Last Night's Tipple

I cracked open the Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve 20 year old that I wrote about on Saturday. As you will recall, Pappy Van Winkle owned the Stitzel-Weller distillery after Prohibition, producing several different brands including Old Fitzgerald and WL Weller, both of which were known for being wheated. Pappy's son sold the distillery in the early 1970s but continued to bottle S-W whiskey under the Van Winkle label. Julian Van Winkle III, Pappy's grandson, continues to do this today. The only problem is that the Stitzel-Weller distillery closed in 1992. So you can do the math: any Van Winkle bottling with an age less than 15 years either contains whiskey older than that or is composed of wheated Bourbon distilled at Buffalo Trace or Heaven Hill's Bernheim. In other words, the 15 year old bottling being released this year is the last 15 year old that will be exclusively S-W juice. That's not a problem with the 20 year old, though -- it can be S-W exclusively for the next 5 years.

The conventional wisdom is that wheated Bourbon benefits more from extreme age than Bourbon made from a standard rye recipe. I don't know if this is universally true -- Sazerac 18 year old rye, which of course has more rye in it than ryed Bourbon, is excellent. Regardless, though, 20 years is a long time for Bourbon. To be honest, I think that it was too long for this Bourbon. The nose is the same delicious caramel creme brulee that the 15 year old version has, but the palate is dry and woody. It's not unpleasant, but I prefer the 15 year old. I'm not disappointed that I spent the money for this bottle since I was intensely curious about it and it's both good and enjoyable; but in the future, if I'm confronted with the choice of a bottle of 15 year old and a bottle of 20 year old, I will take the 15 year old and spend the extra $45 on something nice.

Last Night's Tipple

My four-day tour of wheated Bourbons ends with Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve 15 year old. I am always very hesitant to drink this, not because it isn't good (it's fantastic) but rather because I don't know how I'll be able to replace it when it's gone. I've seen this exactly once in my life, and I bought it then. It's possible to get the 20 and 23 year old versions without too much difficulty because of the high prices -- the bottle or two allocated to Spec's just sit on the shelf for months because not many people are in the market for a $100 bottle of Bourbon. Not so the 15 year old. It's expensive compared to most other Bourbons, but not relative to similarly-aged Scotches. That, and its reputation, quality, and rarity, must mean that it flies off the shelves when it comes in.

You may recall that Stitzel-Weller distillery, whose whiskey Julian Van Winkle has culled from for years to assemble his various bottlings, closed in 1992. That means that the youngest S-W whiskey left is 15 years old. The Bourbon in my bottle of 15 year old Bourbon (purchased in 2006) is probably still all from S-W, but that won't be the case in the future. Supposedly, Van Winkle's stocks of S-W whiskey are getting low, and it just doesn't make sense to keep the 15 year old exclusively S-W when all of the remaining S-W whiskey is older than 15 years.

This brings me to a comment that VaAu made recently on the post I wrote the last time I had Pappy 15:

I stumbled upon some 12 year old PVW—noticeably better than most bourbons in my opinion. Sought some 15 year family reserve—even better. Now I am real curious about Pappy in general. Assuming one can find the following (I have!), what would you guess the price to be:

PVW, 15 year
PVW, 20 year
PVW, 23 year

Also, I am told there is to be a September 2007 bottling of PVW 23 year. What will this do to price of PVW 23 year remaining on shelves?

Finally, will there ever again be a bottling of PVW 20?

How much 20 and 23 remains to be bottled?

Pappy 15, when you can find it, goes for around $45 a fifth. Pappy 20 can be had for around $90 a fifth. The Pappy 23 would be around $120 a fifth. Julian Van Winkle periodically bottles more of all three, depending on demand. I would assume that as long as the 20 year old is still selling, he will continue to bottle it. Stocks of twenty-year-old Stitzel-Weller whiskey will give out after 2012, but there will be sufficiently-aged Buffalo Trace and Heaven Hill wheated Bourbon available by that time for this not to present a problem for the continuation of the older Van Winkle bottlings.

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.

Last Night's Tipple

Another pour of Van Winkle Family Reserve 12 year old Bourbon. My impressions largely match those in June, but I did notice an off-putting pine resin note on some sips. Perhaps it's due to the extensive time in wood.

Scotch is different from Bourbon in many ways, ranging from production methods to marketing and distribution to business practices. The Bourbon business and the Scotch business are both dominated by very large companies now, but the way those large companies operate is significantly different. Scotland has over a hundred operating malt distilleries. Industry consolidation there has largely consisted of multinational spirits companies buying up as many of these distilleries as they possibly can. In contrast, industry consolidation in American whiskey has involved spirits companies buying distilleries and brands and aging whiskey stocks and closing the distilleries. The number of large-scale distilleries producing American whiskey is very small: Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, and Heaven Hill probably produce well over 50% of the American whiskey on the market; and if you add in Maker's Mark, Wild Turkey, Four Roses, and George Dickel, you likely have over 90%.

The American whiskey and Scotch whisky businesses are both incestuous, but in different ways. American distillers form something of a social club, and they're all more than willing to scratch each other's backs. The master distiller of Heaven Hill is a Beam; and when the Heaven Hill distillery burned in 1996, the Jim Beam Distillery allowed Heaven Hill to distill what they needed on Jim Beam stills. In Scotland, this incestuousness takes the form of each distillery being willing to sell whisky to anybody else, even their competitors. That's why there are many non-distillery bottlings of Scotch and why the various good Scotch blends are so good. There are very few non-distillery bottlings of American whiskey, and what ones there are are likely to become rarer. The modus operandi of American whiskey distillers if they have surplus aging stocks is to come up with a new brand and sell it. There isn't a whole lot of bulk whiskey on the spot market, and it's likely to get rarer in the future. Companies like Kentucky Bourbon Distillers that buy and bottle aging whiskey will find it increasingly difficult to operate successfully.

What does all of this have to do with Van Winkle? Well, it goes to explain the deal that Julian Van Winkle cut with Buffalo Trace in the late '90s whereby Buffalo Trace received the rights to bottle and market Van Winkle whiskeys and Julian Van Winkle received the right to get his pick of Buffalo Trace aging whiskeys for his bottlings. Before this agreement, Van Winkle was an independent bottler (although they did own their own stocks of Stitzel-Weller whiskey). Julian knew that his Stitzel-Weller whiskey was running out and that he would be hard-pressed to ensure that he would able to buy quality whiskey in the future if he remained independent. So he threw in with Buffalo Trace. Given Buffalo Trace's attitude toward distilling and their demonstrated ability to make good whiskey, I have to think that this was a good decision.

Last Night's Tipple

Makers of Scotch would probably confirm that it is very difficult to sell their product at a premium price if it's less than twelve years old. There are exceptions, of course: Scotches like Talisker and Macallan can sell ten year old versions, but only because their reputations are so high. In the United States, at least, consumers tend to view age as a proxy for quality. To them, a twelve year old Scotch is necessarily better than a ten year old Scotch, and an eighteen year old Scotch is necessarily better than either of them.

This age-ism seems to have come to the world of Bourbon and other American whiskey. Van Winkle has 15, 20, and 23 year old versions. Heaven Hill has an 18 year old Bourbon sold under the Elijah Craig label. There's an AH Hirsch 16 and 20 year old Bourbon, a WL Weller 19 year old Bourbon, and a Sazerac 18 year old straight rye. And the number of brands that sell ten or twelve year old Bourbons is almost too large to list (Old Charter, WL Weller, Van Winkle, Elijah Craig, etc., etc., etc.). What's going on here? Kentucky isn't Scotland. It's much hotter, and the heat causes Bourbon and rye to age more quickly than Scotch. A twelve year old Bourbon is typically older than a twelve year old Scotch. Part of it is undoubtedly the overproduction of Bourbon in the '70s and '80s. Producers had more Bourbon than they could sell, so there were lots of barrels that just sat in their rickhouses aging. Eventually, the producers decided to bottle what they had and see how the market liked it. Well, the market loved it. And so longer-aged Bourbons are now a feature of the landscape. In the process, producers have discovered what Scotch producers discovered long ago: the older the stated age, the more they can sell the product for. American consumers associate older with better.

As a matter of fact, this isn't always the case. A Bourbon that has been aged too long will dry out and be overpowered by the wood. I recently had a taste of the Elijah Craig 18 year old, and it was like sucking on charcoal. It was not pleasant at all. And because of Kentucky's heat, it's a lot harder to get a drinkable 18 year old whiskey there than in Scotland. So what are Bourbon distillers to do? They want to sell old whiskey because they can do so at high prices, but they want to make it drinkable so that buyers will come back. Well, the answer is that age is not age. Whiskey ages differently depending on the kind of rickhouse it's in (masonry vs. steel-clad, heated vs. unheated, etc.) and where that rickhouse is (on the top of a hill, near a body of water, etc.). Older whiskeys like the Van Winkle 12 year old Family Reserve Bourbon typically come from barrels that are subject to less extreme temperature fluctuations, like, for example, those in the center of a rickhouse.

Originally, Bourbon bottled under this label was distilled at Stitzel-Weller. Alas, since the distillery closed in 1992, the stocks of 12 year old Bourbon distilled there expired a few years ago. What's in the bottle is now mostly distilled at Bernheim distillery in Lousiville, just like the Old Fitzgerald that I had on Tuesday. I might be imagining things, but nose of the Van Winkle shares a lot of the Crown Royal overtones that Old Fitz has. The difference is that the Van Winkle's nose develops into something else, with lots of vanilla and creme brulee and leather. Like the 15 year old Van Winkle, it's unctuous and extremely sweet. It's not as refined or as much of a dessert in a glass, though. That's okay: it's still excellent. As with any other Van Winkle product, buy it when you see it. There's not much to be had.

Last Night's Tipple

There is a great divide in the Bourbon world between those Bourbons that use rye as a small grain in their mashbills (along with corn, which legally must be at least 51% of the mashbill but usually makes up a much higher percentage, and malted barley, which provides the enzymes necessary to convert the starches in the other grains to sugars that can then be fermented) and those Bourbons that use wheat as the small grain. Rye is a very assertive grain, and those Bourbons that use it typically have a "bite" that wheated Bourbons do not have. Instead, they're typically smooth and mellow. All wheated Bourbons -- and these include Old Fitzgerald, Maker's Mark, WL Weller, Rebel Yell, and others -- can trace their recipes back directly or indirectly to the old Stitzel-Weller distillery. This distillery came up with a wheated recipe for Old Fitzgerald and later applied it to various other brands. When Bill Samuels came looking for a good recipe for his proposed Maker's Mark brand, Julian "Pappy" Van Winkle II, who owned Stitzel-Weller, gave him his. Van Winkle sold Stitzel-Weller in 1972, but he retained the right to bottle and sell Stitzel-Weller Bourbon under the Old Rip Van Winkle label (and also labels with other permutations of the Van Winkle name). And that's exactly what Pappy and his son Julian Van Winkle III proceeded to do: they selected and bought barrels of Stitzel-Weller Bourbon, aged them at their own facility, and bottled and sold them under their own label. The Stitzel-Weller distillery had a number of owners after 1972, eventually passing to UDV (a predecessor company to today's Diageo), which shut it down in 1992 and sold the brands and the stocks of aging whiskey to Heaven Hill and Buffalo Trace. Julian Van Winkle, realizing that he had to have access to good whiskey in order for his brand to survive, entered into some sort of arrangement with Buffalo Trace under which they distribute his whiskey and he has access to their aging stocks to select the whiskey he bottles.

The Van Winkle whiskeys currently available are Old Rip Van Winkle 10 year old (a 90 proof version and a 107 proof version), Van Winkle Family Reserve 12 year old, Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye 13 year old, Pappy Van Winkle 15 year old, Pappy Van Winkle 20 year old, and Pappy Van Winkle 23 year old. All of the Pappy Van Winkle Bourbons are still made from Stitzel-Weller whiskey, although that's going to end soon for the 15 year old. The Old Rip Van Winkle and Van Winkle Family Reserve Bourbons are made from wheated Bourbons distilled at Buffalo Trace or Heaven Hill's Bernheim distillery (although both may have a stray barrel of Stitzel-Weller thrown in).

Since the Pappy Van Winkle 20 and 23 year old versions are extremely expensive and difficult to find, I contented myself with the 15 year old. It's amazing. There's vanilla, butterscotch, maple syrup, and bread pudding on the nose. It's unctuous and extremely sweet, which I don't get from very many Bourbons. There's also some orange peel and creme brulee. And it's still alive: it's not dried out or woody, as could happen with American whiskey this old. I wish I could find more. It's simply outstanding and probably the best Bourbon I've ever had.