Last Night's Tipple

I had another pour of WL Weller 12 year old last night, and I got something new and interesting out of it: almond extract. I don't know if my mind was playing tricks on me or what, but smack dab in the middle of the finish was the flavor of almond extract. I am of the opinion that almond extract makes just about everything taste better, so I was pleased.

It's very common to read comparisons between WL Weller 12 and Van Winkle Family Reserve because both are wheated Bourbons, both are 12 years old, both are bottled at similar proof (the Weller at 90 proof, the Van Winkle at 90.4 proof), and both have the same sources (Buffalo Trace- and Bernheim-distilled Bourbon). The Weller can be had for less than $20 a fifth, while the current price on the Van Winkle is around $43 a fifth. The argument is usually that the Weller is a far better value than the Van Winkle. This is almost self-evidently true: the Weller is a good whiskey, and there's no way that the Van Winkle delivers more than twice the enjoyment that the Weller does, at least for me. But I think that most people would agree that the Van Winkle is a superior Bourbon to the Weller, and not by a narrow margin. As with clothing and shoes, you have to pay a lot of money to get relatively small incremental improvements in Bourbon (and whisk(e)y in general).

Last Night's Tipple

I have heard a story of a tour guide at Buffalo Trace Distillery who made much of the fact that Van Winkle Family Reserve Bourbon and WL Weller 12 year old are the same age and come from the same sources. The Weller is $15 a bottle or more cheaper, said the tour guides, and it's the same stuff as the Van Winkle, so why wouldn't you buy the Weller? (I have no way of knowing whether this story is true and, if so, whether it indicates a common practice at Buffalo Trace or not. It is apocryphal, and I am retelling it not to say anything at all about Buffalo Trace but rather to make a point about aging Bourbon.) It's not strictly true that Van Winkle Family Reserve is exactly the same stuff as Weller 12 year old -- the current blend of the Van Winkle may include a small amount of Stitzel-Weller whiskey that's significantly older than 12 years old, and it also likely includes some Heaven Hill wheated Bourbon distilled at Bernheim. I doubt that the Weller has Bourbon in it from either of these sources, although I don't know for sure. But the core of the tour guide's statement is likely true: that the source for most of the Van Winkle blend is the same as the source for most of the Weller 12 year old. Same source, same age, same Bourbon, right?

Wrong. Two identical barrels containing distillate from the same still run aged for the same length of time in exactly the same spot in the rickhouse can be dramatically different in character. Why? I don't know, and neither do any of the whiskey professionals. But this basic fact is the reason why distilleries are able to produce multiple brands that are consistently different in character from Bourbon all made and aged in the same way. It's also why they need to blend many barrels of whiskey to make a batch to bottle if they want to maintain consistency of the finished product. In the case of the Van Winkle Family Reserve, Julian Van Winkle's agreement with Buffalo Trace allows him his choice of the barrels to use for his whiskies, and the Weller is selected from the rest. The Van Winkle is darker and more viscous, and it has more vanilla and caramel character that I like and less of the Wheat Thin graininess common to wheaters that I don't. There's also some unpleasant woodiness when it's first poured, but that's the only negative thing that I can say about it. It is undoubtedly superior to the Weller 12. Is it worth $15 or $20 more a bottle than the Weller? Well, to me it is.

Last Night's Tipple

Since I started in on the wheaters on Sunday night with Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond, I figured that I might as well move up the food-chain to examine again the differences between the different bottlings of wheated Bourbons available. No, not all of them. I don't have a bottle of Maker's Mark on hand, nor do I have the wheated entry in the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection (William LaRue Weller 19 year old) or all of the Van Winkle or WL Weller or even Old Fitz bottlings. But I do have a total of four different varieties (in order from low to high price): Old Fitz BIB, WL Weller 12 year old, Van Winkle Family Reserve 12 year old, and Pappy Van Winkle 15 year old. Next up last night was WL Weller 12. It has some of the same wheated Bourbon characteristics as the Old Fitz BIB, namely, noticeable sweetness and that Wheat Thin graininess. It's not nearly as hot as the Old Fitz; some of that is undoubtedly due to the fact that it's 90 proof instead of 100 proof, but some of it is due to the age. I would be surprised if the Old Fitz is much more than 4 years old (the legal minimum for a BIB), whereas the Weller is 12 years old. Age can take the edge off of a spirit. Finally, the Weller has much more of that vanilla and caramel character that I like so much. Again, not much of a surprise given that those flavors come from the wood and the Weller spends more time in wood.

Last Night's Tipple

The problem that I've had with WL Weller 12 year old before is that it has this disconcerting graininess on the finish. I think that I've seen this described as a "Wheat Thin-like quality" or something like that, and it's apt enough. I just don't like Wheat Thins in my Bourbon. Perhaps due to the chameleon-like nature of Bourbon or to my variable, amateur palate, however, I didn't notice that graininess when I had a pour of this last night -- just sweetness and vanilla. Quite nice.

Last Night's Tipple

William LaRue Weller's grandfather Daniel began distilling in Kentucky around 1800. His father Samuel became a distiller in his own right, and WL got into the business, too, founding the William LaRue Weller & Brother company to market whiskey in 1849. He remained in control of the company, rechristened WL Weller & Son, until 1896, shortly before his death. It was with this company that Julian "Pappy' Van Winkle got his start in the whiskey business, getting hired as a salesman in 1893. Weller was a whiskey trading company, not a distilling company, so they had to buy the Bourbon that they sold under their own label somewhere; and starting in 1903, that somewhere was the Stitzel distillery in Louisville. The Stitzel brothers leased the distillery to Weller in 1912, and that distillery had a license to sell medicinal whiskey during Prohibition. After Prohibition ended, Pappy Van Winkle and his business partner Alex Farnsley bought both Stitzel and Weller and merged them to establish Stitzel-Weller (oh, the originality!), and the new company opened a new distillery in Shively. Van Winkle in turn sold out to United Distillers in the 1970s, which eventually became Diageo after a series of mergers. Diageo shut down the Stitzel-Weller distillery in 1995 and eventually sold off the former Stitzel-Weller brands, including Old Fitzgerald and WL Weller. The former brand is now owned by Heaven Hill, the latter by Buffalo Trace.

The claim to fame for Stitzel-Weller Bourbons is that they were wheated. That is, their mashbills replaced rye with wheat as the secondary grain (after corn, of course). All wheated Bourbons currently on the market (WL Weller, Old Fitzgerald, Rebel Yell, Maker's Mark) derive from Stitzel-Weller's wheated mashbill. The first three were S-W Bourbons that continued with the same mashbill even after Diageo sold the brands off. Maker's Mark, despite the company mythology about Bill Samuels Sr. creating the mashbill from bread-making experiments, uses the S-W wheat mashbill, too: Pappy Van Winkle gave it to him when Samuels was just starting out and needed all the help he could get. Where did the S-W wheat mashbill come from? Nobody really knows. There are extent company documents from the turn of the century indicating that the old Stitzel distillery made standard Bourbon with rye as the small grain. Sometime between then and when the new Stitzel-Weller distillery opened in 1935, someone had made the decision that wheat worked better to create the kind of Bourbon that the company wanted to create. It's undoubtedly the case that wheat had been used as a small grain in other Bourbons prior to S-W making a habit out of it in the early 20th Century. Early distillers probably used whatever grain they could get, and it stands to reason that they could often get wheat instead of rye. By Pappy Van Winkle's time, though, rye was the standard small grain.

In any event, the WL Weller brand today is anomalous just like the Old Charter brand is. All WL Weller Bourbons (except the 19 year old, which is part of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection) are middle-shelf offerings, and yet they have a good deal of age on them. The 12 year old costs less than $18 a fifth, which is just crazy for a Bourbon that old. I doubt that Buffalo Trace will phase out the brand or stop offering the 12 year old, but the price has to rise. The hallmark of all wheated Bourbons is that they're sweet and not bitter, and so it is with this one. It has a graininess on the finish that I don't particularly care for, and it's remarkably hot for a whiskey that's only 90 proof. Believe it or not, but I think it could probably stand a bit more age. It's not bad Bourbon, but I don't think that it will be one of my favorites.