Gary's new quest for the Holy Grail

[bourbonv]

Gary,
I found an advertisement in a 1910 Bonfort's for Nutwood, made by Max Selliger and Co. This is advertised as a Sweet Mash whiskey with a guaranteed 40% small grain of rye and malted barley. Now I know you have shown interest in tasting a sweet mash whiskey and this one is a high rye content product, so now we need to see if we can find a bottle of pre-prohibition Nutwood Bourbon. It would answer a lot of questions and probably give us even more to ask.

In the same issue is an article on Bottled-In-Bond and they state that the first bonded whiskey sold in the U.S. was.... I bet you can never guess. I was suprised but saw how it happened at the same time.

Mike Veach

[gillmang]

Thanks, Mike, well, it may take some time to find the Nutwood but what about Bobby Cox's Mellow Mash from the 1980's? Wasn't Yellowstone a sweet mash bourbon? Maybe it didn't have the amount of rye you mentioned but we could add a splash of Old Overholt to fix that.

As for the first BIB after the 1897 Bottled-in-Bond Act, I know the answer but I'll give a hint to others: it is mentioned in Carson's Social History of Bourbon.

Gary

[bourbonv]

Gary,
I have never heard that Yellowstone was a sweet mash bourbon. I know in the 1980's just before U.D. bought Glenmore, it was a sour mash. I was always told that Mellowmash was a sour mash as well. It's name came from the special still at the Yellowstone distillery.

Gary, I never said after Bottled-in-Bond passed!

Mike Veach

[gillmang]

Well I always assumed "mellow mash" meant sweet mash, I don't know why.

Quite right Mike, bonded whiskey existed before the 1897 Act - the latter Act required for the first time bottling by the distiller (to qualify for the tax break) but the concept existed before to be sure.

This is getting hard, I don't think I can figure this one!

Gary

[bourbonv]

Gary,
The story I heard from Chris Morris who was Bourbon Brand Manager for Glenmore when United Disitillers bought the company, was that Buddy Thompson always thought of Yellowstone as the most "mellow" bourbon on the market. He wanted to make a premium version of Yellowstone with "mellow" in the name, so they brain-stormed and came up with "Mellowmash" because all bourbons are made from a mash and there was a certain ring to the name Buddy liked. It certianly was better than calling it "Yellowmash"!

Actually according to this 1910 article, Canadian Club was the first bonded whiskey sold in the United States and inspired the U.S. Bottled-in-Bond Act. Maybe you can look into this more. Was there a bonding process in Canada in the late 19th century? It would be different than what became the U.S. law, but it must have called for some government supervision and minimum age requirements.

Mike Veach

[gillmang]

Thanks, Mike. On Mellow Mash, I wonder if something in Carson's book didn't say that Yellowstone (at one time anyway) used a sweet mash recipe. I'll check this when I get home.

Regarding Canadian Club, that is most interesting. I'll see what I can find about bonding in Canadian law back then, don't know how much I can dig up but I'll try. I know books have been writtem on the early days of Canadian whisky and there is a good bibliography in a book written not long ago on the liquor trade (by an Ontario academic writer), I need to look into that.

Gary

[bourbonv]

Gary,
I was curious myself about Yellowstone so I went and looked to the advertisement in the 1910 Bonfort's and Taylor and Williams was advertising it as a Bourbon Blended i.e. rectified bourbon. I then went and looked at the 1904 Mida's Criteria and they advertised it as a Bonded Sour Mash. They obviously had different products using the same name and it sort of makes sense. Bonfort's is out of New York and the city has always been a strong market for blended whiskey. Mida's is out of Chicago with a mid-west distribution making it a place to advertise straight, bonded products.

Mike Veach

[bourbonv]

I was looking at the article in the 1910 Bonfort's about bottled-in-bond again yesterday. They definitely credit Canadian Club as not only the first Bonded whiskey for sale in the U.S., but also the inspiration for Col. Thompson of the "Old Jordan" distillery to lead the fight for a similar law in the United States. They point out that "Col. Thompson has never lost a battle" and that the fight was in good hands with his leadership.

Mike Veach

[gillmang]

This would be ironic, Mike, since Canadian Club was always a blended whisky. I guess even blended whisky, or one carrying the CC name at any rate, had a reputation at the time that was felt worthy of protection by a bonding law (although probably the law it inspired was the first U.S. one, the one that simply delayed the tax until dumping but did not require bottling in the bonded warehouse as the Taylor/Carlisle law did).

Gary

[bourbonv]

Gary,
According to this article, Taylor was not very important in getting the law passed - it was more Thompson. Taylor was a big supporter of the law, but at that time I think he was busy with other matters. He was mayor of the city of Frankfort and around that time there was a political move to change the seat of the government to anpther city - Louisville or Lexington being the two main choices. Taylor led the fight to keep state government in Frankfort. That probably left him very little time to campaign for bottled-in-bond.

Mike Veach

[gillmang]

I didn't find anything new on sweet mash bourbon but trolling through an antique bottle site I found a cool picture of a bottle of corn whiskey that used the sweet mash method. It is called, "Sweet Mash Double-Distilled Corn Whiskey". On the label of this Carolinas product (probably early 20th century), it states the whiskey was made from, "hard flinty red corn". See http://www.antiquebottles/raleigh.com. The bottle is shown in the April 2002 newsletter of the Raleigh Bottle Club. The whiskey was from Casper Distilling in Winston-Salem, at one time a major distiller in North Carolina which issued 8 and 11 year old bourbon-type whiskies and various blends. Elsewhere on the site is a receipted color invoice showing some of these whiskies, looks like it could have been issued yesterday..

Anyone know if red flint corn grain is still available?

Gary