An "Ol' West" brand?

Have an old/rare bottle you'd like some more info on?

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An "Ol' West" brand?

Unread postby joel » Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:43 pm

The particulars:

Bought as a souviner some years ago outside of Durango, Colorado.
Proprietor of the antique store claimed it was dug out of a trash pit behind an old brothel.
cylinderical shape. (Quart size.)
clear bubbled glass.
3 part dip mold (seam from shoulder not all the way up the neck).
Somewhat tilted neck.
Raised letter "B" in center of bottom, "404B" under it.

What is left of a label that is about 4.5 inches wide, 6.75 inches long:
Near the center top, in tall narrow letters the word "Mash," printed on a bit of a slant, bottom left to top right (red letters with black outlining).
"Mash" again located in area of bottom right corner of the label.
I believe the maker's name (a rather long one) was diagonal on the label, running from top left corner towards bottom right corner.

Anyone think they have a positive ID of the maker? I'd be much obliged to be informed!!
Last edited by joel on Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: An "Ol' West" brand?

Unread postby joel » Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:51 pm

Sorry, I meant this for the Collector's Corner.
Please forgive this noob.
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Re: An "Ol' West" brand?

Unread postby joel » Sat Jun 28, 2008 4:23 pm

Alas, Mozilla, the little pieces of the label are so dirty darkened as to render a clear presenation impossible by any of my means. The bottle itself was much filled with dirt upon purchase.
Thanks for your response, though.
I would enjoy looking through a reference book of 19th-century (pictured) labels, should such a resource exist.
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Re: An "Ol' West" brand?

Unread postby cowdery » Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:11 pm

It could be anything.

What you have to understand is that the whole manner of marketing and distributing whiskey changed completely after Prohibition, although many of those changes were coming even before Prohibition and probably would have occured anyway.

Durango was founded in 1880. In the 1880s, most of the whiskey making its way to places like Durango was produced by a distillery in Kentucky or the vicinity and sold to a broker. Many of these brokers were in Louisville, but also Cincinnati, St. Louis and, most of all, Chicago. The brokers would have used that whiskey strictly as a raw material, the first step in creating the products they wanted to sell, which were created by blending different straight whiskeys, or by blending straight whiskeys with neutral spirits, and other methods. The product, mixed up in a big tank, would then be returned to barrels (used barrels) for shipment. The purchaser would receive a barrel full of whiskey. If the purchaser was a saloon, the owner would also have, perhaps as a premium from the whiskey merchant, perhaps as something the saloon owner purchased separately, bottles into which the whiskey would be decanted for sale. When the bottle was empty, it was refilled.

The fact that the bottle you have has remnants of a paper label suggests that is was a bottled product, which becomes more likely as the years go by, i.e., it would have been more likely in 1890 than in 1880. However, the brand would have been created by the broker, that middle-man in Louisville, Cincinnati or Chicago, not by the actual whiskey-maker, which would tell you very little if anything about the provenance of the whiskey it once contained.
- Chuck Cowdery

Author of Bourbon, Straight
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Re: An "Ol' West" brand?

Unread postby joel » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:04 am

^
Thank you very much for the reply!
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Re: An "Ol' West" brand?

Unread postby bourbonv » Tue Jul 01, 2008 10:57 am

As Chuck said, you could have just about anything. I do know there are several books out there for "Western Bottle Collectors" - people who collect whiskey bottles from brands sold east of the Mississippi River. There are many collector clubs for this goup and you might do a search for websites. They might be able to help you find the reference books.

If I am not mistaken, the three piece bottle mold was developed in the 1890's so I suspect your bottle is from the turn of the century, maybe after 1901 and bottled in bond whiskey started being sold. I do know that it is not "Mellowmash" because that brand was not created until the 1970's.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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