Hypothetical question about 10 bourbons

Hi Tim,
Ah, the magic of single barrel bourbon.

I have had several bottles of the ETL. I think that they all came from two different barrels. I cleared off the shelf after I opened the first bottle. It tasted much like you describe. I still have one of those open, only one pour out of it.
The second barrel, I have had several bottles of as well. Completely different whiskey. Enormous cookie spice presence. All the other notes are overwhelmed. They are there but they take a back seat to the cinnamon. I once left a glass with a few drops left in the bottom and nosed it for a week. The cinnamon never faded. Finally, I filled the glass with twelve oz of coke. I could still taste it. It will be a sad day when I run out of this. I wonder what happened at Buffalo Trace the day they bottled this.
Ed

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Stitzel-Weller is gone though?

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I'm not sure if it's gone as in dismantled, but that distillery is not producing.

Stitzel-Weller made some fine bourbon, and one of the reason that the Pappy Van Winkle line is so highly regarded and desired is that the Pappy whiskies are some of the very few left featuring bourbon distilled there (and choice barrels of it at that). In fact, as I understand it the Weller and Van Winkle 12-year-old products have lately ceased to be Stitzel-Weller whiskey, so Pappy 15 and Pappy 20 are the only relatively widely available bourbons brands on the market featuring S-W product. It is still possible to find old bottles of the younger Van Winkles, or Weller or Old Fitzgerald, that came from Stitzel-Weller, but that is getting tougher all the time. Tracking them down is a hobby for a number of folks in our little community here; poke around on this forum and you will find lots of posts dedicated to how to tell whether an old bottle of Weller or Old Fitz is S-W bourbon.

I doubt that S-W is gettind dismantled anytime soon, the cost to clean up the asbestos would be substantial.

I didn't realize Pappy 20 was a S-W bourbon, but it does make sense. I guess I never put 2 and 2 together. More of a reason that it's my favoriye bourbon to date.

So, should I put S-W as the producer of the Papy 20 in the article?

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...I'm not sure if it's gone as in dismantled, but that distillery is not producing...

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Although the building itself is intact, somewhere I got the impression that the still is either dismantled/recycled, or past functionality.
Can anyone confirm/dispute this? Chuck? Mike V.?
And I believe it was the magical copper in that still that played a large role in the quality of the whiskey.

I'm having a taste of a ETL SB picked by Civic Center Liquors in SF. This one definitely has the pie spice flavors I associate with ETL....but not the overtly sweet flavors that sometimes come with it. I like the pie/cinnamon/nutmeg flavors in a bourbon......I find a lot of it in the Van Blankle.

Randy

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So, should I put S-W as the producer of the Pappy 20 in the article?

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Thinking about it a bit more, I suppose it depends on what your audience will do with that information. I suppose one needs to be a fairly sophisticated whiskey enthusiast to really understand the significance. The Van Winkle operation does call itself the "Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery", so if a reader is looking for more information about the whiskey and does a web search that would probably be the place for them to go.

Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery it is then! Thanks guys for all your help.

Yes, indeed. In my opinion, that is the great attraction of any single-barrel bottling. Each barrel can, and should, have its own unique characteristics, while still being similar in general to the overall set of barrels of the brand.

Tim