by Strayed » Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:34 pm
Well, I have to agree with you. A similar, but more legitimate situation would be Pritchard's in Tennessee. Their whiskey, too, is made under contract in Kentucky and then processed (in their case, rebarreled and aged) in Tennessee. But Pritchard's is a known and accepted distiller of rum (they make a REALLY good rum) and if the whiskey proves successful I believe they intend to distill Tennessee bourbon.
OTOH, I really LIKE Conecuh Ridge. Of course, I think of it as a novelty spirit. I think of Old Potrero as a novelty spirit, too, as I do Copper Fox, Georgia Moon, and most of the old pre-Prohibition samples in our collection. I believe there is a historic truth in Conecuh Ridge; I think Clyde May's whiskey may have really tasted a lot like that, and I think others' did, too. Doctor Crow's recipe, bearing Col. Taylor's and Secretary Carlisle's approval, may have been the one that survived, but there must have been many types of whiskey in general useage. I have little doubt that, in a land covered with sugar maple trees, that flavor might have worked its way into the spirit.
Who knows? Maybe the Bourbon folks went after the Cognac drinkers and other distillers went after the New England-style (i.e. maple) rum drinkers? I do think that maple once played a bigger part in the American whiskey world than we realize... and there's nearly nothing of left of it to show.