BourbonEnthusiast.com

Went hunting last Sunday and found 4 1.75L bottles of Old Forester 86. One is dated 1980 and the other three are 1983. I also found a 1.75L bottle of Old Charter 7 year, and last, a bottle of Eagle Rare 101 10 year. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon

The Old Forester from that period is excellent whiskey. The Old Charter is going to be more erratic - there was a reason they shut Bernheim down and rebuilt it at the end of the 1980's and sometimes the Old Charter reflects that reason. It often has a sour taste due to bad fermentation.

Sorry to bump this old thread. Mike, could you expand on the issues at Bernheim before the rebuild. I have always liked the Louisville Old Charter and would be interested to find out some more info on it's distilling process. Was the fermenter trouble with the tiles or something like that? Thanks for your help.

Under Schenley, you never really knew what you were going to get in some brands. The Old Stagg brand was what I call the "kiss of death" for a distillery. Schenley would take an old distillery such as the one at Chapeze, rename it the Geo.T. Stagg distillery and withing 2 years the whiskey was gone and the distillery closed. I know of at least five distilleries that suffered that fate. To a lesser extent the same type of thing was going on at Bernheim. Whiskey from smaller distilleries was being shipped into the city to be stored and often used for Charter and Harper brands. Some times that whiskey was not very good and I have had some bottles of Chareter and Harper that reflect that fact with a really unpleasant sour flavor to the bourbon.

Other times the fault in these brands was the whiskey made at Bernheim. The tile fermenters were horrible to keep clean and pressure washing took the grout out of the seams. This meant that it was not uncommon to have bacteria infecting the fermentation doing some nasty things to the beer. Nasty beer makes nasty whiskey. By the 1970's Schenley was in the hands of people who looked to sell it off piece by piece while milking the maximum profit out of the company. Quality really suffered then and the distillery fell into dis-repair as improvements and costly repairs were canceled. The distillery was rebuilt by U.D. because there was no hope of repairing what was already there.

Was that type of attitude something that came from the top down and accounting dept.? How did the quality controll people react?

Luckily, all the Charter I've had has been outstanding.

Thanks

Schenley was sold by Louis Rosenstiel to a person that wrote his Masters thesis for business school on how to get rich by purchasing a big company and selling it off piece by piece after milking all you could from it. I think that explains a whole lot about the quality control issues at Schenley in the 1970's and 80's. The company was doomed from the beginning and it just good fortune that Age International split of in the early 1980's and that there was anything left when DLC bought Schenley.

That's a very good point Prof. Veach! Just think what the bourbon biz would be like today if there had been no Age International and thus no Blanton's! There wouldn't be any Buffalo Trace Distillery and it's many award wininng brands. Just a shuttered up old plant warehousing someone elses mundane whiskey. Would there be any single barrel bourbons at all? Would today's Bourbon Renaissance have occured at all? I tend to think not.

ima

Mike,
Not sure if know..... who was the owner that sold everything off? Was he with UD or another company? Seems like he would have been with Schenley before UD?
Any other thoughts regarding Charter and Harper distillation processes are welcome. Was there a bottom shelf label in the Bernheim portfolio?

There was indeed a bottom shelf in the Schenley portfolio. You have to remember that Bernheim is just one of many distilleries owned by Schenley and they sent whiskey between the distilleries allo of the time. There is a good chance that the Old Charter or I W Harper from the 50's, 60's or 70's in the bottle was made at some other distillery such as the Geo.T Stagg/Albert Blanton/Ancient Age/Buffalo Trace distillery. The bottom shelf products were products like Echo Springs, Cream of Kentucky, Old Quaker and James E. Pepper - Brands that at one time were great but were slumping in sales due to neglect of advertising and quality control. You could throw in other brands that disappeared by the early 70's as well such as Green River, Old Piondexter, Pebbleford and Blur Ribbon.

Mike said "Blur Ribbon"!

Now that's great flurbage

Blurbin

Hee-hee, I don't know about you, Lynn, but when I've consumed as much bourbon as Mike occasionally does (I'm not sure if he meant (on another thread) that Barleycorn drank up his whole bottle of Old Weller 107 or I did -- both are certainly possible) I start to blurrrrrrrr things a bit m'self.

EllenJ wrote:Hee-hee, I don't know about you, Lynn, but when I've consumed as much bourbon as Mike occasionally does (I'm not sure if he meant (on another thread) that Barleycorn drank up his whole bottle of Old Weller 107 or I did -- both are certainly possible) I start to blurrrrrrrr things a bit m'self.

We surely do know how to drink some serious amounts of Blurbin don't we

It's all in good fun. In fact I wish I were crashin' in your Cincy Bourbo-Bunker this very night.

Ima really needs a private jet.

Damn It!