Vintage Sherbrook Rye

[gillmang]

Excellent points all, thanks.

Gary

[EllenJ]

John, why would you not consider whiskeys such as the early Large I saw in your collection a classic Monongahela whiskey? Or that great pre-Pro Overholt? Why would production have changed significantly over a mere 75 years or even 100 years in those (more stable, settled) times?

First of all, Gary, as you must certainly know from our tasting experiences, the product can change radically in a VERY short time (say, between 1980 and 1990?) with only minor production changes.

Secondly, I explained in the message you're referring to why I would not consider them the same. The continuum is NOT uninterrupted; the conditions that created the so-called "classic" Monongahela were very short-lived. And one shouldn't confuse the word "classic" as a descriptor with "the best", nor even "good". There are many references to the original Monongahela beverage indicating that "desireable flavor" was not necessarily considered synonomous with "Monongahela". In fact, not unlike Scotch, I believe one was considered to have achieved a sort of manly respectfulness by having "developed a taste" for the stuff.

The really good Pennsylvania rye whiskeys you refer to are almost CERTAINLY much finer quality than the "classic" Monongahela, just as the 1907 McBrayer is surely more delightful (don't know yet... that one remains unopened for now) than a barrel of any "classic" Bourbon that ended up in New Orleans after a long, hard ride down the (mainly impassable) Mississippi in the early 1820s.

... Jim Beam rye may not be as good as in the 1960's, but broadly we can agree it is aged rye whiskey...

VERY broadly

...Byrn in the 1860's gave the then-accepted recipe for rye whiskey - he lived in Pennsylvania - as 80% rye, 20% barley malt. Those Large and Overholt whiskeys surely were made like that, more or less, and Overholt still is, more or less...

It's possible that those pre-1920 whiskeys were made similarly to what was produced in the 1860s, but that's not at all certain. In any event, what was made in the 1860s would have been much less similar to what had been made forty years prior to that. The major changes (including the Coffey still, for one important example) occured during that time.

...In your introductory remarks to your Monongahela whiskey pages, you state that Monongahela rye tasted like current Old Overholt if you added a touch of Old Potrero to it...

That was, of course, conjecture. But I do think there is merit in it.
However, I do suppose I should have included an apology to Fritz Maytag.
And perhaps to Beam Brands as well.

[EllenJ]

John, You are wrong about one thing - Gary is right there was an unaged version of Monogahela rye. I know this because in the 1860's it was still popular enough that rectifiers imitated it. I think that posted the recipe from this book somewhere here and I will see if I can find it. This should prove valuable because it will also tell us what flavors the recifier considered dominant in the whiskey.

AND

...That makes a lot of sense, Mike. This particular thread shows lots of references to Fritz Maytag's concept of rye whiskey (as Monongahela). It's pretty hard to go through Gary's and your posts without accepting that although Mon Whiskey certainly referred to a particular style, color may not have been a defining factor.

Yeah, but we both know that dude didn't have a clue!

Seriously, I had to laugh out loud because I'd JUST finished reading that message (you reposted the thread) before I read your's and Gary's here.

But in this thread you were talking about whiskey being sold as Monongahela in the 1860s.
And that wasn't the whiskey that gave the style its name.
That was whiskey called "Monongahela" in order to capitalize on brand recognition.

By the 1860s, virtually any rye whiskey from Pennsylvania (or not, in some cases) was called Monongahela.

The reference Gary found to the store in Indiana indicates that, in 1825, Monongahela appears to have meant any non-corn, non-rectified whiskey.

At least west of the Alleghenys.

Whether that was so on the East Coast is still up for grabs. My contention is that the marketing success of red liquor from western Pennsylvania occured between around 1810 and 1830, and what I refer to as the "real" Monongahela was but a product of the conditions existing prior to (1) rapid transit -- in the form of steamboats and railroads, and (2) the War Between the States.

So-called "Monongahela" that was around in 1860 was no more similar to its roots than was so-called "New England Rum" from that time, although both were marketed all the way up to prohibition. And there were still examples (Overholt, Thompson, Medford) sold after repeal.

I don't believe Fritz Maytag ever referred to Old Potrero as a Monongahela whiskey; he believes (or at least I feel he did at the time) that it was the type made by farmers in Virginia and Maryland. I believe he was incorrect, on a number of counts, but I applaud him for developing his product from that idea. Most farmer-distillers would have given the Devil their best hunting dog to be able to distill 125+ proof whiskey. Heck, they'd have let the Devil BORROW their dog for awhile just to get 100-proof consistantly. Isaiah Morgan is more like what I'd expect colonial-era rye whiskey to have tasted like, no matter which side of the mountains the farmer lived on.

But if the farmer had to sell his whiskey to a dealer in Greensburg, who stored it awhile and then sold it to another dealer -- who hauled it on one of his mule-train trips across the mountains to, say, Carlisle, or Cumberland, or Newtown... and sold it to yet another dealer, who warehoused it until he got enough orders to ship it into Baltimore, or Philadelphia... well, by then it might have been Monongahela (and the consumer might have thought that name referred to a kind of rum or brandy), but it sure didn't resemble the farmer's original whiskey much anymore.

And, of course, that's why the dealer wanted to buy it from him in the first place. Like any marketer, he neither knew nor cared about what the product was made of or how it got to be that way; he had customers who would buy a certain kind of liquor from him and he knew where to get it for them.

Think about it...

Why on earth would a Baltimore liquor distributor pay for shipping common whiskey hundreds of miles across dangerous mountains, two barrels per mule, when he could simply buy whiskey by the wagonload from any farmer within easy distance on paved (or at least gravelled) roads? The answer is simple... because he wasn't buying "whiskey"; he was buying "monongahela". It wasn't until the advent of the steamboat and the railroad (which eliminated the long, arduous journey and months of storage) that he learned more modern ways to accomplish a similar flavor, using local (i.e., Maryland) whiskey.

P.S. - I'm wrong about something else, too. And I'm surprised you didn't pick up on it!!
Mike Veach WASN'T with us at the Maryland tasting. Well, at least bodily. It's not possible to have such a tasting without Mike being a member-in-spirit, and he certainly was that day as well.

[cowdery]

I believe Monongahela, like Bourbon, was a more or less distinct style early. We know 18th century distillers understood that complete saccharification can occur even when malting is incomplete or when whole grains are mixed in with the malt. I don't believe anyone on the frontier was making malt, from barley or any other grain, but they were making what malt they had go as far as possible.

So I think the further west you got, the less malt there was in the mash. That aside, they would have used whatever whole grain was most economical, which by all indications was rye in Western Pennsylvania.

New England rum was made from molasses, sugar cane molasses, not sorghum. The molasses was a by-product of the first, crude stages of sugar-making being performed at the cane plantations in England's Caribbean colonies. The raw sugar was shipped to England and the molasses was shipped to New England, where it was distilled into rum.

The molasses was shipped to New England in what? Barrels. The rum was then put back into the same barrels, where the remaining molasses did nothing to hurt it. Maybe it gave it a little color too.

Maybe it became desirable for spirits to have color for a reason other than aging.

The other common distillate of the colonial period was apple brandy.

Americans liked sweet spirits.

So comes a distiller maybe from a Scottish or Irish whiskey tradition, or a Dutch genever tradition, or a German Korn tradition, or a slavic vodka tradition, used to making a drier beverage. But his customers want sweet. So he gives them sweet. He adds sorghum molasses, or honey. He tinkers with the saccharification process.

You can also get sweetness from wood. The only obstacle to aging in new charred oak barrels, which is the other way to get red color, is a generous supply of American white oak and the presence of people with the tools and skills necessary to make stout barrels from hard wood.

It took more skills and tools to make a barrel than it did to make the whiskey that went into it.

I don't know if there was white oak in Western Pennsylvania but if there was, I can imagine new barrels becoming the norm someplace where there is more stuff to put into barrels than there are used barrels to put it in. Assuming new barrels, then, I believe they would have charred them because they knew that would give the result they wanted.

They were probably using small barrels--eight gallons I think I read somewhere--and then there was the travelling. I don't believe we have to contrive accidents. They knew what they were doing.

All of this assumes a marketplace in which these types were distinct and known, which advertisements from the period indicate was the case. Of course, the period we're talking about is the early 19th century, not the late 18th. We're talking about a period when these frontier products are being exported out of the immediate area where they are made. So by this time it's not quite so frontier and there is competition. Distillers or, at least, distributors are trying to satisfy a customer who has choices.

And, yes, in ads in the early 19th century, you see Monongahela, you don't see Bourbon until later.

[gillmang]

Just a general comment: I don't think things change as much as we sometimes think.

Tastes get ingrained. Sure, there were established tastes for categories such as white, lightly tinted, and dark, as Mike said, even by 1860. It seemed dark was the minority, because probably it was more expensive to the general market and not as well-known as new and lightly aged Monongahela whisky.

By 1865-1920, that dark Mon whiskey market got bigger, aided by establishment of industrial distilleries in Monongahela and Yock areas, as John explains on his whiskey pages. I believe this dark whiskey into the teen years of WW 1 was the same essentially as dark Mon whiskey from the early 1800's: there was just more of it. As to column stills they were implanted very early: look again at that Dr. Plummer's page, just above the liquor store ad is one listing the town's industries. One is a "steam distillery"...

John, I hope soon you will open that Judge McBrayer whiskey from 1909 (how about tonight!). I think it will be great but well within the continuum of modern bourbon. I anticipate it will taste like Kentucky Spirit or the Heritage I just opened (export-only version of a WT 101 single barrel). Or maybe like that with a more fruity taste from distinctive yeasts of the day or corn that had a particular flavor.

Fully aged bourbon and rye - and Canadian whisky - were becoming popular in and near the original areas of production that were industrialising and equipped with warehouses (later 1800's) and also far away where people could afford to buy it. The latter market started early and was the shipped whiskey John was referring to (that e.g. the first Walters bought for his stores and depots in Baltimore). The taste for white whiskey (in Canada it was called white wheat whiskey) endured until 1920 and later got transplanted to vodka. Tinted whiskey today is represented by corn whiskey. I think the term Monongahela whiskey was used indifferently to describe all these variants (including Mon corn) but I agree too with John that as used in international commerce in the later 1800's it meant aged, red whiskey, the finest type, sweetest, and most expensive. This was known early in select markets as e.g., Herman Melville's words in Moby Dick show.

There is a French expression: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose". The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Gary

[EllenJ]

... ..John, I hope soon you will open that Judge McBrayer whiskey from 1909 (how about tonight!). I think it will be great but well within the continuum of modern bourbon...

Oh, I certainly hope not!

... ..in the later 1800's it meant aged, red whiskey, the finest type, sweetest, and most expensive. This was known early in select markets as e.g., Herman Melville's words in Moby Dick show.

One of those changes that appears to remain the same is that, when the ready availability of a product "changes" from common to scarce, the social perception of its quality and desirabilty tends to become irrationally elevated.
What would make you believe the McBrayer whiskey would be anything but awful? Simply because it's so rare?
Why would you expect it to remind you of Kentucky Spirit, and not Knob Creek, or even Seagrams' Seven? How about Thedford Reserve?

I'm not singling your comment out; not at all. I just think it makes a good example of a universal human reaction, one that affects me as much as anyone else. Especially when applied to items where enthusiasts compare quality and taste. In fact, I don't believe I would really enjoy whiskey as much if it WEREN'T for such thoughts.

When writing The Whale, however, Melville expected his reader to be familiar with Monongahela, both by it's dark red color and by his reference to it as "unspeakable" (and the last of several other choices -- including "Ohio whiskey" and something he called "old Orleans whiskey", which might have been bourbon, or might have been brandy -- you suppose maybe he'd been shopping at Dr. Plummer's?). That view of Monongahela seems a long way from "the finest type, sweetest, and most expensive".

BTW... The Judge's virginity remains intact. We just might wait for another chance for us to get together with you.

[gillmang]

Thanks John, and I love that last comment, so I better be careful how I tread..

I had a reason though for saying what I did about McBrayer. Sam Cecil in his book makes much of its reputed high quality, so much that he says when the judge passed on, he stipulated that his name not be used to brand the whiskey after three years from his death.

I am not sure when he died (the book says) but am convinced 1909 is early enough for the whiskey to have retained its integrity.

It was, in a word, about the best bourbon of its day and should compare favorably to the best of our day. It may even exceed our best, but it won't be worse!

Gary

[gillmang]

In terms of "unspeakable", I recall well that adjective from the Melville description and confess to some puzzlement how it was used. It might mean, unspeakably good, or, unspeakably bad. The term when used alone must have had a definite meaning at the time but I am not sure what it was. Still, any whiskey that was red must have been considered good unless it was one of the imitation recipes Mike was referring to where the red was induced through use of cochineal, etc.

Anyway, Monongahela whiskey was so reputed in the 1800's I just have to think it was considered tops when Melville wrote.

Gary

[bourbonv]

John,
I caught your other error when I first read the post at work, but I did not have time to reply then and it slipped my mind by the time I got home - no, indeed I was not at that tasting but I would have loved to have been.

Gary,
What makes you think that slight colored Monogahela was from it being lightly aged? I think it was probably slightly colored because of some other flavoring agent was added to it. In the early records of people living in the the late 1700's and early 1800's they are always adding something to their whiskey to change the flavor. There are hundreds of recipes in the Filson and the Kentucky Historical Society files of people making their own gin, cherry bounce, peach cordial, etc... from raw whiskey. The slightly colored version could be from people adding something to the rye to give it a flavor they called "Monogahela". This is a distinct possibility and that flavoring could be honey with a dark honey giving it a little color.

John,
McBrayer did have a high reputation in Kentucky in the late 1800's. E H Taylor, Jr. considered McBrayer whiskey to be on par with Old Crow and his own. With that said, that does not gaurantee your bottle. A lot can happen in 100 years to make a bottle of whiskey go bad, including impurities in the glass leaching into the whiskey. I just hope I am around when you do open that bottle, or at the least, you save me a drink.

[EllenJ]

Gary: You are correct. Judge McBrayer was well aware of his product's reputation and also that, once it was no longer under his control, the quality would likely be compromised in the name of lower costs and higher profits. So, in the mistaken belief that it would do some good, he is said to have registered some legal documentation that limited the use his name as the brand after a period of (I believe you mentioned) three years following his death.

But, as we all know, if one designs a foolproof protection, someone else will simply find a better fool.

In 1888, the Final Gavel came down for the Judge. And, although the brand remained in the McBrayer family for at least seventeen years, they appear to have found a way to get around McBrayer's "restrictions" and thus were able to continue capitalizing on the old man's name and reputation.

They simply changed the brand from "Cedar Brook -- W.H. McBrayer" to "Cedar Brook -- formerly W.H. McBrayer". A little like Roger Nelson, a musician better known by the stage name "Prince", a name that became contractually the property of Warner Bros, who refused to release it when he severed relations with the company in 1994. Apparently, WB made it clear they intended that Prince (who had, by that time, legally changed his personal name to match) would not be able to make use of the tradmarked brand name for the next six years until his contract expired, and they may have implied that they intended to apply the brand "Prince" to another musician at their discretion. This was (and remains) a common practice in artist contracts and has destroyed many a musician, or at least put them at a severe disadvantage in business negotiations. Nelson's rather bold (and quite effective) counterplay was to establish the completely original and unique name of (which can be neither spelled nor pronounced), and declare himself to be "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince". People laughed. People ridiculed the name and the idea. But they knew who he was, and they bought his records and went to his shows. And Warner Bros were left with a brand name they legally owned, but could not practically use because any dollars they might expend promoting the name "Prince" would have done little more than benefit their competitor.

At any rate, in 1905 the heirs to Judge McBrayer's distillery sold the brand to Julius Kessler, better known as the developer of the notorious Whiskey Trust. Kessler was not contractually bound by anything McBrayer may have stipulated to his family and, with the high ethical standards often associated with the Whiskey Trust, the company apparently continued including the old founder's name on the label for awhile, after which the American Medicinal Spirits Co. bottled both Cedar Brook and also "Old McBrayer" throughout prohibition. National Distillers continued both brands for awhile after repeal; I don't know if McBrayer's name was still used on Cedar Brook by that time.

The bottle we have is Cedar Brook with the "formerly W.H. McBrayer" statement, so we know that it's more recent than 1888. As a matter of fact, another statement, in fine print, identifies the label as a new design adopted in 1900, so we know it's no older than that. It also has the name Julius Kessler prominantly printed in script across the label, so we know it's post 1905 (and 14 years beyond Judge's desire to have his name removed). Since Kessler's name wouldn't have appeared there in 1900, we can guess that the "new design" may have been the addition of "formerly W.H. McBayer" after perhaps actually having complied with Judge's stipulation for nine years.

One very interesting thing about the label, and one which allows us to narrow the date range pretty closely, is that the word "WHISKEY" does not appear on it.

Anywhere.

And that would imply at least two very important things...

(1) The product was bottled between 1906, when the Pure Food & Drug Act went into effect, outlawing the word "whiskey" except as applied to "straight whiskey", and 1909 when President William Taft issued a proclamation overturning several points of that Act, including a compromise that permitted a less narrow definition of whiskey.

(2) The product in the bottle would not have qualified as straight whiskey. For any of a number of reasons, ranging from it being a completely assembled beverage using rectified spirits, coloring, flavoring, etc., to simply not having been aged in new charred oak barrels.

What's especially interesting about that second point to me, in light of this discussion, is that it puts the prejudices of many of us into an unacceptable logic loop that we feel compelled to find a way out of. Since 1909 Cedar Brook is way Pre-Prohibition, then it must be great, and comparable to some the finest of today's bourbon. Yet, since it apparently was, at best, more comparable to Early Times or US-1 UnBlended (and maybe more like Southern Comfort or Redneck Riviera), most of us wouldn't even give it a mention here, let alone praise it.

Oh my! What to do?

"Is. A. Puzzlement! (Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera)" -- Yul Brynner, as the King of Siam, St. James Theater, NYC, 1951


P.S. - Mike: There is no way that bottle would be emptied without you getting a taste of it. Unless it turned out to be a very bad example of number two (above, that is, although I'll leave final interpretation to the reader - we've encountered a couple like that occasionally, don'tcha know?)

[gillmang]

Great research John, but you know, sometimes it is the non-lawyers who complicate things.

To me, if it says McBrayer on it and it's pre-pre-Pro it is probably extremely good.

Sure all those legal changes happened but the same people who made it when the Judge was living probably still made it for Mr. Kessler, or were trained by those people. Things didn't change that fast then. True, I'd be somewhat concerned that it does not state whiskey on the label, but I would have to think there was a good reason for that.

Even if it was a blend it is probably still great.

(Plus, your pessimism seems premature since you have not opened it).

I can't believe you have that bottle and won't open it (yet)!

Gary

P.S. Canadian rye pint from the 30's being brought here tonight, a friend's dad found it working in an old building. I may not get to keep it but it will be opened and taste notes to follow!

[gillmang]

I think sour mash substituted for whiskey on that label. That process is associated with bourbon whiskey and other straight whiskeys.

Maybe that is how the judge's original bottles read, do we know?

Gary

[EllenJ]

Even if it was a blend it is probably still great.

Congratulations, Gary! We have a winner!!
That's exactly the reaction I was looking for.
I knew, if no one else had the booyahs to come through with this, you would.

Prior to what I call the "whiskey wars" in the late 1890's, and as documented quite clearly in President Taft's official Statement of Opinion, some really outstanding American alcohol beverages were being made by rectifiers. Rectifiers who used grain spirits -- and whatever other ingredients they needed -- to produce an outstanding product which they were proud to offer to the public under their name.

I believe you are absolutly right; that McBrayer will probably be at least as delicious as the Melvale Maryland Rye you tasted with us, and which is most likely similarly unqualified to wear a label today that includes the the word "rye".

And the craft distillers of tomorrow (along with Buffalo Trace and whatever distillery Chris Morris will be working for then) who create spirits that go beyond the current "whiskey" restrictions. And THAT includes the best of the Indians, providing they take that brave step and drop their idiotic plea to call their products "whisky").

In the current Bourbon Country Reader, Chuck points out the contention between the Indian distillers, who have called (and wish to continue doing so) their product "whisky", despite the fact that it's made from molasses. The whole agument is ludicrous, but Chuck's take from it is that anything that isn't whisky is somehow "less" than whisky on whatever scale he considers valid, and that's why, if we don't insist that American bourbon qualifies to be called "whisky" we're allowing it to be condemned to a state of second-rate imitation scotch.

That's bulls#!t, and Chuck's wrong. "Whisky", meaning barley spirit, is arguably INFERIOR to both the American corn- and rye-based product and several other grain-and-fructose products , and the sooner the world gets that straight, the better. That's MY contention, and I feel anyone who disagrees with that needs to spend awhile re-thinking just why this is called a BOURBON ENTHUSIAST web forum. Don't you?

I thought so!

Your contention (with which I heartily agree) that, even if we accept that Cedar Brook is what the laws of its day would have required it to be sold as "imitation whiskey", it was most likely (as was Melvale Rye) one of the best alcohol beverages ever made, underlines my own point. Which is that American Whiskey is a MUCH broader field than "which is the best Kentucky bourbon currently available".

Now let's see if we can get anyone else to agree.

Folks... we ASSUME most do NOT feel this way. Please don't add to that point of view, since you'll only be showing your alignment with the status quo. Let's hear from those who believe American grain spirits are different from, perhaps better than, and not to be lumped together with the all-barley spirit the rest of the world considers to be "whisky".

[gillmang]

Well, I have long supported good blending practices and felt that a great blend could be made and clearly they were 100 years ago. Your own taste notes and studies support this, as do my researches in at least one blending manual of the day (Fleischman's from 1885) which showed that quality blends were made with high percentages of straight whiskeys.

However the issue of the name seems separate to me. It seems too late to change the idea of whiskey in America as any cereals-derived distillate whose proof does not exceed 190 and obtains some aging, or any drink of which whiskey as so defined is a part. But that is more a technical issue I think. E.g., if someone wanted to call a blend just Old Kentucky that is fine with me. It is more what is in the bottle that counts.

In a sense, a Manhattan cocktail is a quality blend, and they used to sell bottles of "Manhattan cocktail".

Gary

[EllenJ]

Then why do we (who are supposed to be helping to introduce people to these products) take such pains to point out that "educated drinkers" know that Jack Daniel's isn't bourbon, and Canadian isn't what we call rye?

They ain't a-gonna learn none o' that from their corner bartender. Unless he's Gary Regan.

Their liquor store proprietor won't be much help, either. Unless he's Fred Mozenter, or Jay Erisman, or one of a few others.

Magazines such as Malt Advocate, Drinks, Whisk...(well, let's just leave it at the first two), will certainly be a great source of knowledge, but mostly the readers of such magazines are already enthusiasts.

Corporate websites? Yeah. Sure.

Even discussion forums like this one, which are completely upfront in their (thankfully not limited) focus on a specific niche, can't help but support the impression that the only American spirit of any legitimacy is straight bourbon whiskey.

Bourbon is a major factor in the world of American spirits, and rightfully so. But it's neither the first one, nor the only one, nor necessarily the best one. When The Goddess and I first began contributing to forums such as this one, we spoke of "rye" whiskey, and Pennsylvania whiskey, and folks thought we were weird. They were correct. We were. And we still are. But now even the "bourbon" forums speak almost more of rye whiskey than of bourbon!

Whether we'll continue to be welcome guests five years from now or not, I have no idea. But by then, enthusiasts will be speaking of (and probably submitting tasting notes for) American alcohol beverage spirits that they can't even imagine today. Beverages not made entirely from cereal grains. Beverages assembled from spirits that don't fit into any of today's coded categories, save "imitation" whatever.

Beverages that people younger than themselves actually want to drink. Think of it!

And, unlike with rye, they won't be at all put off about the fact that we won't be calling them "whiskey".