Straight Bourbon

There's a lot of history and 'lore' behind bourbon so discuss both here.

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Straight Bourbon

Unread postby bourbonv » Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:39 am

I just posted the following on the Filson Bourbon Academy facebook page and I am curious as to what you think about it'
"At the turn of the 20th century the distilleries worked very hard to make straight whiskey a separate category of whiskey from blended whiskey. In 1897 they had Congress pass the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. Bonded whiskey is by law straight whiskey, distinguished from blends by the strict regulations involved in the 1897 Act. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Taft Decision of 1909 further distinguished straight bourbon from “rectified” whiskey, defining the terms “straight whiskey”, “blended whiskey” and “imitation or artificial whiskey”.
The end of the 20th century saw these gains reversed. First de-regulation in the Reagan era took the teeth out of the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. No longer was there a tax stamp required with the information as to the season and year the whiskey was made and bottled so there was no way the consumer would know for sure the age and vintage of the whiskey. Then the government started allowing products to be called “Bourbon” after being put into used wine barrels for a period of time. Then they started to allow flavors to be added to whiskey and still call the product “Bourbon”. It seems the meaning of “Straight Bourbon” is being attacked from within and the person most harmed is the consumer. At the present rate Bourbon whiskey may be nothing more than another blended whiskey."

Is Bourbon slowly becoming just another blended whiskey?
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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Re: Straight Bourbon

Unread postby EllenJ » Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:39 am

Mike, can you post a copy of the original 1897 BIB Act here on BourbonEnthusiast?

We all have our opinions concerning your points, but totally without ground. Even you state that "...Bonded whiskey is by law straight whiskey" as if the current legal definitions existed before Repeal, but they didn't. Without the actual law to look at, we can only assume that the definition of "straight whiskey" and pre-PF&D requirements for bonded storage were the same as they are today (and we all know what "assume" means).

For example, DURING prohibition, ALL (legally sold) whiskey was bonded. That is, all of the whiskey sold under prescription (or to bakers and churches), came from federally-bonded warehouses. There wasn't a set of requirements to be met for whiskey to be placed INTO such warehouses; ALL whiskey went into the consolidation warehouses, whereupon it became "bonded" whiskey. When it came time to bottle that whiskey in pint bottles, the two or three owners of all those wonderful pre-Pro brands were neither required nor predisposed to maintain brand integrity. They couldn't even if they wanted to, because the contents of the barrels weren't necessarily the same as what the barrelheads stated. These were consolidation warehouses, whiskey was a commodity, and evaporation was dealt with by the simple expedient of dumping partial barrels and rebarreling the vatted whiskey to keep the barrels full. All the whiskey in ANY bottle of Prohibition whiskey was likely not made in the same season, by the same distiller (What? I'm supposed to know who DISTILLED this stuff? Getouttahere!), or any of the other factors that we expect after the POST-REPEAL laws (CFR27 and all that)

The 1897 BiB Act was a federal document and public information. Copyright laws do not apply. I'm sure you have access to that document (you wouldn't be quoting from it if you didn't), so could you find the time to scan and digitize it into .pdf and post it so the rest of us can know what the heck we're talkin' about? MUCH APPRECIATED!
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Re: Straight Bourbon

Unread postby Satty Beach » Mon Sep 09, 2013 12:20 pm

Challenging question. I think I should have gone into this business. It calls for projection, there's no going back in time and making more "X" when you made too much "Y" 2 years ago. Then no sooner do you do that and people are calling for more "Y" again. But, the publics drinking habits are faire bankable. Most people just drink the same thing for years and years until they get sick of it, their habits change or the product changes (because the big players trade labels like baseball cards they can do that). Early Times is one of my favorites and it just went into the gutter. I hit 5-6 liquor stores looking for a "good" bottle. No dice, that goes to show how fast the turnover is. If you want a white whiskey though, for $10 a bottle, try Early Times! I guess there is always a silver lining or that is how I see things. I did finally nail down the vague candy store flavor that brand had and it (was) horehound.

Awhile back there was a poll on this site "What do you want the distillers to do?" My answer to that would be STOP TINKERING! Now, who's the biggest tinkerer? BT. Who also puts out some darned good whiskey? BT. So, it's a double edged sword. I also think they are suffering from brand overload. Old Charter is/was another favorite of mine and to my opinion it has gone sterile, something's missing, I can't describe it. I'm going to have to watch Ancient Age. Closely. Benchmark is already gone, IMHO, that's just a leftovers dump anyway. (not sneering). I may revisit that brand. Now that I said that it looks like they are focusing all their energy on the top shelf and letting the value brands languish.

One thing you can always be sure of in this life is a large segment of people are unhappy. I'm happy and some people I know are happy but, not all are. The big distillers are not happy. Why should they be happy? They make an addictable product so they have a guaranteed income stream. So, they run out of product "X" because they didn't project correctly (you REALLY can't 100%) so they resort to making "Speed" whiskey and mish-mashes (no pun intended). So what happens is, guess what, the little guy to the rescue. The little guy will save the big distillers from themselves. Or something like that...

Tommy B
Taken the cure.
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