The Cult of Oldness

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The Cult of Oldness

Unread postby cowdery » Sun Feb 25, 2007 5:48 am

I blame the English.

For hundreds of years, the Scots and Irish made whiskey, and only they drank it. They didn’t market it to themselves, they didn’t have to, they were born drinking it.

Then, in about the middle of the 19th century, London merchants—some of whom were Scottish, some English, some even Italian—decided to soften the traditional Irish and Scottish pot still malt whiskey by mixing it with a lighter, almost flavorless grain whiskey made in a new invention, the column still. Blended scotch was born, and with it international scotch drinking and international scotch marketing.

This new whiskey—a brand new invention—was more palatable than the straight stuff and a lot less expensive to make. It was marketed to people who drank, but didn’t drink whiskey. Maybe they knew a little bit about it, or about other aged spirits such as brandy, or old wine. Most people know about aging, they know that the older something is, the better it is.

Barrel aging was positioned as the expensive, sophisticated and therefore better way to flavor spirits with plant material. The cheap way was gin, a neutral spirit infused with plant material like juniper berries, orange peels and tree bark. That could be done overnight. Whiskey (this new whiskey, that is, blended scotch) was better than gin because it was aged in barrels, and that took a long time.

So, the London blenders trying to sell this new kind of whiskey didn’t talk about the high efficiency of their new Coffey stills. They talked about oldness, timeless craftsmanship. They talked how old the whiskey was, and how old the distillery was that made it—or some of it, anyway, the malt part. Or they told a story about long ago, in a land far away, a story of heroes and villains, that had nothing to with their brand but conveyed oldness.

Their companies, like their products, were brand new, so they looked for anything old to talk about, the older the better. Mainly what they talked about were the distilleries that made the malt component of the new blends.

Bragging about the age of your whiskey is pretty straightforward. You talk about how old it is, how much older it is than somebody else’s whiskey, how much less expensive it is than somebody else’s younger whiskey or whiskey the same age. And 20 is better than 15 is better than 10.

With the “heritage” angle, older is better because it means the company has more experience, is closer to origins, has whiskey in its DNA. So 1066 is better than 1250 is better than 1415 is better than 1648. You get the picture.

Aged spirits are supposed to be old liquor from old companies, with even older cultural associations, the older the better in every case. That’s what makes all aged spirits better than un-aged spirits, such as gin or rum, and makes some aged spirits better than others. Oldness is Lord. We prostrate ourselves before thee.

The European-American conquerors of North America began to make liquor here as soon as they could. They adapted European methods to new conditions. They found a new grain to incorporate, Indian corn, later called maize or simply corn. It distilled up sweet and mild, but full-bodied.

They also found plentiful supplies of a terrific wood for barrels, American white oak, so plentiful and so rich it gave the whiskey a dark red color and creamy, nutty, caramel yummy-ness.

The Americans made wood much more of a flavoring agent than it had ever been in the Scottish or Irish tradition, more like it was in the Cognac tradition. Oak, vanilla, caramel; dark fruits; those are fortified wine and brandy flavors, especially present in Cognac, which ages in Limousin oak barrels that are sometimes placed in attics of homes and businesses to expose them to wildly fluctuating temperature extremes, like the hilltop rackhouses of the Bluegrass.

But one thing both traditions had in common was, older-is-better. For scotch whiskey, Irish whiskey, and Cognac brandy, older is always better.

But American whiskey isn’t built that way. At first, it wasn’t aged at all, though it might be sweetened before drinking with a little sugar or fruit juice. When it was aged, they aged it fast. They put it into new charred barrels and aged it in steamy Kentucky. Doing it that way, the whiskey tasted pretty good in three years and really good in six.

But like most things, it didn’t keep getting better indefinitely. It seemed to peak at about 8, maybe 10 years. After that, it started to get too woody and too sooty. It tasted like a campfire. It didn’t taste good.

Like their United Kingdom counterparts, American whiskey merchants talked about oldness, they even talked about age, but most of the whiskey they sold was four to six years old. It tasted good enough. No one complained.

Oldness was in the names—Old Fullerbrush—and in the stories about the brand’s founder meeting Daniel Boone at the ye olde pot still inn, but the whiskey was four to six years old, regardless of what the label said in those days before truth-in-advertising laws.

Then came Prohibition, which officially lasted 13 years but disrupted the American whiskey industry for much longer than that. Some of the whiskey sold during Prohibition as medicinal whiskey was very old for American whiskey, between 13 and 18 years old, some of it. Much of it was truly awful, over-aged, dead, oxidized, disgusting. However, this whiskey was from barrels that may have been moved several times and probably didn’t receive the TLC that barrels of aging whiskey usually got from their owner. Whiskey that old didn’t necessarily have to taste that bad.

In the post-Prohibition era, it took time to build back whiskey stocks, so even four- to six-year-old whiskey was scarce for many years. Then came World War II, which set everyone back all over again.

Some distilleries sold older whiskey. We know Stitzel-Weller (S-W) produced ten year old and twelve year old bourbons in the late 1950s. The S-W products were so self-consciously rare they even said “Collector’s Item” on the label.

The Old Charter bourbons rather famously came in a range of stated ages, up to twelve years. Wild Turkey came into being as an 8-year-old, Evan Williams came in as a 7-year-old. Old Taylor’s label claimed six years. Old Crow had ten-year-old limited editions.

That was the range. Rot-gut whiskey was less than four years old. Good, standard bourbon was four to six years old. Premium bourbon was six to eight years old. Then there was a specialty category of whiskey from eight to twelve years old. At least 80 percent of the industry’s volume was in whiskey less than six years old. Nearly zero percent was in whiskey more than 12 years old.

Some brands never said how old they were. One of them, Jack Daniel’s, did nothing but grow in popularity despite that omission.

And so it was until the 1980s. A few things had happened by then. First, so much American straight whiskey wasn’t being sold that it was piling up in the warehouses, getting older than anybody thought it should, because nobody had anything else to do with it. Second, some of the people who weren’t drinking American whiskey were now drinking scotch whiskey, with numbers on the labels, and the numbers were starting at 12 and going up from there.

Meanwhile, half a world away, a new generation of Japanese men was reaching adulthood. Whiskey drinking is an almost ritualized part of Japanese business culture, but the new generation was thirsty for something unlike what their elders drank, which was scotch, or scotch-like Japanese-made whiskey like Suntory. The new generation discovered bourbon and bourbon began to boom in Japan. But because of the numbers on the scotch labels, the Japanese thought maybe bourbon labels should have numbers on them too. And not 4 or 6. They wanted 12 and up, just like the scotch bottles. The American producers thought about it for about 5 seconds and said, sure, we can do that.

Thus were born the double-digit bourbons. In 1991, a bar owner in Chicago told me that he couldn’t get Very Very Old Fitzgerald (12-years-old) anymore because the Japanese bought it all. Twelve years, once the ceiling, was now the floor. The Japanese were buying 15-year-old bourbon, 18-year-old bourbon, 20-year-old bourbon, even 23-year-old bourbon.

American distillers had decided a long time ago that American whiskey was a dicey proposition after about 12 years, so they hadn’t exactly experimented with longer aging. Why bother? The 12- to 23-year-old whiskeys that arrived in the 1980s were an accident, victims of circumstances, the unwanted children of parents in freefall, but they hadn’t been nearly as abused as the Prohibition-era whiskeys. They had received reasonable care. It made a difference.

If the double-digit bourbons had all stayed in Japan, none of this would have happened, but they didn’t. Some found their way back here and Americans started to taste double-digit American whiskey.

Some of it was, well, not great, but some was a revelation. Who knew bourbon could taste like that? Still, most of the best were less than 20 years old. The sweet spot was still about twelve, maybe 15. Above 20 years was just about as risky as ever. Even to people accustomed to a lot of wood there was still a bridge too far, and 20 years was about where they built it. Very few people who had tasted American whiskey at a variety of ages would pick 20+ as their favorite.

That was what people who drank a lot of American whiskey knew. The best American whiskeys are not 20+ years old. Maybe a couple are, but most aren’t, and most 20+ year old bourbons aren’t in the world-beater class. But many people just coming to American whiskey don’t know all that. The cult of oldness is what they knew. When the cult of oldness joined the church of the best, it was really on. The older-the-better competition had come back to bourbon and rye. From Japan it spread to the United States and Europe. (It doesn’t seem much in evidence in bourbon’s other big market, “down under” in Australia and New Zealand.)

When there is a market for whiskey based solely on a number on the label, whiskey that should not be will be put into bottles and sold. In many cases, the independent bottlers of these products are the end of the line for barrels unwanted by their makers and by now maybe on their third or fourth owner. No criticism of these producers is intended here. They are giving the customer an honest product, an authentic 21-year-old bourbon if that’s what the label says. They are giving the customer what he wants, what he asked for. Matching willing buyers with willing sellers, that’s what it’s all about. Caveat Emptor.

But subjectively, in my opinion, some of the whiskey in those bottles you wouldn’t enjoy drinking. Some of it is just okay, and a little bit of it is outstanding. It is all expensive, so the risk that you’ll waste your money is always high.

Heaven Hill and Buffalo Trace both sell double-digit whiskey and, as distillers, they can ensure continuity of supply year after year, even if as the producer always fondly hopes, the product grows more popular each passing day. If you like one of their very old whiskeys, you can buy a bottle every now and then and know what you are going to get. An independent bottler can’t always ensure continuity of supply, so one batch might taste very different from another. As distillers keep more old whiskey for their own brands, it is becoming much harder for independent bottlers to supply their brands, especially with very old whiskey. Some have lowered their stated ages or gone NAS (“no age statement”).

The cult of oldness mourns their passing. It doesn’t really mind the higher prices for the fetish objects that remain. Oldness is worth it.

I disagree. Somebody has to say “enough!” For the good of American whiskey, the cult of oldness must be suppressed.

The cult of oldness must be suppressed because it too often gives inexperienced bourbon or rye drinkers a distorted impression of American straight whiskey and its normal taste profile. After spending a lot of money on what he or she thinks is the best because it is the oldest and most expensive bottle in town, the novice expects something transcendent and gets a mouthful of chimney instead. “If that’s the best bourbon there is, then bourbon is not for me,” they decide, never knowing what they have missed.

That 21-year-old stuff, even when it’s really good, is on the fringes of the normal bourbon drinking experience. It’s not for beginners. The not-so-great 21-year-old stuff will send Junior back to his Budweiser in less time than it took to remove the thick wax seal from the “rare” whiskey bottle.

It’s not good for the American whiskey industry if someone is out there drinking products that turn them off about American whiskey.

The cult of oldness is to real whiskey appreciation what pornography is to real sex. It distorts the experience for many and spoils it completely for some. Better awareness is the best way to prevent the cult of oldness from claiming any more innocent victims.

Only you can prevent oldnessness.
- Chuck Cowdery

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Unread postby Bourbon Joe » Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:57 am

Excellent treatice on this subject Chuck. I happen to agree.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Feb 25, 2007 11:22 am

Chuck,
I agree with what you are saying here. I always thought a 6 to 8 year old product was peak age, but then I started tasting the higher barrel proof whiskey made after the mid 1980's and I would revise that peak to about 7 to 10, maybe 12 if the barrel is treated right, as the peak age for bourbon. There are older exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. If Buffalo Trace and Mark Brown are smart, intelligent business people, they will take advantage of the one person who really does know aging whiskey correctly for long term brands - Julian Van Winkle. If they want to keep their "Antique Collection" as prime examples of extra aged whiskey, then they should imitate everything Julian does with his barrels of whiskey. As it is now, I personally am finding more and more bitter wood tannins in their older products that make we want to drink anything other than the older "Antique Collection" products. They are falling into the "If it is older it must be better" trap Chuck so vividly describes here. Other companies are also falling into the same trap as well.

The one company that has not fallen into the older is better trap is the same company Chuck points out in his post - Jack Daniels or more broadly, Brown-Forman. It is interesting that this is the case because there are two different reasons that Jack Daniels and Brown-Forman's bourbons do not fall into this trap. Jack is a victim of its own success and could never spare the whiskey needed to create a 12, 15 or 20 year old version of Jack. This is for the best because Tennessee whiskey simply does not age well after 10 years old. The Lincoln County Process adds too much soot and smoke to the whiskey at the begining to allow extra aging without bitter, sooty whiskey that taste of raw vitiam B tablets.

Old Forester and Woodford Reserve escape the trap because of Brown-Forman's use of heated warehouses. They claim that the constant cycling of heat and coolness in the winter makes the whiskey mature quicker at a ratio of 3 years aging in 2 years time. Since they can not claim a 3 year age statement, they prefer not to use age statements at all. The exception to this has bees Old Forester Birthday Bourbon which does have age statements. They are an exception and these barrels are treated differently being selected to fill this role by the company. An interesting fact here that supports Chuck's arguement is that the one year they did go with an 8 year old Birthday Bourbon instead of the 12 or 13 year old bourbon, was the year the "older has to be better" crowd raised a ruckus and claimed they were being cheated because trhe age statement went down. I personally thought they were full of crap - the whiskey was an excellent whiskey that showcased a flavor other than wood and I think it was one of the better Birthday Bourbons. It is much better than this past year's wood fest Birthday Bourbon.

Older is not always better and I think we should keep that in mind when someone tries to charge us over $100 for a bottle of twenty-something old bourbon (or rye) that could simply taste like chewing on a burnt matchstick.
Mike Veach
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Unread postby gillmang » Sun Feb 25, 2007 12:38 pm

I agree largely with Chuck's extended comments and Mike's reaction. However, it is my perception that specialised markets exist for many forms of bourbon (including their packaging). I hesitate therefore to draw too narrowly (i.e., in general, as opposed to what I like for me) an ideal age range for bourbon and rye whiskeys.

A very small market existed in the U.S. for double-digit whiskey from the late 1800's on. Examples of 12 and 18 year old bourbon and rye are shown in reproductions of circa-1900 catalogues at the back of Oscar Getz' book. This whiskey was very expensive and probably appealed to those familiar with extra-aged brandy and malt whisky. That tiny market continued in a way with VVOF in the 1950's/60's, and there were other examples, e.g., the 20 year old Michter's rye released in the 70's or 80's mentioned by our new contributor, and the 20 year old circa-1970 bourbon pictured here recently.

Then the Japanese phenomenon happened and made it all much bigger here.

What does it mean? Some of that extra-aged product probably is being bought by people with a "aged scotch/brandy perspective". As Chuck says, the market gives them what they want. Some people really like old-tasting bourbon and rye, so that market is satisfied again by the suppliers of extra-aged bourbon. Some people collect old bourbons and don't mean to drink them, so again supply meets a demand.

Where do I fit in this? I generally prefer bourbon at 4-9 years of age. In some cases I like the older expressions of some distillers, e.g. EC 12 years old and EC 18 too - I just like them, especially the rich charred taste of the latter.

I like some ORVW products (especially ORVW 15 and Pappy 15, and of course ORVW 10). I find wheated bourbons are more suitable to long aging than rye-recipe ones. Yet I much admire BMH 18 year old rye! I find it not that mature-tasting, it must have matured slowly.

So, in general, I like bourbon at the age experts in the industry generally approved it at (like Booker Noe, Charlie Thomason). This came to me though long experience, trial and error.

I like some extra-aged bourbons too but they are the exception.

Gary
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Feb 25, 2007 8:03 pm

Gary,
I agee with what you are saying for the most part. I dearly loved Old Rip Van Winkle 15yo but I am not as fond of the Pappy Van Winkle 15yo. There is a reason for this and that is the Pappy is becoming to dominated by the wood. I don't want to speak for Julian, and this is just my opinion here, but I think that is not by choice. I think the fact that Stitzel-Weller is gone and the whiskey made there is no longer available so Julian has limited choices here for his 15 year old product. Barrels of whiskey put into the mix now might not have been bottled 10 or 15 years ago when his choices of barrels were better. This is a case where he has built a popular brand and has to support it but the pipeline of 15 year old wheated bourbon is limited, thus a decline in quality. Just because it is 15 years old does not mean it recieved the personal care that those older barrels recieved when Julian had more choices. He may have limited his barrel choices to barrels that were on the bottom two floors of the warehouses where they would age slower and more gracefully back when there was plenty of Stitzel-Weller whiskey available for him to choose from. Now he may be stuck with barrels that were from high in the warehouse at Stitzel-Weller before being moved to Buffalo Trace and placed in brick warehouses. That is if he can find Stitzel-Weller whiskey at all. Now instead of rich caramel and vanilla with a hint of ripe apple and pecans nestled in wood that you found in the Old Rip 15, you get heavy wood tannins that compete with the nice candy and fruit shop flavors to a point that it is distracting.
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Unread postby gillmang » Sun Feb 25, 2007 8:18 pm

I tend to agree, Mike, although many people think the reverse (prefer the Pappy 15 to ORVW 15). Different strokes...

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Unread postby bourbonv » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:05 pm

Gary,
I was with the service person from Simplex that checks our fire alarms today. He has been doing this job twice a year for about 5 years now and he is a bourbon fan. I have been talking him into experimenting with some different bourbons over the years and he has gone from a Maker's Mark, Jim Beam, Wild Turkey drinker to a person who appreciates a wide variety of bourbons. He was telling me today that he has decided that most of the older whiskeys that he thought of as the good stuff 5 years ago, just don't do it for him any more. His present favorite is Weller Antique (evidently he is still getting some older bottles from the store near his home that are still the Weller 107 Antique) and Eagle Rare 10yo. He thinks he now prefers something in the 8 to 12 year range of age over the older products.
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Unread postby bunghole » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:14 pm

I've been saying this for years and years that older isn't better - just older. It's about time someone listened. :roll:

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Unread postby gillmang » Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:36 am

Yes, and that is what happened to me. Slowly I started to prefer younger whiskeys.

Actually, I always did like moderate age whiskey, I liked Old Fitzgerald Supreme when it was S-W, for example. I liked OG when made by ND, so same idea.

Today I like 4-8 year old whiskey generally. But always there are exceptions. I find EC 12 very balanced. I like ORVW 15 and Pappy 15. I like EC 18 because it is so unique, almost not bourbon!

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Unread postby Mike » Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:13 am

I have certainly gravitated toward the middle aged and yournger bourbons over the last two years. Like the fire alarm guy, I appreciate Weller Antique at 7 years old. I still like some older bourbons, but not like I once did.

I don't consider 12 YOs to be really old and many can be had for under $30, e.g. EzraB Single Barrel at $25 is a very nice whiskey to my palate.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas
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Unread postby cowdery » Fri Mar 16, 2007 8:45 pm

I still think about this subject a lot.

I know I've hurt some feelings and made some enemies by poking fun at people who are so enamored of very old bourbons.

What consumers need to understand is that no distillers have made 20-year-old bourbons on purpose. They happened because bourbon sales plummeted and distillers were slow to cut back on production. Warehouse stocks built up and, suddenly, there were whiskeys in barrels that had been there for more than 20 years. If someone was willing to buy them, you can't blame the producers for selling them.

So far so good. And if someone buys them and drinks them, and thinks they're great, that's fine too. I don't happen to agree but to each his own. For you, the accident that brought those products to market was a happy one.

But when someone tries to push the idea that a collection of these very old bourbons is a "great" bourbon collection or the "greatest" bourbon collection, somebody has to say "wait a minute" and tell the real story.

I know no one said "greatest," at least not in print (I've heard this person say "greatest" at the gazebo), but the implication is still that these are the best bourbons ever, and they simply aren't. I suppose they are genuinely rare, but people need to be reminded that "rare" doesn't necessarily mean "good" or even "palatable."

I wrote the much longer piece above to fully articulate the point-of-view that inspired the allegory that made some people mad. I'm writing this because I felt it was time to tie the whole thing together.

As for double-digit bourbons pre-prohibition, Gary, the bottles pictured on the inside back cover of the Getz book are, I believe, all prohibition-era medicinal whiskeys which, like the very-olds we have now, were an accident.

Prior to the Bottled-in-Bond Act, there may have been double-digit age statements on labels but you couldn't trust them, as false labeling was rampant.

I have seen a few literary references to very old bourbons in the olden days but I suspect these were cases of authors falling into the "cult of oldness" trap, using age (incorrectly) as a metaphor for quality.

Finally, the most decisive point for me is that, to a man, actual distillers will tell you bourbons peak at eight to ten years.

Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here. It wouldn't be the first time.
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Unread postby gillmang » Sat Mar 17, 2007 10:05 am

Chuck, be assured that the bottles of well-aged whiskey I am referring to are not medicinal bottles sold during Prohibition.

They are pre-Prohibition in the truest sense, bottled and marketed well before 1919. I don't have the Getz book before me but I will quote from it in more detail later.

The ad in question is from about 1900 (certainly after the Bottled-in-Bond Act) and shows whiskeys sold of between 8 and 17 years or so. I will give more details later.

One thing to recall I think is that some of these bourbons may have been pot distillations. Even if they were column distillations, they may have been distilled without benefit of a rectification tower. As Britannica 1911 noted, American straights of the day had twice the congener levels of malt whisky! I doubt that is true today. WR may be an example of a 1910-style whiskey that was just okay at 4-6 years of age but would have come into its own at 12-18 years of age. Britannica said (it is either in the spirits or alcohol entry, I know I read it in that edition) that American whiskies needed longer maturation than malt whisky to be palatable. At the time, I believe malt whisky would have been aged 3-8 years, some for longer certainly but I don't think the average aging time was that high. If it was 8 years, this would give 16 years as an ideal aging period for bourbon. This is simply speculation or at most informed guessing on my part, but I don't think we can say with certainty either that well-aged whiskey selling for top dollar in 1910 was not regarded by many as the acme of production. (Not by all though: Joseph Fleischman in his 1885 blending manual states that whiskey is not better just because it is older). One thing too to recall is that cycling was used by a lot of whiskey custodians of the time. So a whisky aged 4 years which was heavily cycled might be equal (sort of) to a whisky aged 12 years or more uncycled. I understand OF is cycled, and its maturity seems to belie the 4 years of age the brand is given.

This being said for the historical part, for current bourbons and ryes, I prefer whiskeys generally in the 4-8 years range. I have often said I like some older, e.g., some 10 year whiskey (ORVW 10 years), some 12 (EC 12 is a favourite), some older (EC 18). But in general, I go for the 4-8 years range.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:25 pm

Chuck,
There were indeed bourbons of extreme age before prohibition, but they were the exception and not the rule. I suspect that most of them were people like Julian who knew how to treat a barrel to make it age right or were bourbons aged in used barrels. The latter is the most likely case because it is easier to extra age whiskey in a used barrel without getting overpowering wood.

Gary,
When looking at these advertisements you also want to look at the company doing the advertising. Is this a straight whiskey distiller of a rectifier. Before 1910 there were many rectifiers advertising 20 year old bourbon. Unfortunately they also made that 20 year old bourbon while you waited. Wright and Taylor was one such company with their "fine OLD kentucky TAYLOR" brand which they adverised as a twelve year old product but what little whiskey in the bottle was barely 4 years old.
Mike Veach
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Unread postby gillmang » Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:57 pm

Alright. I am referring to the ads on page 126 of Getz' book.

The ad is from Munsey's magazine in 1902 and advertises, from Green Mountain Distillery, with a Kansas, Missouri address, "1 qt. 17-year old Smoky Hollow Rye: $1.25." Also, "1 qt. of 14 year old Sour Mash": $1.00. "1 qt. 15 year old Rye Malt Whiskey" is $1.05. The ditto amount of 10 year old "Rye or Bourbon" is $.71. The ditto quantity of "8 year old Tennessee White Corn" is $.75.

This all bonded whiskey since the ad offers in a larger quantity (three gallons) an 8 year old whiskey, "placed in Government bond in October 1994.".

I refuse to believe this is all made up, or talking about blended goods. The price differentials, and statements such as "rye malt", are too precise to allow of such subterfuge. I take it at face value.

A separate ad on the same page advertises "Glenesk Rye - 10 years old, "copper distilled". On the same page, "Atlantic Rye", also 10 years old, is advertised for a little more money.

They couldn't get away with demanding high prices for something that wasn't evidently real and superior to the common goods (as perceived at the time, anyway).

Gary

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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Mar 17, 2007 4:20 pm

When individual states began to pass prohibition laws prior to National Prohibition, producers found a loophole. Since the US mail was a federal enterprise, the individual states had no power over it. Therefore, consumers in dry states could get mail order whiskey. These ads are from that period. (Congress eventually plugged the loophole.)

As you can imagine, this led to a caveat emptor times ten.

It's almost impossible for us now to grasp how much false advertising there was in those days. For example, the ads could claim "government supervision," but as long as they didn't counterfeit the tax stamp, they couldn't be prosecuted, and of course by the time you received your order and noticed that the tax stamp was missing, they already had your money.

The 1902 date is several years before the Taft Decision that really put some teeth into the truth-in-advertising laws. The mail-order period was fairly brief, but produced a lot of amusing advertising.

These were almost certainly not, in fact, whiskeys of the ages indicated in the ads. What is instructive, though, is that it was felt to be desirable to offer whiskey at double-digit ages, which supports my argument that the "cult" has been around for a long time.

Falsely advertising well-aged whiskey was no different from falsely advertising extravagant premiums--"a sofa with every case"--as was also common during this period. An analogy to today would be the products that advertise, for example, male "enhancement."
- Chuck Cowdery

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