The Cult of Oldness

Discuss any bourbon related topics here that do not belong in a forum below.

Moderator: Squire

Unread postby gillmang » Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:22 pm

Mike, that sale was hard to do not (I would think) because 10 year whiskey was felt less good than 8, but it seems the name bonded could not be appended to the name at the time. Even by then, a short 15 years after the bonded system was introduced, the name had cachet. This is really an accident I think, resulting from the associations of the term bonded with genuineness and quality (my word is my bond, etc.). But I don't think there was any intention for the legislation to confer that meaning. Bonded meant, and still does, whiskey held in a sealed- or tied-off area on which taxes did not have to be paid until the goods were released. The goods were "bonded" to the warehouse until the tax was paid. Of course, this was also a sign to the consumer that the goods were genuine, not blended with grain spirits or tampered with and as pure as they could be.

Gary
User avatar
gillmang
Vatman
 
Posts: 2173
Joined: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:44 pm

Unread postby bourbonv » Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:45 am

Gary,
I agree that the primary reason was the loss of the bonded tax stamp, but there is also the concern of many consumers who are suspicious of older whiskey because of rectifiers. The fact that Old Taylor was not anything other than a bonded product would have some people wondering if non-bonded older whiskey was a counterfiet label. Believe me, the Old Taylor label was counterfieted and imitated all over the nation and Taylor fought this often in the courts. The most lingering cases were the law suit against Stagg who refused to take Taylor's name off the label in the 1880's and 1890's and against Wright and Taylor and their fine (small print on label) Old (large print on label) kentucky (small print on label) Taylor (very large print on label).
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
User avatar
bourbonv
Registered User
 
Posts: 4086
Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:17 pm
Location: Louisville, Ky.

Unread postby cowdery » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:37 pm

The "Cult of Oldness" is really about romanticizing the past, especially when it's an assumption that things must have been better in the good old days.

Another aspect of it is this obsession with old recipes, Jim Beam and Bulleit being prominent in that, but not alone. The reality is that you wouldn't want to drink a whiskey made the way they were made 200 years ago. The way they were made 100 years ago may be another matter. What I have tasted in pre-prohibition and early post-prohibition bourbon that I treasure is much more of that wintergreen taste. Today, if you can find it at all, it's very slight. Maybe that came from the lower distillation proof, maybe it came from the older wood, maybe it came from wilder yeast, maybe it came from a combination of all of those.

We know that process controls were not what they are today. That meant less consistency, which probably was a negative more often than it was a positive, but when it was good it was very very good, and impossible to duplicate except by another lucky chance.

One problem with the "dusty" seekers is that a lot of the whiskey produced in the sixties was really awful. There was a period when the producers were trying to cut costs to increase profits. They took copper out of the stills and eliminated doublers.

I guess just for my own mental health, I tend not to pine for things I can't have. Well, I try not to, anyway. I will say that I'm very happy with the current state of American whiskey. I cannot afford to drink whiskey older than 20 years exclusively but if I could, I wouldn't, but to each his own.

I do have a question for a person who chose to concentrate an American whiskey collection on whisky aged 20 years or more.

Why?
- Chuck Cowdery

Author of Bourbon, Straight
User avatar
cowdery
Registered User
 
Posts: 1586
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 1:07 pm
Location: Chicago

Previous

Return to Bourbon, Straight

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot] and 34 guests

cron