John's Historical Rye Tasting in June

[gillmang]

John, I was fascinated to read on your updated whiskey pages (in the Melvale entry) of your tasting of historical Maryland ryes with Jim Bready, Howie, and Dave Gonano (also of course Linda and Mr. Bready's wife). I note you tasted an 1800's whiskey from the 1943 Walters estate sale in New York. The sale is also mentioned in a recent biography of the Walters, a well-known Baltimore business and art-collecting family who began as liquor dealers in the mid-1800's. The book is available for purchase at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. In the book, it is stated one of the rye brands distributed by them was Baker's.

It occurs to me now that the lineage of Baker's, the bourbon in the Beam premium range, resides precisely in that distant, early 1800's rye - and Baker's is notably a very rye-oriented bourbon. Despite all the changes wrought by time and commerce big and small, such linkages can be made by those who put two and two together. I'll go out on a limb and say I doubt I'll be proved wrong on that one.

I congratulate you on organizing this intriguing, history-laden tasting and giving extra gravitas to it by inviting James Bready and his wife. Mr. Bready authored a fine monograph about 15 years ago on Maryland rye whiskey which was printed in an historical magazine of that great state. Dave Gonano was kind enough to send me a copy some time ago. John knew about it well before of course.

However, there was no mention in John's report of what these whiskeys tasted like.

Do you John or any others from the tasting have any taste notes you can pass on? Howie, do you? Did these ryes bear any resemblance to what is called straight rye today, e.g., ORVW 13 year old, possibly?

Did they all taste alike in some way, if so, in what way?

That was a very special event and while some oldies have been tasted here and there (e.g., at Gazebos, some courtesy John's generosity again) I can't recall that any tasting collected as many old and reputed whiskeys as the ones mentioned in the Melvale piece.

Mr. Bready must have been amazed that others possessed the same interest as he, I'll bet he never thought anyone would gather to do such a thing, it must have been very gratifying to him.

But again: what were these products like, specifically?

Gary

[gillmang]

Pending any comments, I think I have to prove myself wrong on the origin of the Baker's brand in the current Small Batch line of Beam Brands.

Chuck writes in a current article in Whisky Magazine (recommended, but that is a given with Chuck's writing) that the brand is named for Baker Beam, a former distiller at Jim Beam. I checked the Small Batch website and it states the same thing. Therefore, probably the Pennsylvania Baker's brand, orginally associated with fine rye whiskey and later also with bourbon, is unconnected to the Baker's Bourbon of Beam Brands. Baker's Bourbon is pretty good by the way, I liked it more when it first came out (before the label change) but it is still pretty distinctive.

If I was reshaping the Small Batch range, I would discard the 80 proof whiskey in there (can't recall the name, I find it quite ordinary) and insert instead a 100 proof Jim Beam rye or barrel proof Old Overholt.

Gary

[Bourbon Joe]

I would discard the 80 proof whiskey in there (can't recall the name)
Gary

Basil Hayden perhaps.
Joe

[gillmang]

Yes, thanks Joe!

Gary

[EllenJ]

Gary (and all, especially Mark and Chris),
I'm really honored and grateful to be a Bourbon Enthusiast (the eleventh member to join, not counting our hosts themselves), and I love participating on the forum. I do, however, always consider myself to be an alien, but welcome, guest, because I know the main raison d'etre of the website is to encourage the enjoyment of developing, comparing, and discussing taste profiles of spirits (nominally bourbon, but not limited to that particular spirit). I respect that interest, but it's not really a major part of my own whiskey enjoyment. If I'm drinking with you, and you point out the subtle tones of white chocolate that come in during the middle of the finish, I'll certainly taste them... even if you made it up. In fact, the more I sample the more suggestable I become. By the end of the evening I'll taste anything you say's there; cinnamon, blackberries, rutabagas, whatever. Do I, you ask, notice the toffee notes? Well, I probably didn't until you brought it up, but I sure do now. Of course, there are numerous very different flavors of toffee, so I'm not sure what value that might have to someone trying to learn how something tastes from someone else's description of it. And when you say you taste "pitted fruit", I'll never question just what pitted fruit you mean.
Apricots?
Olives?
Avacados?

What I CAN do, and pretty well, I believe, is detect similarities and differences among whiskey (or rums, or vod.. well, whiskeys and rums anyway) subjectively. Most distillers I know do pretty much the same thing (only lots better, of course).

So, with due respect to those whose interest this forum so uniquely serves, I'll let others provide detailed tasting notes. Howie? Chris? Dave? Sam? And of course if you ever find yourself close enough to Cincinnati (just two li'l ol' hours from Louisville), you (anyone here, but especially you, Gary) are more than welcome to visit and taste many of these (and more) yourself. PM me for details. Not during the festival, though, as we'll be shaking our hula skirts and getting lei'd in Hilo, Hawaii.

Low Hah, Baby!!

Okay, so of what delicacies did we partake? Here's a partial listing...

Obviously the star attraction was the Melvale rye. As with any of these old bottles, there was great uncertainty about how it had weathered the years and what we might expect. Some go bad; some were probably not that great to begin with. Others have weird things go wrong with them. For instance we have a bottle of 1876 rye (labeled "Eastern Rye", without mentioning a state name) that might once have been good, but now tastes like telephone poles smell. Mark Brown, of Buffalo Trace, said it was creosote, and that it leached from the coloring they used for the bottles in those days. There was no creosote taste in the Melvale. It was (and still is; come visit us and taste it) one of the richest flavored and delicious rye whiskeys I've ever tasted, and everyone had the same opinion. Blew the socks off the pre-Pro Overholt and Mount Vernon. In a Gillman-inspired moment last night, I experimented a little, with very tiny portions. I think a dedicated vatter such as yourself could get pretty close using three parts of ORVW 13, one part Vintage Bourbon 23-year-old, and just a splash of black coffee.

Because the "theme" of the event was Maryland Rye, examples of those predominated. But we also had some Pennsylvania brands from before, during, and just after prohibition. We had two taste-offs, between the rye whiskeys popularized by National Distillers in the thirties, forties, and fifties and their original pre-Prohibition namesakes.

In the photo of the Mount Vernon ryes, the bottle on the right is from National Distillers. I'm not sure when it was bottled, but probably late thirties or early forties. The 200ml cognac bottle on the left holds the last of our Cook & Bernheimer Mount Vernon from 1915-16. In our samples, when the level of whiskey in a bottle gets down under about a third (i.e., there's twice as much air as liquid), and I can't bear to make it part of the ongoing House Vatting, I transfer the remaining contents to a smaller bottle to prevent oxidation. Sometimes (such as for this whiskey) I label the smaller bottle with a photograph of the original label and then display it next to the empty original bottle. In the tasting, we were all surprised at how remarkably similar the ND product was to the pre-Pro. The later version's flavor and nose were more intense, although I kind of suspect the earlier one was equally intense when we first opened it three years ago.

In a similar taste-off between pre- and post-prohibition Old Overholt, the National Distillers version (1935-40) was also very similar to the earlier one, but it was the pre-Pro version that had the greater intensity. That taste-off also included J. Dougherty & Sons Pure Whiskey, which doesn't use the word "rye" on the label, but was produced by A.Overholt & Co. I'm afraid I don't recall it's taste, but I believe it was quite different from the others. There was also a very rare bottle of 93-proof "Overholt 1810", which was made for export by National Distillers in the early 1970s. By that time the regular ND Old Overholt had degenerated to 86 proof and a lighter flavor (very similar to the way Beam's current version tastes today). The 1810 brand shares the flavor, but gets more "punch" out of the higher alcohol content.

Other pre-prohibition Pennsylvania ryes we tasted were Large and Dillinger, and post-Pro Sam Thompson from Schenley. We also had two ryes, bottled during prohibition, whose brands had once been well-known Maryland ryes, but were made elsewhere. One was Braddock, originally made by James Clark in Cumberland. The whiskey in this bottle, however, was made by Peter Pogue's grandfather in Kentucky. It isn't identified as rye, just whisky. The other was Spring Garden, originally a Baltimore rye but this whiskey was distilled by East Penn Distillery (which was located near Pittsburgh -- not quite sure how they got "east" out of that). Both tasted pretty much as you would expect prohibition whiskey to taste. As did Gwynnbrook, a prohibition-era Maryland rye that actually came from Maryland.

The bottle that Jim Bready brought to the party was labeled simply Fine Old Rye Whiskey. It was made by John H. Farber, Distiller. I found it a bit harsh, but others thought it one of the better ones. In evaluating any whiskey (even, gasp, Kentucky Bourbon!) made prior to 1906 it's helpful to keep in mind that much of it -- even the GOOD stuff -- wasn't what we would today be allowed to call "whiskey". As you are well-aware, the idea that "manufactured whiskey" must necessarily be cheap, vile, low-class swill is simply propaganda put out by the barrel-aged whiskey interests. Of course a lot of those concoctions deserved such a description, but there were some fine, well-respected brands that also disappeared quickly after the Pure Food & Drug Act was finalized in 1909.

Another pre-Pro brand we tried was Victoria Club a very tasty whiskey whose label boasts unexcelled "Purity & Quality", also that it was "Sold Entirely on its Merits" (which I interpret to mean it wasn't government inspected). Despite what I said earlier about flavor tones, that one had a definite chocolate flavor that was very enjoyable. We also brought the bottle of Congressional Club made by the Frank L. Wight Distillery in Loreley, Maryland that we took to the Bourbon Festival Sampler last spring and shared with folks at the Jailer's Inn.

The Pikesville Ryes, both Maryland and Supreme (made by Heaven Hill) made for an interesting comparison. It's easy to say that Pikesville Supreme is not a top-shelf product, but as Dave has pointed out, the original Maryland Pikesville wasn't either. It just happened to have been the last one.

[EllenJ]

Concerning Baker's, from the Beam small-batch collection...

Baker Beam was not the only Baker in the whiskey-biz. There was an Old Baker brand made by the Meadowlawn Distillery in Jefferson County, Kentucky, which was run by one of J. W. Dant's sons. That was in the forties and I believe someone else (Heaven Hill?) may own that brand now. We have some labels that appear to be from much more recent times.

There was also John Baker in the early 19th century, who operated a very successful commercial distillery in Pennsylvania. We're probably going to do a web page about that operation soon. We've been to the location, a few miles west of Somerset, and done some research. There are some pretty fascinating things about it. For one thing, it was large enough to require a company town for its employees, which remains today as Bakersville. We have a copy of an old Somerset County map of Bakersville which shows the distillery, although it's identified as Solomon Baker's distillery. Solomon might have been John's son; both John Baker's home and property and Solomon Baker's hotel (and tavern, most likely) are identified on the map.

An article in the August 7, 1890 edition of the Meyerdale Commercial newspaper, entitled "About our Distilleries", mentions that there were (at that time) a full dozen commercial distilleries in Somerset County, and lists among them "the Baker Plant". The article then goes on to mention that "Of these liquor dealers, Walters, of Baltimore, has purchased and now operates the Hoover and Shultz plant and also owns the coming Baker plant". That would have been either William T. Walters (who died in 1894) or his son Henry Walters, whose bottle of Melvale Rye was enjoyed and spoken of in my previous post. Although I confirmed all that later via the Meyersville Commercial article, we first learned of the connection from Jim Bready the evening of the Maryland Rye tastings. He brought it up when Sam Komlenic and I mentioned our visit to the ruins of the Frantz Distillery near Berlin. Before prohibition it had been known as the Schultz Distillery, and was also owned by Henry Walters. You can find it on our website in the section "Inter-Mountain Pennsylvania Distilleries".

That newpaper article, by the way, goes on to list the names of four distilleries that "cook their whisky with Steam, while the rest..." which would include both Schultz and Baker ".. .manufacture it under the old constitution, or copper-distilled.", by which I presume they mean pot stills.

The article also makes a special note about Baker's, "Old man Baker, whose whisky was famous the country over, has been dead for many years, but Baker whisky is a staple brand on the market today, as it was in 1861, so the revival of the plant is readily accounted for". This would lead me to believe that the distillery had been closed and that Walters was expecting to re-open it late 1890 or 1891.

"The History of Bedford and Somerset Counties" published by Blackburn and Welfley in 1906 says of Baker whiskey that it ".. .acquired a wide celebrity, and its name at least has never been permitted to die out. It must be said, however, that this is one of the very few (perhaps the only one) of the oldest distilleries that has never entirely gone out of business. Henry Baker also kept a good tavern, prospered, and grew rich".

The Volstead Act, however, appeared to have been successful in putting it entirely out of business, and to the best of my knowledge it never returned after the repeal.

[gillmang]

WOW, thank you so much John, this is far more than I hoped for.

You answered all my questions and don't slight your tasting abilities, you did a great job.

The comparison of Melvale rye to a blended ORVW 13 year old, Vintage Bourbon 23 year old and a dash of black coffee tells me what it was like, it is just the simile I was looking for!

And thanks for all the other data, interesting that the inter-war (post-Pro) Overholt did not diverge widely from the pre-Pro item.

I will keep studying this information for quite a while. And great photos.

I do hope to make the pilgrimage to Cincinatti one day.

Kind regards


Gary