Bourbon Whiskey

by Bernie Lubbers

  It’s also a distinctively American spirit, and the category is on fire right now. Rye is enjoying its second “Golden Age.”

  STRAIGHT WHEAT WHISKEY

  BERNHEIM ORIGINAL

  Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey

  Small-batch

  90 proof

  What is this telling you? Well, we know it’s 51% wheat. Wheat results in a sweeter-tasting whiskey, but not because the grain is sweeter. Wheat is not as rich as rye so it allows more of the sweetness of the corn and vanilla to show through, compared to rye, which can overshadow some of those sweet flavors.

  Hey, you’re catching on. I wonder how long it will take for someone to produce a straight malted rye whiskey?

  So now you know how to read a label. Head out to the liquor store and spend some time looking at the labels. You will find that instead of just looking at the price of a bourbon and assuming it’s really good, you’ll be able to read the label and know something about it before you even taste it. When you do that, you’ll find some real diamonds in the rough. Old Grand Dad, Ancient Age, Elijah Craig and Old Forester are just a few.

  Some do cost more and are more than worth it. I’m always surprised when someone asks me why a bourbon can cost anywhere from $25 to $50+. Remember, distillers have to use a brand new barrel every time and then age the liquor for at least four years. I’m surprised we sell it as cheaply as we do. These are the same people that go to dinner and think nothing of spending $50 on a bottle of wine, and it’s gone when dinner’s over. That $50 bottle of bourbon will be around a little longer than that, and you get more than four glasses out of it! So quit bitching and buy the bourbon…jeez!

  For more information, check out my website: www.whiskeyprof.com.

  Bourbon’s Place in American History

  “Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.” –Abraham Lincoln on Grant’s drinking. Grant drank Old Crow.

  When I sell liquor, it’s called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it’s called hospitality.” – Al Capone

  “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.” – Will Rogers

  Here’s where I earn my “Professor” title. For those of you who don’t have the attention span for an actual history chapter, please turn to page 101. I’ve put together a handy-dandy timeline that will give you an overview of my favorite drink’s history. You can always come back for details later.

  The history of bourbon is the history of America. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, George Washington himself was a distiller and in 1798 was the country’s largest distiller, producing 11,000 gallons of whiskey that year at Mount Vernon. George Washington wasn’t the only founding father to distill or enjoy whiskey. Thomas Jefferson also grew rye and distilled it into rye whiskey, and James Madison was known to drink a pint of whiskey a day.

  Early farmers didn’t have a store down the street if they needed something, either. They had to barter with their neighbors. If you had something your neighbor needed, he’d trade you something for it—a pig or a chicken, for example. If you had whiskey and your neighbor liked it, you could trade it for something else. So many farmers were trading whiskey and other things for goods. Sometimes money was hard to come by out in remote areas of the new country.

  Not only farmers used whiskey as money, but the military has a long history with the frontier spirit. As a young nation we learned from the British. The British Navy paid their sailors a weekly ration of rum along with their money. After the Revolutionary War, the British put a blockade on rum coming into the United States, so our government couldn’t pay our soldiers with rum. Instead they got a weekly ration of whiskey. According to records, the cavalry soldiers in 1782 received a daily ration of four ounces of whiskey. George Washington said that … “the benefits arising from moderate use of strong liquor have been experienced in all Armies, and are not to be disputed.” This practice continued as our country expanded into some pretty dangerous territory in the 1800s.

  An 1800 advertisement for employment in the army reads: “an abundant supply of whiskey, food and clothing of the best quality – $12 bounty, and $10 per month with comfortable quarters and a ‘life of ease.’” A federal act in 1819 increased the deal by 15 cents and an extra “gill” of whiskey or spirits a day for cutting roads and fortifications. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

  The tradition of paying the soldiers a ration of alcohol continued through the Civil War, although the weekly ration was not enough to keep soldiers from pillaging the occasional distillery and stealing its whiskey. So distillers were forced to take precautions against both Union and Confederate soldiers (Kentucky was a border state, so both forces were there quite a bit). The distillery kept both Union and Confederate flags on hand and then raised the flag of whatever side happened to approach their distillery. They’d share some whiskey with the troops and cuss the opposing side…no matter what side it happened to be.

  The Civil War dealt a blow to bourbon distilleries in a couple of ways. Kentucky was a neutral state, but it relied heavily on trading with the South; therefore, many distilleries sided with the South. Basil Hayden was one who sided with the South. He claimed that if the South lost the war, he would not venture off his property for the rest of his life. Well, he lived to be over 100 years old (he started his distillery in 1788!), and after the South lost, he kept his word and never ventured off his property. Good thing for him, his distillery was located on his property, so there was quite a bit of venturing he could do right there!

  There are a lot of stories about Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant and his drinking. We know Grant drank off duty, as did most of his fellow officers, but there was never an eye-witness account of him being a drunkard or drunk on duty. Lincoln reportedly fired back to one of his critics to find out what brand Grant drank, and he sent a barrel to all his generals. What was the bourbon that was supposedly U.S. Grant’s favorite? None other than Dr. James Crow’s Old Crow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

  The truth of the matter is that the stories of U.S. Grant’s drinking were quite exaggerated. Many of the drinking stories come from jealous Northern generals who could find no other way to discredit this brilliant man who was delivering battlefield victories to the president. An easy way to do it would be to spread malicious rumors about Grant being drunk on the job. There were stories, there were innuendoes, there were suppositions. But, in truth, there are no reliable eyewitness accounts of any drunkenness on the part of General Grant during the Civil War.

  Perhaps Lincoln, being a shrewd leader, made the comment of sending a “barrel to all his generals” so they’d stop smearing Grant’s reputation and start smearing the Confederates.

  After the Civil War, though, bourbon didn’t regain the ground it had lost during the war, and it steadily decreased in popularity into the early 1900s. Rye whiskies fared better, as they did not have the same issues with their northern markets, and trade flourished during and after the war.

  TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT–A DIRECT WAR ON LIQUOR!

  “Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself.”

  –Mark Twain, 1881

  The Reverend Howard Hyde Russell, an Oberlin College graduate, returned to northern Ohio and founded the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). From the pulpit of the First Congressional Church in 1893, Russell outlined his plan to end alcohol’s death grip on the country. The group was focused and did not align with Democrats or Republicans, but it joined with anyone who would lend a hand to help extinguish the making, selling or consumption of alcohol. To them, if you did away with alcohol, that would take care of gambling, rape, murder, horse racing, theft and arson. They cared only about doing away with alcohol and freeing the nation’s citizens from its hold.

  The leadership and staff of the ASL were almost exclusively members of Baptist
and Methodist churches. Because 75% of the board of directors were clergy men, they had a captive audience every Sunday and reached hundreds of thousands of voters. An ASL spokesman talked about the power of this. He said that he could dictate 20 letters to 20 men in 20 parts of the country and ignite 50,000 men to action against alcohol. At this time in history, an organization based on a network of churches could call up 100 churches mobilizing 20,000 men in Bible classes alone.

  Russell’s ASL inspired a man by the name of Wayne B. Wheeler to join his cause. Wheeler was small and slight in stature, but not in his effectiveness. Upon his death it was written in papers that without him, the country would never have had the Eighteenth Amendment. The Milwaukee Journal wrote that Wheeler’s conquest was the most notable thing of their time. Wheeler was a short, slender man who looked totally harmless, but he was a relentless crusader for Prohibition. While attending law school and clerking in a law office, he bicycled from town to town speaking to churches and groups and recruiting those for the common cause. In 1898 he earned his law degree and took over the Anti-Saloon League’s Ohio legal office. The more he put on his plate, the more he accomplished. Delivering speeches, initiating legal cases on the ASL’s behalf, launching telegram campaigns, organizing demonstrations—Howard Russell commented that there just were not enough Wayne Wheelers to go around. From their Ohio base of 31 full-time staff they were able to influence the Ohio legislature and later the U.S. House and Senate.

  Wheeler took the Temperance Movement to a new level when he got the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) involved to help further each group’s interests of Prohibition and women’s suffrage. Wheeler actually coined the phrase “pressure group” at this time.

  Native Kentuckian Carry Nation joined the WCTU in 1899 in Kansas. In 1901, Carry wrote herself into the history books by getting arrested for smashing up a saloon with a hatchet in Kansas City, Missouri (a town known for its opposition to temperance). She would be arrested a total of 30 times for similar crimes between 1901 and 1910. Ms. Nation actually had a traveling vaudeville act where she talked about her agenda called “Hatchetations.” After the show, she’d sell mini hatchets to the public. Sort of reminds you of buying light-up magic wands at Disney World, doesn’t it? Perhaps that’s where they got the idea.

  Nation also published a biweekly newsletter called “The Smashers Mail,” which appeared in a biweekly newspaper titled The Hatchet. In one of her articles, she wrote that she applauded the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. She had heard that he drank, and she felt that drinkers always got what they deserved. She died after collapsing at a lecture in 1911. As an aside, Carry Nation died the same year my father was born, in 1911. She only lived to be 65, and my dad lived to be almost 94. I think it’s ironic that she died the same year my father was born. Way to show her, Dad!

  Right before Prohibition started, WWI broke out. The war to end all wars meant all hands on deck, and many distilleries were making industrial alcohol for the war effort. This alcohol was used in the production of rubber for tires, antifreeze, ether and rayon, which was used in the production of parachutes. When the war was over, the liquor companies were not rewarded for their efforts in helping to defeat the Kaiser; they were put out of business because there was no legal market for their products. This seems like a real kick in the face, doesn’t it?

  I am not going to cover all the causes of Prohibition in this chapter. If you want to read a great book on the subject, I suggest Last Call by Daniel Okrent. But as we all know, Prohibition was the death of bourbon whiskey. The states that made it–Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee—are all right in the middle of the United States and in plain sight of federal agents, so they had to stop producing. Prohibition lasted 13 years, 10 months, 18 days, 7 hours and 27 minutes, until January 1, 1934.

  People opposed to Prohibition pointed out all the tax dollars that would be lost if such a bill was passed. But when Congress decided to put in an income tax, it became feasible. Russell, Wheeler and Nation organized essentially the first-ever lobbyists and put the pressure on legislators until state after state began putting prohibitions of their own into effect. They became so powerful and were responsible for so many anti-Prohibition politicians being voted out of office, the government gave in to the pressure and Prohibition passed.

  Prohibition took effect on January 17, 1920. As devastating as Prohibition was for bourbon, it was a boon for Canadian whiskey, Scotch, Rum, Tequila and, most notably, moonshiners and bootleggers in the states. Just ask the Kennedy family how profitable it was for their father, Joe, to bootleg Scotch and Irish whisk[e]y from Canada to the Northeast. The Caribbean produced a lot of rum, so rum runners supplied Florida and the Gulf with rum that was produced legally in Cuba, Puerto Rico, St. Croix and elsewhere. Tequila producers in Mexico cranked up production, and tequila and mezcal flowed north to Texas, California and other border states.

  The immense Canadian border allowed Canadian Club and other Canadian whiskies to make their way into the United States. Deals with Al Capone, the Purple Gang and other mobsters were struck because Detroit was just a stone’s throw away across the Detroit River. The stance that Canadian Club took was that they were making legal deals with individuals, and then what they did with the liquor was none of Canadian Club’s business.

  My friends Dan Tullio and Tish Harcus at the Canadian Club Heritage Center are the company’s ambassadors and serve as the “godfather” and “godmother” of Canadian Club. If you’ve not been to their headquarters in Windsor, Ontario, do yourself a favor and go. It just drips with history, as well as good whiskey. Try the CC Sherry Cask, we bourbon drinkers really go for it.

  Dan and Tish tell me that all sorts of boats queued up on the Detroit River to get Canadian Club Whiskey. Bill McCoy and his son supervised the dock operations at Hiram Walker where Canadian Club was distilled. As you can imagine, there were a lot of imitators who would say they had Canadian Club Whiskey and would sell it to folks who didn’t care or couldn’t wait to deal with Bill and his son. But most people wanted the real thing because of its quality and reputation as a world-class Canadian blended whisky. So it became commonly known that if you dealt with Bill McCoy and his son directly, you had the genuine Canadian Club, or “the Real McCoy.”

  WINTER IN WALKERVILLE

  I was visiting Canadian Club in Walkerville, Ontario, Canada, just across the river from downtown Detroit. I met fellow whiskey professors Steve Cole and David Mays and Laphroaig Scotch ambassador Simon Brooking there to learn more about Canadian Whiskey production. Our Canadian Club hosts were the passionate and fun duo of Dan Tullio and Tish Harcus. Walkerville is only a six- hour drive from Kentucky, so do yourself a favor and go up to visit Dan and Tish at the CC Heritage Center. You talk about history. Have you seen Boardwalk Empire on HBO? They tell the story of how Canadian whiskey flowed over the border and was a key player in the story of Prohibition in the United States. The Heritage Center alone at CC is something to see. It was built by Hiram Walker, and it’s just an amazing place. There is a speakeasy in the basement of the Heritage Center where deals were made with Al Capone, the Purple Gang and other infamous characters.

  We were up having “drinkypoos,” which is what Dan and Tish call cocktails there. And not just cocktails; we were enjoying 30-year-old Canadian Club Whiskey courtesy of Tish. But the hilarious thing was, she had it in a 1.75-liter plastic bottle, since it wasn’t out yet and not in bottles yet for sale. So there we were, drinking 30-year-old whiskey out of a plastic jug—what a scream. Then Steve said, “Hey, we’ve all been drinking this great whiskey a while and are a little buzzed, so shouldn’t we switch from the 30 year to Classic 12 year?” In unison we all promptly looked at him and said, “Hell no!” Later that night, Steve was out making snow angels on the lawn while we smoked cigars. It was an unforgettable moment that we ambassadors get to experience.

  What’s fascinating to me is that these spirits are still popular in those regions of the country wh
ere they were bootlegged during Prohibition. Tequila is still popular in Texas and the Southwest. Rum is still big in Florida and New Orleans. Scotch is popular in New York and the Northeast, and in Michigan and all along the North, Canadian Whiskey is still strong. This is known as the “Prohibition effect.”

  So the abolitionists really had it blow up in their faces. The only thing Prohibition seemed to do was bankrupt the U.S. government (half of the government’s tax revenues came from the taxes levied on alcohol) and make criminals out of otherwise honest citizens who bootlegged these spirits. Not only that, but Prohibition was the best thing that ever happened to moonshiners. On January 1st, 1920, the first day of the “Noble Experiment,” the price of moonshine quadrupled overnight.

  A few distilleries were granted a license to continue to sell bourbon as medicine available by prescription from a doctor. Old Forester, Old Grand Dad and Old Prentice were some of those brands. Now they still could not make bourbon during Prohibition; they could only sell what they had on hand. It had to be bottled in pint-sized bottles and labeled as “medicinal whiskey.” Most often those bottles came in a box which touted cures for many ailments. They were also “bottled in bond” under government supervision, so they were at least four years old, 100 proof, from one distillery and from one season (January through December).

  Booker Noe and Jimmy Russell tell stories of shiny black sedans with Illinois license plates that would come down at night from Chicago to Bardstown. The “medicinal” bourbon sat in barrels in the rack houses. The local sheriff and the federal marshal would both end up with a few extra dollars in their pockets, and those shiny black sedans would leave a few hundred pounds heavier on the drive back up to Chicago. Afterward, they would fill those barrels with water just in case anyone checked them later.