Better American Blends?

[cowdery]

The following question was posed to me today on my blog:

Do you think a premium American blend could be successful? Something that was, say, 40% straight whiskies and the balance light whiskey, all of which was aged 8-12 years?

What do you folks think?

[OscarV]

Yeah, if Beam put it out.

They have the muscle to get it out on the shelves and in the public's face, see Red Stagg.

[sku]

Why not? Americans buy Canadian blends, Irish blends, Scotch blends, granted those don't contain GNS, but I think you could sell a blend if you marketed it well and it had a good flavor profile. It would have to be something different and you wouldn't be converting Jack or Jim's drinkers, but I'm guessing there are a lot of vodka drinkers out there who would go for something with a bit more flavor, but aren't up to sipping straight whiskey.

[CorvallisCracker]

I don't think you'd want GNS in it. You'd want to use grain ("light") whiskey as a base. If you're going to try to distance it from the cheap blends, you'd want to make a point of letting folks know it's 100% whiskey.

As for flavor profile, you might want to stress rye over corn, so as not to make it too "bourbony". A couple of weeks ago, during a gazebo chat, I followed some OWA with a glass of Saz 18 and was struck by how sophisticated it seemed. If you could acheive a similar flavor profile, maybe a little lighter in body, and lower in cost, that might appeal even to those who normally prefer straight whiskies.

With an effective marketing effort, who knows?

[Res/st-or]

I kind of like the HW Bourye.... I see no problem with blending if something unique can be the end result.

[ErichPryde]

I'd like to see more blends like the bourye than I would blends that include light whiskey again.

[Josh]

I'm less optimistic than you guys. I look at something like Early Times which in the US is a blend of bourbon with a whiskey aged in resused cooperage. It sells fairly well, but B-F is getting ready to convert it back into a straight bourbon. To me, that speaks volumes. If B-F, which isn't Beam big, but is still big, can't make something like that work, I doubt anyone else can. See also the Ten High "bourbon, a blend" experiment.

[ErichPryde]

If you make a quality blend and advertise it well, there won't be any problems. Early Times is nothing more than B-F's Toy Soldier in the Jack-Jim-Evan war, but the problem is that Jack has an automatic shotgun, Jim has a Garand, and Evan has some sort of an interesting repeating rifle. Unfortunately the only thing anyone could scrounge up for ET was an old muzzle loading musket. At least they didn't give him an blunderbus, I guess.

[cowdery]

I thought about the ET example. It proves a couple of things. At this point, the halfway-ness of ET is forcing them to shit or get off the pot. They either need to make it cheaper, to make it more profitable, or make it bourbon so they can stand shoulder to shoulder with other value-priced KSBW and make it more profitable by charging more.

But I agree with Scott (who actually started this) that "100% whiskey" would be the key differentiator, although that might start a pissing match since--100 years ago--blends got the right to call themselves "whiskey."

That's what I meant on the blog about the "magic" of replacing 1/5 of your vodka with straight whiskey and transmutting it all into whiskey.

[CorvallisCracker]

If you make a quality blend and advertise it well, there won't be any problems. Early Times is nothing more than B-F's Toy Soldier in the Jack-Jim-Evan war, but the problem is that Jack has an automatic shotgun, Jim has a Garand, and Evan has some sort of an interesting repeating rifle. Unfortunately the only thing anyone could scrounge up for ET was an old muzzle loading musket. At least they didn't give him an blunderbus, I guess.

[ErichPryde]

Why would B-F want ET to compete with JD? They own both.

[cowdery]

Brown-Forman's strategy has long been to use ET and JD to flank JB.

JB then tries to flank JD with JBW and JBB.

[doubleblank]

BT produced Charter Reserve, a blended whiskey, about 2 or 3 years ago. It came packaged in a velvet bag and fancy bottle. Guess who it was going after? A Republic exec said it didn't do very well and was pulled. It was only test marketed in areas that were large markets for Old Charter bourbons......like east Texas and a few other places. I bought a bottle out of curiosities sake but haven't opened it.

So it has been done recently and bombed. But I doubt BT put any marketing muscle behind it.....heck, what product do they push hard for that matter?

I had tasted it in BT's lab before release and while good, it was nothing special.

Randy

[Dramiel McHinson]

The following question was posed to me today on my blog:

Do you think a premium American blend could be successful? Something that was, say, 40% straight whiskies and the balance light whiskey, all of which was aged 8-12 years?

What do you folks think?

There was an interesting article in 1972 that describes American distillers hoping for relief from regulatory requirements so they could make and sell light whiskey. ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910362,00.html)

The article basically explains that American distillers wanted to compete with scotch and Canadian whiskey by introducing smoother, less aggressive whiskey using the same production techniques as scotch and Canadian distillers.

So what happened since then? Apparently Light Beer went over well but Light whiskey never seemed to take hold in a big way. Personally, I would think a blend as described above would work for people that also like other blended brown spirits. If the price to flavor ratio beat out imports then it might have a chance.

All you need is an add campaign that shows a bunch of bowling team buddies throwing their viagra in the trash after downing a bottle of Jefferson Davis Light Whiskey and having the ball polisher girl develop an obsessive compulsive desire to sit in their lap. :bigeyes:

[CorvallisCracker]

Dan, I think you've kinda missed the point of the question.

The light whiskies of the early seventies failed because they were going after the low end of the whiskey market, one that was already well saturated with low cost American and Canadian blends. Plus, with the exception of the Four Roses offering, they weren't blended, they were "straight" (can't think of a better term) light whiskies. The Four Roses product was less than 20% straight whiskey, which again, positioned it at the low end.

The question I put on Chuck's blog asked about a premium blend, i.e., the American equivalent of Johnnie Walker Black Label, Bushmill Black Bush, or Crown Royal; something in the $25-35 range, perhaps with a 12yo age statement.

The advertisement you describe sounds like Great Fun (I know I'd like to be in it :70358-devil: ), but I don't think it's what you'd use for this sort of product.

[cowdery]

The disconnect for light whiskey, I think, was that you can make whiskey the way the Scots do but that doesn't mean it will taste like scotch. The customer for whiskey cares about taste. Not just how relatively strong the taste is but the characteristics of the taste.

Light whiskey set out to serve a market that didn't exist.

Blended scotch works because there are a large number of distilleries in Scotland making very distinct styles. Most blends have at least a little peat, a little smoke, a little sherry, a little iodine.

Back in my college and immediate post-college days I drank a lot of cheap blended scotch. There may be blended scotchs that rank below the ones I drank, but the ones I drank did not taste like whiskey-flavored vodka the way American blends do.

Ireland is more like the U.S., with the limited number of distilleries, but Middleton has both pot stills and column stills and makes a bunch of different distillates. That's never been the way in the U.S., except to a limited extent with what Seagram's did. Seagram's tried to approximate that and still does, but within a very narrow range, i.e., it's all rye-recipe bourbon.

Finally, there may not be much difference between GNS and blending whiskey, but there is a difference.

Everybody knows I love tradition, but the tradition of calling something "whiskey" that is 4/5 vodka is a tradition I could bear to see die.

[tmckenzie]

I just got my hands on a 1968 bottle of seagrams 7. The rye jumps out of the glass at you. Why can't something like this be done again?

[ratcheer]

I just got my hands on a 1968 bottle of seagrams 7. The rye jumps out of the glass at you. Why can't something like this be done again?

I think the current Seagrams 7 is pretty good - certainly a lot better than I expected when I tried a bottle. Probably not as good as the '68, but still very respectable.

Tim

[ILLfarmboy]

....Everybody knows I love tradition, but the tradition of calling something "whiskey" that is 4/5 vodka is a tradition I could bear to see die.

That'd make a great signature......

[jsbac]

I just bought a bottle of the Charter Private Reserve -- haven't tried it yet. It was the first time I'd ran across it. I don't normally buy blends since getting into bourbon, but I like Old Charter, so I thought at the very least this would be a kewl addition to my small collection.

BT produced Charter Reserve, a blended whiskey, about 2 or 3 years ago. It came packaged in a velvet bag and fancy bottle. Guess who it was going after?

[squire]

A few years back I spent some time, say 6-8 months, blending vodka with straight whisky to get a lower taste profile that would please my companion.

Didn't work out as I never achieved my goal and she wouldn't drink any of them anyway.

[p_elliott]

A few years back I spent some time, say 6-8 months, blending vodka with straight whisky to get a lower taste profile that would please my companion.

Didn't work out as I never achieved my goal and she wouldn't drink any of them anyway.

[squire]

Oh yeah, I've tried them off and on for forty years now, just haven't found one blended to my satisfaction.

[cowdery]

Oh yeah, I've tried them off and on for forty years now, just haven't found one blended to my satisfaction.

What was your usual ratio of whiskey to vodka? With most American blends it's 20/80, except 'premium' Seagram's 7, which is 25/75.

[squire]

Chuck when I said off and on for those years is was always an effort to gradually introduce a female by steps to appreciate real whisky and I wound up having to drink the stuff myself. I did get one to drink Segrams 7 and 7up but I think that was because she was convinced imported whiskys were somehow 'better'. I didn't use blends even in my broke student days because we could get bottom shelf Bourbons (Kentucky Beau, etc.) for the same price as blends.

The experiment I mentioned in the post was not to come up with something I liked but to please the girl. It started at 50/50 and went down to 25% whisky and up as high as 75% but it was a no go. She had gotten violently ill off a bottle of Jack Daniels her freshman year in college and refused to touch anything with whisky on the label ever since.

Vodka rocks, yes, whisky, no.