by gillmang » Sun May 14, 2006 6:07 pm
Mike, the bottle is in a locked cabinet at my office and I will bring it home and give more complete notes tomorrow night, because I want to be accurate. As it happens until recently I had some OG from National Distillers that I bought myself in St. Martin last December, it had the paler orange label and fluted bottled neck and smaller representation of the Grandad figurehead that denotes ND-era whiskey. It did have a statement on it of both Clermont and Frankfort and the bottle was stamped 90 on the bottom; I inferred this was all Frankfort whiskey but bottled after the takeover. Anyway it had a deep fruity taste, dark marmelade-like, exactly what you are talking about in the ND sample you tasted. The fruity quality of the JD Silver Select was not as intense as that but comparable to a degree. I'll give better notes later this week when I retrieve the bottle.
One of the things I wonder about is, i) what caused that old fruity taste, which is evident also (in a different way) in ND OT, and ii) why has that taste been rubbed out in most modern bourbon including bourbon sold under the names we are discussing?. In Bardstown during the recent Sampler and the SB Gazebo tastings, I had the chance to taste a number of whiskeys from the 1940's until the 70's (both bourbon and straight rye) and most had that fruity-like taste (e.g. a 1940's Old Weller did). Some offered it in more of a raisiny interpretation. Clearly this was a hallmark of many whiskey flavours then; the Silver Select, possibly chosen with an eye to historical verisimilitude, offers that taste or certainly a hint of it. Maybe it is the serendipity of that particular bottle, the only way to know is to obtain another bottle of Silver Select and I won't be able to do that for a while!
Gary
Last edited by
gillmang on Mon May 15, 2006 7:28 am, edited 2 times in total.