Today, December 5th, is the 89th anniversary of the end of national Prohibition after Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah (!?) voted to ratify the 21st amendment. Interestingly enough the federal government had already begun the repeal process months earlier.
I have always understood the notion of holding whiskey ‘in bond,’ i.e. putting it into a warehouse for some period of time to age before excise taxes needed to be paid on it, as an implicitly good thing. Recently I came to understand that this boon could and did have some (possibly unintended) consequences, at least when bonding was first introduced.
The black fungus Baudoinia is a common sight on the outsides of whiskey warehouses in Kentucky. Turns out the way the fungus grows also has an interesting connection with another well known phenomenon, Angel's Share.
An innocuous looking document sent out by the TTB on the 27th of April 1962 would change the way American whiskey had been barreled since before Prohibition. Was the science it was based on any good or was the outcome predetermined?
Last week I went on about all the qualities American white oak brings to the maturation of Bourbon. But that's not the end of the story. Seasoning, kilning, charring and toasting are all types of wood degradation performed as part of 'raising' barrels. Each makes its own unique contribution to the whiskey maturation process.
There's so much to admire and praise about the American white oak and the qualities it lends to Bourbon and rye whiskey. Here's a few of them.
Can the $20,000 to $40,000 asking price for a bottle of Doug Phillips 'Green Ink' rye be attributed to a 19th century Gauger marking barrels for tax purposes?
Seeing the list of America's best Bourbon bars for 2022 it was hard for me to note that Hard Water was missing. It was one of many bars that didn't survive the COVID shutdowns.
A week or so ago I attended an ‘experience’ at one of the many distilleries in Kentucky now offering tours and tastings. Like many similar offerings, it included a recap of various important milestones in American whiskey history. And as happens all too often, one or more of these milestones was attributed to the wrong event and date. I guess this isn’t the biggest deal but when those of us who represent the distilling industry are asked to tell the story of Bourbon to the general public I think it’s important to get these details right.
There are two common schools of belief (or perhaps ‘churches’ is a better term) on chill filtering. One school declares that chill filtering is a harmless process and that what’s removed has no impact on flavor, only color and possibly the texture (mouthfeel) of the whiskey is affected. The other school strongly believes that chill filtering is destructive and results in an unavoidable attenuation of aroma and flavor in the whiskey. It seemed unlikely that both of these assertions could be true so I decided to look further into the matter.