by cowdery » Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:41 am
Old Mock is an actual Stitzel-Weller product. I only know about it because Mike Miller got a hold of a case or so and he sells it at his bar, Delilah's, in Chicago. It's kind of his trump card. Pretty hard to beat that in terms of something you can go into a bar and buy by the drink. I forget what he charges for it. It's a lot.
I don't think I've ever seen an Old Oscar Pepper medicinal whiskey. The Pepper family scion by then was James E. Pepper and he sold his own James E. Pepper brand. I think he sold the Oscar Pepper name, probably to Gaines-Berry. So about all I can tell you is that when that was made, the Oscar Pepper brand had nothing to do with the Pepper family. Are they both 1916-1933? That's odd.
Prohibition was repealed in December of 1933, so this would have been some of the last medicinal whiskey bottled.
I can't say that I know of anyone obtaining a bottle of American whiskey that turned out to be counterfeit, but it happens with scotch and cognac from time to time. Were I to counterfeit something, medicinal whiskey would be a good thing to counterfeit. You want to counterfeit something that's valuable but not too valuable, which means rare but not too rare. There's still quite a bit of Prohibition medicinal whiskey about and it can be gotten for a modest price, but let's say that price is $200 a bottle. That might make counterfeiting pretty inviting, so anybody looking to buy that sort of thing should be cautious.