Last Night's Tipple

Jim Beam likes to make a lot about its history. On the side of its bottles, there are line drawings of six generations of Beams, back to Jacob Beam, who, the company likes to claim, made the first Beam Bourbon in 1795. On the Beam website, prominent mention is given to the "Seven Generations of Distillers" (the seventh being Frank Noe, the late Beam Master Distiller Booker Noe's son, who now has the title of associate distiller at Beam). Marketing fluff makes mention of the Beam recipe being unchanged since Jacob Beam made the first barrel back in 1795. And on and on. Most of this is simply mythologizing. If Beam were making their whiskey the same way that Jacob Beam made it in 1795, they couldn't legally call it Bourbon (because it probably wasn't aged and certainly not in charred new oak barrels) and you probably wouldn't want to drink it (because it would resemble modern moonshine more than modern Bourbon). Those seven generations of distillers? Well, you'd have to take out at least three of those generations. Jim Beam (the man) was on the business side of the house; his brother Park did the distilling, and Parker is not mentioned. Park's offspring currently are distillers at Heaven Hill Distillery, not at Beam. Jim's son Jeremiah likewise was on the business side of the company, not the distilling side. And Frank Noe is primarily a Beam company spokesman who apparently only has the title associate distiller to add to the marketing.

In fact, the Beam family has a long history of whiskey- and Bourbon-making, dating back to, yes, Jacob Beam. Jim and Park Beam owned the operation in the early 20th Century, and their flagship product was called Old Tub. When Prohibition came into force, the Beam brothers sold the distillery. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, a number of investors bankrolled Jim Beam in setting up a new distillery, and Jim Beam, the brand, was born. Jim Beam, the man, had no ownership interest in the new distillery: he was simply the front man.

None of this is to say that Beam can't make great Bourbon. They can, as evidenced by, for example, Baker's, which can hold its own with any Bourbon in the world. Beam introduced the 8 year old Black Label in the late '80s or early '90s, at least partially, I think, to compete with Jack Daniel's -- the bottles, labels, and prices are similar. The whiskey inside those bottles isn't bad. At first, the nose is all charcoal. With time in the glass, it evolves into something more pleasant, with some vanilla and butterscotch and at some times simply savory butter. It tastes a lot like orange peel, without a whole lot of the sweetness that one typically finds in older Bourbons. It's not bad. I don't know if it would be my first choice in the price category ($17.50 a fifth), but there is something to be said for consistency and reliability, both of which Beam in all its incarnations has in spades.