomas Handy (reduced to 100-proof). One factor is probably that, unlike many bottlers of LDI rye, James E. Pepper 1776 isn't chill-filtered (YEAYYYYYY!!), although Handy isn't, either.
Bottom line: this is one really tasty Kentucky-(style) rye whiskey. I think Handy is still my favorite overall, but at $80 bucks a bottle (IF you can even find any), I think I'll keep a couple bottles of James E. Pepper on my shelf for normal usage. At $28.99 a bottle (in Ohio, probably less anywhere else) it's the only rye you really need to have.
Barrel House Distillery has been around for awhile. Apparently they reside in Lexington, Kentucky in a warehouse once owned by Schenley, when Schenley owned the James E. Pepper brand. Now Jeff Wiseman and Peter Wright have gained ownership of the brand and are producing "James E. Pepper 1776 Straight Rye Whiskey". Okay, they're not REALLY producing the whiskey, at least kinda-sorta... the juice is distilled at LDI, as is true of about a dozen or more "sourced" whiskies. But one could certainly find a lesser-quality vendor than LDI (and many have). What Wiseman and Wright have done is kind of interesting, especially to someone like myself who appreciates the desire to revive a fine old whiskey, which is apparently the goal of these gentlemen.
Their original idea was to revive the brand. In internet forum postings one of them made it very clear that they were not distillers, but rather marketers with a special interest in this brand and its history. I won't go into much more here, because we'll have a page coming out on them soon that will cover a rather fascinating story of a side of modern brand development that rarely gets the attention it deserves. Suffice it to say that they established what they wanted to do, and then went about finding a distiller who could do that for them. Lawrenceburg Distillery - Indiana (LDI) couldn't have been a better choice.
Barrel House didn't start out with a Kentucky (style) bourbon. As is true of most startups, their first products were gin and "moonshine". And there is some abiguity as to whether they can market a "Bourbon" called James E. Pepper, as Diageo may still own rights to that brand. But not to James E. Pepper "Rye". And this is really good rye whiskey. They claim to own the original mashbill recipes, and that might be true, although I suspect what they're doing is selecting what they consider to be excellent examples from LDI 100% rye whiskey originally purchased by Kentucky Bourbon Distillers in Bardstown. Drew Kulsveen is no slouch when it comes to selecting honey barrels, and since this whiskey is bottled in Bardstown, I'm assuming Drew had something to do with selecting the sort of rye whiskey that Peter and Jeff wanted to present to the world as their version of James E. Pepper rye.
Good choice.
Okay, my "tasting notes" aren't like y'all's. I'm not good at nuances, or at least the accepted NAMES of nuances. To me, "chocolate" is such an ambiguous term as to be laughably inept as a descriptor. Did the taster mean Godiva? Hershey? White chocolate (which isn't even chocolate), M&M's? See's? Oh, come on; give me a break. And "dark, pitted fruit"? Uh, y'mean like... olives? I don't think I'd like a whiskey that tasted like olives. So, I'm not knocking folks who can identify lavender, or smokey rosemary, or rutabagas; I'm just unable to do that myself. What I CAN do, is tell whether a whiskey's flavor matches that of another whiskey. I'm pretty good at that (1st place in every Bourbon Academy tasting contest I've participated in). And, when I compare the new James E. Pepper rye to a sample of Old Crow Rye (bet ya didn't know Old Crow made a rye, did you. Well, they did) bottled for H.B. Kirk & Company back in the late 1800's, guess what? It doesn't taste like that. But it tastes a lot more like that than, say, Heaven Hill's excellent Rittenhouse Rye (also 100-proof), or my beloved Sazerac Thomas Handy (reduced to 100-proof). One factor is probably that, unlike many bottlers of LDI rye, James E. Pepper 1776 isn't chill-filtered (YEAYYYYYY!!), although Handy isn't, either.
Bottom line: this is one really tasty Kentucky-(style) rye whiskey. I think Handy is still my favorite overall, but at $80 bucks a bottle (IF you can even find any), I think I'll keep a couple bottles of James E. Pepper on my shelf for normal usage. At $28.99 a bottle (in Ohio, probably less anywhere else) it's the only rye you really need to have.