Bourbon Empire (40 page)

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During its first decades, Brown’s company cycled through many different names, accounting for various business partners. It became Brown-Forman in 1890, Forman being the name of the company accountant.

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The brand is currently owned by Diageo.

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It is technically named after the Bernheim Brothers Distillery.

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Old Charter still exists as a brand, but in the years since its creation has drifted between nearly a half dozen different owners and is currently made by Buffalo Trace.

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Before Peay acquired the brand, its resurrection had been stifled by Dr Pepper, for obvious reasons.

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The James E. Pepper brand would have a number of slogans related to this theme, including “Born with the Revolution,” some of which were created by other marketers of the brand following Pepper’s death.

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Even in original photos from the time of the fight, some of the banners look like they were painted into the advertisements after the fact, which somehow seems oddly appropriate to Pepper’s legacy.

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By placing nude women in settings that resembled ancient Greece or Middle Eastern harems, companies could better argue that their advertising was “art,” thus avoiding the era’s laws against pornography.

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In 1883, the famed New York political cartoonist Thomas Nast, an opponent of anti–Chinese immigrant prejudice, lampooned the idea that if the Chinese drank American whiskey instead of importing Chinese spirits and wines, Americans would be more accepting of them. In the cartoon, a Chinese man embraces a giant bottle of whiskey.

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In 2014, a group of investors who were no doubt inspired by bourbon’s renewed popularity bought the eighty-two-acre site for just under $1.5 million, with plans to build a new distillery there.

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Aside from the regular Maker’s Mark brand, there is also Maker’s 46. This is regular Maker’s Mark that spent six extra weeks in a barrel with seared pieces of French oak, which lend the bourbon a slightly spicier flavor. (Oak trees from France and Japan both tend to carry spicier flavors than American oak, which generally carry heavier notes of vanilla.)

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The term “blended whiskey” shouldn’t be confused with the type of blending bourbon makers do when they mingle different straight whiskies from their warehouses to achieve a unique flavor profile. Those are still considered “straight whiskey” because that’s all they contain (additional rules around this term, requiring that “straight whiskey” be aged for at least two years, would eventually be applied as well). In the United States, blended whiskies are often composed of straight whiskies mixed with grain neutral spirits. In Canada and Scotland, however, the blending spirits are usually distilled to a slightly lower proof and often receive some sort of aging. In both places, blending is much more respected and considered an art. To learn more about Canadian whisky, see Davin de Kergommeaux’s excellent
Canadian Whisky:
The Portable Expert.

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Although better known for making rye, many of these distilleries made bourbon as well.

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Rye’s welcome revival this century has been accompanied by a modern myth that it was America’s dominant whiskey up until Prohibition.

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Today the Weller brands are made by Buffalo Trace, while Rebel Yell and Old Fitzgerald are made by Heaven Hill.

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There were three one-month distilling “holidays,” which usually coincided with corn surpluses, when distillers were allowed to make beverage alcohol.

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The period stretching from the 1990s until about 2011 was another consumer golden age, when perfectly aged bourbons were plentiful and inexpensive. The intensity of bourbon’s resurgent popularity after 2011 caught many distilleries by surprise and caused limited shortages that drove up prices, arguably ending this golden age.

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Ancient Age operated on the plot of land once used by Frankfort Distillers, one of the outfits with a medicinal whiskey clause during Prohibition.

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Since Maker’s Mark rotates its barrels during aging, a laborious measure not adopted by most companies, its whiskey ages a little differently than most brands, thus the absence of an age statement.

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Even by 2014, with overall whiskey sales up in the United States, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, and Buffalo Trace continued to make super-premium bourbons exclusively for the Japanese market, unavailable to Americans stateside.

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Because of the three-tier system, high prices for certain brands are often set by retailers rather than producers.

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Whiskey companies sometimes exacerbate these impulsive cycles by speaking broadly of “whiskey shortages.” These announcements often come during the times of year when whiskey sales are traditionally low (such as summer), and can help boost sales by generating urgency. What tends to go unexplained is that the “shortages” are usually very temporary, for brands that are on allocation (meaning that individual distribution networks are allocated a specific amount of a certain brand for a set time period). But even though a certain brand might be unavailable for this temporary period, there will still be plenty of other labels to choose from, easing the worries of drinkers concerned about a potential drought.

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Indeed, Tuthilltown’s whiskey has improved since the buyout. By 2015, it was also using more large barrels, a positive and telling omen.

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Flavored whiskies also offer liquor companies an excellent way to dispose of whiskey that didn’t age well (the opposite of honey barrels), masking it with sugary sweeteners.

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Technically, Jack Daniel’s is a bigger brand, but due to regional pride (recall chapter 6) it pointedly considers itself “Tennessee Whiskey” rather than bourbon. It is also an iconic brand, but a bit of an anomaly in the whiskey world due to its use of the Lincoln County Process and the way it has positioned itself.

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In 2014, Coppersea partnered with a local cooper to begin production of barrels specifically for the distillery, giving its whiskies additional
terroir.
A sample of Coppersea’s malted rye that had been aged in the small barrels was also quite pleasing, reminding those who are skeptical of that method—including myself—that there are always exceptions to the rule.

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