by EllenJ » Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:12 pm
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.
- Attachments
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- The Notorious Rye Gang. This wasn't all, but it's the photo with the most bottles in it.
- NotoriousRyeGang.jpg (139.41 KiB) Viewed 9638 times
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- Pre-prohibition Mount Vernon on the left - National Distillers on the right
- MountVernonTasteOff.jpg (209.3 KiB) Viewed 9638 times
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- Dave Gonano and Linda examining a bottle of Mount Vernon Rye
- Dave-Linda.jpg (123.03 KiB) Viewed 9638 times
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- Pre-WW II Old Overholt from National Distillers and Overholt-made whiskey from Dougherty
- Overholt-Dougherty.jpg (130.42 KiB) Viewed 9638 times
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- FINE OLD RYE WHISKEY, made by John H. Farber, Baltimore County
- JohnHFarber.jpg (90.94 KiB) Viewed 9638 times