Last Night's Tipple

I had another pour of JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon last night. You will recall that this is one of Heaven Hill's plethora of orphan brands, the list of which includes JTS Brown (Paul Newman's Bourbon in The Hustler) and many others. One question that I have about these brands is whether Heaven Hill fills them all with the same Bourbon. Jim Murray, who is a prominent writer about whis(e)y and the author of Jim Murray's Whiskey Bible, seems to think so because the entries for Heaven Hill's orphan brands in the book all tell you to see the entry for Heaven Hill Bourbon. I'm not so sure. Part of my doubt is due to the fact that I haven't tried any of the other HH rye-based orphans, but part of it is because I know that HH does have different flavor profiles for their different Bourbons. Despite their similar age and proof, for example, Fighting Cock and JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond taste different. They both have that Heaven Hill minty thing going on; but JW Dant has much more char than does Fighting Cock, and Fighting Cock evolves more of a dessert character than does JW Dant. So another thing that I need to investigate more fully in the future.

Last Night's Tipple

I confess that I'm a bit ashamed every time I pick up the Fighting Cock bottle. I know that I shouldn't be a whiskey snob and that I shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I have images of half-drunk, chortling college students when I see the bottle. And frankly, that's probably the market that Heaven Hill is going after. Oh, well. It's still pretty good Bourbon, despite the packaging. I have read descriptions of Heaven Hill Bourbon that say that it has a distinctive minty character, and I guess that I can see that. It's also hot and a little rough, which is in keeping with its marketing image. With time in the glass, it has some of the dessert quality that I like so much. Not a perfect Bourbon by any stretch of the imagination, but a good value.

Last Night's Tipple

As I have previously discussed, Old Fitzgerald is currently distilled by the Heaven Hill Distillery at their Bernheim plant in Louisville. The brand is a venerable one, rising to glory and renown with the Stitzel-Weller Distillery and Pappy Van Winkle after Prohibition. It doesn't have nearly the reputation that it once did; instead, it's in Heaven Hill's stable of middle-shelf orphan brands with only a regional following. But it is still true to its wheated Bourbon roots. Heaven Hill had never distilled a wheated Bourbon when they acquired the Old Fitz brand in the early '90s, but instead of turning it into a regular old ryed Bourbon, they kept the mashbill and began to make their own wheated whiskey. Some of this whiskey is currently in the some of the Van Winkle bottlings (used while the Buffalo Trace wheated Bourbon was coming up to age), and Heaven Hill's experience with wheat led them to their experiment with Bernheim straight wheat whiskey, which is a one-of-a-kind offering. I'm not taken with Bernheim wheat, especially at the price; but I love the innovation and I have hope that the whiskey will improve with some more age on it.

But I was talking about Old Fitzgerald Bottled In Bond. It's not that hard to tell that it's a wheater -- the sweetness and the Wheat Thin grainy nose are both dead giveaways. It's not bad, but it's no Van Winkle. Heck, it's not even an Old Weller. It's just too hot, too rough. Two or three years more time in the barrel could do this whiskey good. That statement seems to be a recurring theme with Heaven Hill whiskeys.

Orphans

While we're discussing interesting things that the Wall Street Journal has published recently, I should mention an article in yesterday's Pursuits section about orphan brands of liquor and beer and how they can become the successful basis for niche players in the drinks business ("In Praise of 'Orphan Brands'" by Eric Felten, p. P6). Felten defines an orphan brand as one that at one time had a substantial following but that got lost in the waves of consolidation and brand shuffling that have roiled the drinks business over the past couple of decades. The three brands that he discusses are Sheep Dip, a vatted malt Scotch whisky that had a good deal of popularity in the '70s and '80s but that fell on hard times until a former Genmorangie marketing executive named Alex Nicol bought the brand and revived it as the centerpiece of the tiny Spencerfield Spirit Company; Lone Star beer, currently owned by Pabst, currently the orphan brand king in the beer world, and brewed by contract by Miller; and Plymouth Gin, a legendary gin brand dating to the 18th Century that almost retreated into oblivion until it was rehabilitated at the turn of the 21st Century.

It's a pity that Felten didn't discuss the Bourbon industry in general, with its huge number of orphan brands (Old Crow, Old Taylor, Yellowstone, Ten High, Tom Moore, JTS Brown, JW Dant, and Old Fitzgerald, to name just a few); or about Heaven Hill in particular, which has largely built its business around buying up orphan brands. Still, it was an interesting article, not just because it brought Sheep Dip to my attention. It's apparently a very high-quality vatted malt, of which we could use more. I'll have to give it a try sometime.

Last Night's Tipple

I have to believe that Heaven Hill's Fighting Cock Bourbon is at least partially intended as an ironic send-up of Wild Turkey. WT is known colloquially as the Kickin' Chicken, and, to be honest, the chicken on the label of Fighting Cock looks not only like it's kicking but also a bit like the WT logo turkey after a fire cracker had gone off underneath it. Fighting Cock is bottled at 103 proof, which sounds a lot like WT's trademark 101 proof, only 2 better! And I'm sure that the Heaven Hill marketing department has amplifiers that go up to 11, too. Anyway, it's a time-honored tradition for companies to copy the marketing of their successful competitors; and perhaps there's a bit of that going on here. However, it's just a bit too over-the-top to take seriously, which is why I'm pretty sure that Heaven Hill didn't intend for it to be.

Whatever the goal of the marketing, what really matters is the quality of the Bourbon in the bottle and the value that it offers. I bought Fighting Cock because I had read some favorable comment about it and because it seemed to have a good price-point (around $18 a fifth) for a Bourbon of its age (6 years) and proof (103). Like the other higher-proof Heaven Hill Bourbon that I've tried recently (JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond), Fighting Cock has a nose that is dominated by char -- not vanilla or caramel or other aromas that derive from barrel charring, but the char itself. With some time in the glass, that char burns off a little, and what's left is some vanilla and some more fresh mintiness (another widely-commented-upon characteristic of Heaven Hill Bourbons). There's a lot of wood on the palate, but also an oily graininess that isn't as bad as it sounds. What really dominates everything, though, is that this is one fiery whiskey. The alcohol on the nose doesn't ever really burn off like it does on most spirits that I've tried, and a sip will burn. I don't regret buying this, and I don't think that I'll have trouble finishing the bottle. However, I doubt that it will be a mainstay in my collection.

Last Night's Tipple

After my not so favorable impressions of JW Dant Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon a couple of weeks ago, I was eager to see if I would like it any more the second time around. I had another pour of it last night, and I have to say that it did seem better this time. It's grainy with a bit of mintiness on the palate, which I have read is the hallmark of Heaven Hill-distilled Bourbons, and I didn't notice the overt char that impressed me the first time I tried this. It all goes to show you that your perceptions of a whiskey vary greatly depending on factors that I can only imagine: maybe mood and setting, maybe other aromas in the air, maybe even the ambient humidity. I don't know. All I can say is that this tasted like better Bourbon than I remember it being two weeks ago. So take that for whatever it's worth.

Last Night's Tipple

In the early days of Kentucky Bourbon, not everyone who wanted to distill had enough wherewithal to afford a copper pot still. It was common in such circumstances to improvise a pot-like still from a log. That's right. A log. A log was split in half, hollowed out, and joined back together. The top was fitted with a thing that looked like a hollow Hershey's Kiss with a copper pipe running out of it. Another length of copper pipe ran through the hollowed-out portion of the log. The distiller would fill the cavity of the log with his beer, run steam through the copper pipe in the cavity, and collect the alcohol running out of the copper pipe coming out of the Hershey's Kiss on top. This method of distilling was called "running the log," and one of the early distillers who used it was Joseph Washington Dant, who began distilling in Nelson County in 1836. The Dants became one of the first families of Bourbon, with JW's eponymous brand of Bourbon and son Joseph Bernard Dant's Yellowstone Bourbon being two of the best-selling Bourbon brands in their day. Just as you can't turn around today without meeting another Beam in Nelson County, so too do Dants abound, although they have been out of the whiskey business since shortly after Prohibition. The JW Dant brand kicked around a number of different owners and finally settled with Heaven Hill in the 1980s. It's not a prestige brand anymore, and its distribution is limited; but it does have a modest following.

The bottle of JW Dant that I bought was Bottled in Bond. The back label says that it was distilled and bottled at DSP-KY-31. The interesting thing about this is that DSP-KY-31 is the old Heaven Hill Distillery, which burned in October, 1996 and has not been rebuilt. The bottom of the bottle has the digits "06," which suggests that it was bottled in 2006. This means that the whiskey in the bottle is either 10 years old, or Heaven Hill is using old labels. After tasting the whiskey, I think that the latter explanation is more likely. The nose is all char and wood, developing into vanilla with some time in the glass. The palate is grainy and hot. This does not taste like an old whiskey, and I would be absolutely shocked if it was actually distilled in 1996. It's not spectacular, but it is a decent enough whiskey for $15 a fifth.