bourbonv wrote:Hard to say that no taste from Russia is different than no taste from Poland.
Hee.Hee.
Uh, Mike... would you say that was certainly a
"tasteless" comment?
bourbonv wrote:The Thedfords and McKendricks are prime examples of packaging a low quality product in an expensive looking package and charging a high price. Consumers took one taste and backed off. They then kept in their mind, "It looks good, but so did that mesquite crap". For bourbon to retain its improving image, it needs to keep in mind attractive packages had better include a good product.
Okay, here goes...
I want y'all to know, right up front, that I love you and I love bourbon whiskey.
Think of this as an exercise in "tough love".
I understand what you're trying to express, Mike, and I agree with you (and Chuck)... to an extent.
But I think you're taking an easy shot at products that our little group simply didn't happen to support (actually, it wasn't technically "our little group", but that's another story; many of us were involved there then, and we write the same way now, too).
The Goddess & I once spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting with Jim Razzino, the producer of both the brands you mentioned, in his Louisville home.
Jim's interest in American whiskey, like ours, centers around the history of whiskey in America. The idea behind Thedford "Colonial Style" whiskey, his first attempt, was less of a "me, too" move, relative to Brown-Foreman's Woodford Reserve, than a reaction to it. For all of it's highly-touted copper pot stills, Woodford Reserve (at least as bottled at that time) was no more an expression of "whiskey as it once was" than any other Kentucky bourbon. Especially any other Kentucky bourbon normally labeled "Old Forester". Jim wanted to create a more accurate example of the sort of whiskey Americans drank even before the Labrot & Graham (or Oscar Pepper) period, and his choice was a very young whiskey which he had bottled as Thedford Colonial Style.
It was wrong. He knew it was wrong (Razzino is an amateur historian similar to ourselves). Real colonial whiskey, if aged at all, would have been younger than what he could obtain, and wouldn't have been aged in new charred barrels. He could have used corn whiskey, but real colonial whiskey would have been rye, and that wasn't available to him. So he used the youngest bourbon whiskey he could find and hoped for the best. Thedford Colonial really isn't bad whiskey, other than being young. It's quite reminiscent of Bullett Frontier whiskey, made by Four Roses.
And that brings us to what Razzino REALLY wanted to do...
Jim is as fascinated with the American Cowboy as the Goddess and I are with pre-1990 American Whiskey. His house is decorated with paintings and photos of the Old West; his bookshelves and coffee tables are cluttered with cowboy books and memorabilia. He speaks of the Wild West the way we talk about copper pot stills and mashbills. His idea of marketing a brand of whiskey just like what cowboys might have drunk in the 1800s was not just marketing hype; it was an honest attempt to apply his career training (he was a salesman for, I believe, Brown-Forman before going independent) to his passion.
McKendricks was aimed at a niche market, and not without some logic. Razzino knew that the real "cowboy whiskey" wasn't twenty-year-old Stitzel-Weller or its 19th century equivalent. Oh there was plenty of that, all right, but you'd be more likely to find it in the fine saloons of Denver or San Francisco. What the great American cowboy found in a wooden shack at the end of the trail was young whiskey, aged in used barrels for about as long as it took to get to Kansas or Montana from Kentucky. The most commonly used method of "aging" was (and still is among craft-distillers) the addition of charred wood chips to the barrel. That was the sort of whiskey Razzino envisioned, but with one further step: America, and to an extent Japan & Europe, was on a "Southwestern" binge at the time. Everything was mesquite-this and chili-that. He took an existing successful marketing idea, that of emphasing the thick smokey taste of Islay whisky, and substitute mesquite smoke for the peat smoke.
Unfortunately, "Southwestern" went just as quickly
out of style. Oh sure, Mexican restuarants are still around, but how many of them are still Tex-Mex?.
Seen anyone putting in adobe tile on "Trading Spaces" or "Designed to Sell" lately?
Does anyone know where I can find Southwestern Mesquite Seasoning anymore?
Uh-Huh.
I think one could safely say that the product was not a resounding success. Certainly not among us bourbon lovers, who (while we constantly bemoan the lack of innovation in the industry) always categorically reject anything new or different, unless it strongly resembles the currently accepted profile. And (with a single exception -- and even
that's likely to disappear along with the last of the Stitzel-Weller, despite the fact that his best stuff wasn't even from there), we refuse to grant legitimacy to anyone not currently associated with the eight recognized Kentucky straight whiskey companies.
Certainly not to such upstarts as Jim Razzino. Or Tom Bullett. Or Trey Zoeller. Or Peter Pogue. Or any of the new Michter's whiskeys from Chatham Imports. And (if it weren't for her participation in this forum) not for LeNell Smothers, either (remember, LeNell isn't marketing an existing brand with a "Bottled for LeNell's" sticker; that excellent rye whiskey bears her own label). After all, we call ourselves bourbon enthusiasts, but do I see any tasting notes or discussions about Hudson Bay Baby Bourbon? Anything not derogatory on Noah's Mill? Yet nothing but praise for Buffalo Trace's 90-proof Sazerac Rye or (somewhat reluctantly) Heaven Hill's Bernheim Original or Woodford's Four-Grain.
Come
on, folks. Get your heads out of your (to use a name that I've always associated with just the OPPOSITE of what I'm describing) BUNGHOLES, and start picking up on products that don't taste like the ones we already know and like.
There. That's it.
I really hope I didn't offend anyone, 'cause I love y'all and I love trading American whiskey knowledge back and forth. But I just feel it's time for the group I'd like to think I'm part of (after all, under my original name I'm number 15 of 611 members here) to move on up to a higher level of American whiskey appreciation. Like many of you, I suspect, I've felt this way for some time. I just needed to wait for the discussion to get around to a new product whose flavor I personally consider poo-poo so I could use that as an example instead of touting some personal favorite. It happens that I don't care for the taste of McKendrick, nor of it's less-auspicious brother, Longhorn Creek. But then, I don't find it any more unpleasant than that of Ardbeg or Laphraighadijnf (or however you spell Leap Frog). I just think I'd rather spend time discussing, rather than dismissing, "the little guy" in the progression of American whiskey from what it was when I started drinking it to American whiskey as it's gonna be when my grandson Ryan starts drinking it in a couple of years. I believe that, unless we DO THAT, the progression is simply going to continue to go (perhaps rightfully) toward American vodka.
Except for us old geezers who still prefer that bourbon stuff.
Cheers!![/i]