by gillmang » Thu Jan 10, 2008 4:02 pm
Good review, I've tried this and it is good but still very much in the Dickel style.
I wonder why a maker of bourbon would not try the Lincoln County process on their bourbon - or rye - mash and see what happens in three years or so. Especially with aged whiskey being in short supply, marketing a "pre-aged" version might make sense. Plus, some of the glamor associated with the Tennessee style could be borrowed to trade on a bit. Say e.g. a bourbon distillery put out a new brand called Pete's Secret Hollows Tennessee-style Whiskey with a sub-script, "slow-filtered in a traditional, Tennessee-style maple charcoal leaching vat". I think this might be sense, maybe even as a brand extension, for some of the distillers. I've always wondered what charcoal leaching would do for a whiskey other than Jack Daniels or George Dickel. Those whiskeys will always taste a certain way simply because of how they are made to begin with. Maybe in other words another whiskey would really shine after three years in charred wood (or more) and a preliminary maple charcoal leaching. I guess B-F would not do this since it already owns Jack Daniels but why wouldn't another producer try it? Everyone already makes blends and often straight rye too (which originally was associated with States other than Kentucky). I don't see in other words that doing this would take away from the image of Kentucky bourbon or that producer's brand of it. It might give rise to some interesting new tastes, and all from the same mashbill that makes the bourbon (or rye), you wouldn't even have to change that. All you would have to do is construct a 10 foot high vat of ground maple charcoal and put the white dog through it. Surely this would cost almost nothing, really.
Gary