New Oak Barrels

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New Oak Barrels

Unread postby EllenJ » Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:42 pm

You know it's funny how some things a person might say half in jest come around to being facts-we-just-didn't-think-of.

For about as long as Mike Veach, Chuck Cowdery, Gary Gilman, and I (among others) have speculated upon the role of the "new, charred oak container" in the very definition of straight whiskey, I've held that there must have been an awfully strong coopers' lobby in Congress at the end of prohibition. Well, it turns out I was right, and the answer was so "right in front of our noses" I'm surprised no one (not even Mike) thought of it right away.

Today I learned about the the important contributions of Wilbur Mills (D-Arkansas) to the Federal Alcohol Administration Act of 1935. It seems that, in return for his support of legislation that would benefit the straight bourbon distillers of Kentucky, the Honorable Senator Mills obtained agreement that the bill's language include the requirement for new oak barrels as a benefit for his state's important lumber industry. Good for Arkansas, and good for straight whiskey.

So that's the connection.

Wilbur Mills... the original "Copper Foxxe"!
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Unread postby gillmang » Thu Nov 22, 2007 11:47 pm

That is interesting John, thanks for that.

I think it is well-established that the use of new charred oak was considered best practice before Prohibition. But this enshrinement in the law in the 1930's would only have guaranteed quality in the future; certainly though I take the point about boosting Arkansas' timber industry.

As so often in life, it was I think a case of mixed motives or what we might call today, "win win".

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Unread postby bourbonv » Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:24 am

John,
You obviously don't remember me telling you about the book in the U. D> archive that states the Cooperage union lobbied to have new barrels added to the requiremnets as part of "New Deal" legislation to create jobs. It was pushed by the lobby but the fact is that new barrels were the tradition before bottling became popular. The barrel was the primary sales package and rarely returned to the distillery for re-use. This made pushing for a new barrel requirement easy to pass since everybody was using them anyway to re-create that per-prohibition flavor.
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Unread postby EllenJ » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:56 pm

Mike,
I do remember you telling me that. And I totally agree with you -- that there is such a book. :wink:

Yup, no doubt about it. The World Coopers Union (i.e., the Cobblies) must have had a lot of clout. Especially those who specialized in producing barrels for straight whiskey. Of course, barrels were the primary sales package of many other products, both dry and liquid, nearly all of which were one-way journeys as well. I suppose all those other United Barrelworkers & Coopers Locals must have felt pretty good paying their dues to support their distillery brothers' good fortune. Maybe it was because the straight-whiskey-barrel coopers were such an significant segment of the industry; not like, say, beer barrel makers. Or maybe it was because they had the support of all the major straight whiskey distillers, who were known to be great supporters of labor unions back then. :roll:

Seriously, though, I find no conflict in the idea that such lobbying occurred as you mentioned. I've only pointed out who it may have been that they were lobbying. And that the whiskey coopers were likely NOT the ONLY interested parties lobbying for the good Senator's vote. :wave:
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Unread postby Bucc58 » Mon Nov 26, 2007 8:34 pm

I am so proud to be livin' in Arkansas right now! Maybe the Barrel makers were backed by the Lumber Lobby. I think they would have the stroke.
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Unread postby EllenJ » Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:26 am

Joe, while hopefully everyone was able to detect the sarcastic humor in my reply, there is certainly no sarcasm in my gratitude for the Arkansas lumber industry.
Or the United Coopers of America.
Or Senator Mills.
Or even the Girl Scouts.
Whoever was responsible for ensuring (by federal regulation -- remember that next time you catch yourself condemning the Gom'ment for messing with private industry affairs) the quality of whiskey that can only come from requiring a new charred oak barrel for every 55 gallons of whiskey produced has my eternal gratitude.
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Unread postby Mike » Wed Nov 28, 2007 2:42 pm

EllenJ wrote:Joe, while hopefully everyone was able to detect the sarcastic humor in my reply


John, when I was a kid, we were so poor we lived in a few used bourbon barrels for a couple of months. I will never forget the wonderful dreams I had as I licked myself to sleep each night.

There is no end to the uses for used bourbon barrels. I keep one in my truck now in case of some unforseen emergency.
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Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas
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Unread postby cowdery » Thu Nov 29, 2007 12:21 am

Not to be a party-pooper, but Mills was a U.S. Representative, never a Senator, and didn't enter Congress until 1939.

He was, however, legendary in his affection for Kentucky whiskey.
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Unread postby Bucc58 » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:11 pm

Mills made his name by lightening America's post-Prohibition mood, helping to pass the 1935 Federal Alcohol Administration Act, which formally set down the methods by which bourbon should be made.

Ironically, whiskey (the North American spelling) was later the undoing of Mills, who's now best remembered for a scandalous liaison with a stripper called Fanne Foxe, aka "The Argentine Firecracker".

Mills's car was once stopped by police in Washington, upon which Miss Foxe promptly bolted and hurled herself into the Tidal Basin (she survived), leaving the Congressman drunk as a skunk, with blood dripping from scratches to his face.

But back in the Thirties, Mills was a sharp operator. Lobbied by the timber barons of his home state, he ensured that bourbon had to be matured in brand new barrels made from American white oak, the largest supply of which is in the great Ozark forests of Arkansas.




This is strange on the time line. I keep finding references as to rep. Mills helping to pass the 1935 act yet in his bio he was not a rep until 1939. :?: Maybe his helping this bill was done before he was a rep? Maybe this is what got him elected? Maybe it was an amendment to the act at a later date? I will keep looking. 8-)
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Unread postby bourbonv » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:35 pm

Chuck is correct. If you look at politicalgraveyard.com you will find the information about Mills and his government service. Since March 1st 1935 is the deadline for distilleries to start using new barrels, you should really consider this bill as a 1934 bill as far as negotiations and such needed to put the bill together. Mills was still in state level government.
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Unread postby cowdery » Thu Nov 29, 2007 4:07 pm

Not only was Wilbur Mills not a congressman in 1934, he was a mere 25 years old. While not impossible, it's hard to believe he was a "sharp operator" with that kind of clout at such a young age.

You may be getting the same information from a lot of different sources because they all got it from the same source.

Mills got his JD from Harvard and was admitted to the bar in 1933. The only elected office he held before going to Congress was County Judge of White County. ("County Judge" is an executive position, sort of like mayor of the county, not a judicial position. Kentucky also has the County Judge system.)
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Unread postby EllenJ » Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:12 am

I suppose it's also possibile that the surname "Mills" might not be entirely uncommon in Arkansas, a state which is also known to produce a respectable number of people named "Wilbur". I've spelunked through enough dark, narrow, and twisted logic "caves" in search of where some of our favorite brands came from to know how easy it is find yourself following an important branch of the Overholt family all the way into Oregon where they all become car dealers. :roll:

If you want to waste a few hours and get a good laugh or two, sit down at your computer sometime, with a bottle of good bourbon or rye whiskey of course, and just type your name into Google (or Yahoo!, Mamma, Ask Jeeves, or any other search engine) and see how many of you there are out there. All waiting to be jumbled together and confused with one another.

For example...

Michael Veach, hopefully not our Kentucky Gentleman and Scholar, is currently serving time in a Wisconsin prison.
That's when he isn't serving as pastor of a Staten Island, NY church.
Or as a trustee on the Westfield Township (Illinois) Board. That's right there in Clark County, Chuck!

Which reminds me... Charles Cowdery shows up in several places, including as a contributing author to the JSTOR database we discussed earlier. Chuck must have forgotten about "his" fine commentary on nine statues sculpted by Ed Hamilton in the late '70s.

Several of us appear to be doctors. Googlers prone to brand confusion will discover that John Lipman is a rather well-known diagnostic radiology and vascular & interventional radiology physician in Atlanta, Georgia. Also in Kennesaw and Marietta. Perhaps Mike in Conyers knows me. I do uterine fibroids like nobody's business, baby.

I'm also the Executive Director of the Cape Cod Environmental Planning Commission in Massachusetts. Hey MikeK! Drop by our office sometime. Tell 'em I sent ya!

For those of you who might find yourself in need of enterprise-grade identity-validation technologies, you can find me in Washington. Kirkland, Washington, not D.C., where I am the Investor Relations rep for SAFlink Corporation. Perhaps someone should run the name "Wilbur Mills" through the SAFlink product?

Oh, and don't forget theapesheet.com (no that's NOT me, either; but I do like it)

And, right here in River City (aka, Cincinnati), I've discovered that John Lipman was a founding member of the top-40 pop band "98-Degrees". The internet references to John Lipman and 98-Degrees once resulted in a touching e-mail from a starry-eyed young fan who wanted to let me know she was devasted when I left the band and I was always her favorite. I wrote her a nice message thanking her for her kind thoughts and explaining that I'm likely older than THAT John Lipman's father, and probably old enough to be her grandfather. She never replied.

But I digress. Getting back to the task of showing how some perfectly innocent (or at least unaware) slob named Will Mills, who may (or may not) have ever set foot in Arkansas, MIGHT have been credited with federal legislation beneficial to that state's lumber industry (as well as to the quality of America's straight whiskey), let's take a look at how easily one of US could have done the same thing....

Continuing our stroll around the palatial estate of Google, let's see what we can find about folks named, say, Joe "Bucc58" Young...

Even without the Mighty Monkey thing, Joe's name gets around the 'net a bit, too. As a well-known rodeo rider and cowboy poet in Caldwell, Idaho, Joe has won numerous awards and has been invited to recite at no less than five of the prestigeous annual National Cowboy Poetry Gatherings. Really cool, Joe! I've read some of your work, even before I knew it was you.

Of course, I guess they do have a bit of lumber in Idaho.
Vancouver, too, I would imagine.

Vancouver, did I say? Well, it's as good an example as any of the long and twisty (not to mention, often hilariously wrong) road one can encounter through the simple device of a good imagination, an ability to read between a single line, and Google. Let's follow the "sawdust trail" and see just how many ways we can "trace" our friend relationship to legislation requiring the use of new oak barrels to make bourbon.

In addition to Idaho, Joe Young shows up in Gary G's back yard. In the town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Joe Young once held the second KFC franchise in all of Canada. That's KFC as in KENTUCKY Fried Chicken. Y'all. He was also a well-known writer and political activist in Toronto, and Canada's Communist League nominee in several Ontario campaigns in the late '90s and in British Columbia during the early part of this decade. That's the Vancouver part. Joe didn't win the election there. Probably that was a good thing. Politicians are renowned for their ability to say convincing words out of both sides of their mouths at once, and Joe Young must certainly have been talented at this, because while campaigning in Vancouver he appears to have been simultaneously running for United States House of Representatives as the 2000 candidate for the South Carolina Libertarian party!

Anyone who can manage to attract campaign contributions as both a Communist and a Libertarian simply HAS to have some background in bourbon marketing!

Joe Young may have even a greater interest in lumber and how it applies to the bourbon industry than we realize. At least that might easily be true of the Joe Young who is President and CEO of South Carolina's Low Country Forest Products, a past chairman of the South Carolina Timber Producers Association, and a member on the National Sustainable Forestry Board. He also happens to have served as South Carolina's state legislator (Democrat, not Libertarian, and hardly Communist, no matter what my redneck friends say), where he would certainly have represented the state's lumber-producers, and for all I know, he may have been instrumental in selling South Carolina oak to such outfits as Bluegrass Cooperage and Independent Stave.

Oh, and all the time he was doing that, Joe apparently swung a pretty mean guitar for ANTiSEEN, the legendary '90s South Carolina underground punk-metal band. ANTiSEEN had been around for over twenty years, and Joe Young has played combined lead and rhythm guitar for all of them. All right, maybe "played" isn't the exactly correct word here, but he's the one responsible for those sounds that come out of it. And whiskey (Bourbon and Tennessee) is definitely a major part of both their repertoire and their stage preparation.

Sure seems to me like it all fits together.
I apologize to Wilbur Mills (D-Arkansas) for calling him a Senator.
I apologize to Wilbur Mills (local politician) for mistaking him for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
I apologize to Wilbur Mills (lumber man) for thinking some lousy kid, who's gonna grow up to be a politician, actually accomplished something as noble and important to Arkansas and to American whiskey as you did, and no one noticed.
And, by the way Will (lumber man), you're okay. And your new dress looks nice.
Last edited by EllenJ on Fri Nov 30, 2007 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Fri Nov 30, 2007 12:33 pm

John,
You just pointed out one of the dangers of the internet - finding the RIGHT information. It is easy to get the wrong person or wrong dates and even simply the wrong information. The important thing to do is simply judge the source and if possible, look at their source. Even then you can find that the same mis-information is coming from the same couple of sources.

By the way, what were your result when you googled bunghole? That could be very interesting to read. I have heard complaints from my brother that when he researches the family tree bourbon sites (such as ellenjaye.com) keep popping up. I tell him to deal with it - that is what he gets for doing genealogy! Still, I am a bit taken aback by a preacher. I do hope he is not some temperance nut! I would hate to have such a black mark associated with my name.
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Unread postby Bucc58 » Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:14 pm

It's good thing you didn't find a complete list or you guys might not ever talk to me again. :shock:

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and didn't know it
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Unread postby cowdery » Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:31 pm

Point taken but, for the record, I actually did write the critique of Ed Hamilton's sculptures, at his request, for a small literary journal. Ed is a terrific artist, from whom I learned much. He is also an Old Grand-Dad drinker.
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