cowdery wrote:Unfortunately, many of the "small batch," extra-aged bourbons out there are from bottlers, who like to foster the illusion that they are distillers. Often they will aver that they are prohibited from revealing who made what but I doubt that's really true. (Why would Heaven Hill care?)
Of course, I have no knowledge of what requirements may be part of Heaven Hill's contract distilling agreement with any given bottler (or Barton's, or Buffalo Trace's, or any of the others for that matter), but just to offer a possible explanation, there could very well be language in the contracts that prohibit the distillery from acknowledging that they produced the whiskey that was bottled. This wouldn't be the distillery's demand (as you pointed out, why would Heaven Hill care?), but rather a stipulation of the independent bottler. And perhaps not only for vanity, either. Since the actual, taxable, alcohol being distilled is already paid for and considered the (again, taxable) property of the bottler, the distiller understandably would want no part of ownership. And on the other hand, the bottler can hardly be faulted for not wanting to confirm ownership claims that might be made by the distiller prior to bottling. It's also possible that bottlers (in the past, of course) sometimes handled product they purchased from distillers that, shall we say, forgot?, to properly document the origins and tax-paid status of the particular barrels in question. The fine old tradition of "don't ask; don't tell" didn't originate with the U. S. military; whiskeymakers have understood that principle at least since the Irish poteeners and Scots moonshiners.
Psst! if y'all enjoy these peeks at the backstage, behind-the-scenes pieces of bourbon (and rye and rum) lore, don't miss a chance to get the current Bourbon Country Reader, in which Chuck goes further out on that ol' limb than most folks in the media have. And maybe the issue of "where that wonderful whiskey really came from" will continue to pop up from time to time in that fine publication. I love to take issue with Chuck, but in order for you to understand that, you need to put into context that I've learned a powerful lot about bourbon and American whiskey in general from Chuck, and if you're not reading the Bourbon Country Reader, you're only reading the "official version" of what's happening in the the American whiskey world. (yes, Chuck, that's supposed to encourage more gutsy, honest issues like the current one, regardless that Paul Pacult still gets paid more than you do ).