Chapin & Gore

[jcg9779]

I did a search and didn't find too much on this bourbon, other than the fact that it is a Heaven Hill product. Does anyone know anything else about it?

Chapin & Gore Bourbon

Old Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey

6 years old

86 Proof (500ml bottle)

[cowdery]

The puzzler here is who has (or had) bottling facilities in both Frankfort and Bardstown? Heaven Hill does not. Sazerac does, but that's recent and this bottle doesn't look recent.

Chapin and Gore is an old Chicago company and the Chapin and Gore Building is a local landmark.

[jcg9779]

It's definitely an older bottle - there's the Georgia tax stamp and a paper strip across the top. No year stamped on the bottom of the bottle to estimate the year though.

[craigthom]

It's definitely an older bottle - there's the Georgia tax stamp and a paper strip across the top. No year stamped on the bottom of the bottle to estimate the year though.

Is there anything written on the paper strip?

[jcg9779]

No there isn't anything on the strip. Half of it is torn off though.

[craigthom]

Georgia stopped using tax stamps on January 31st, 1993, so there's your late limit.

[cowdery]

It probably was made when Schenley still owned the Fairfield Distillery, which was in Bardstown, not Fairfield. The warehouses are still standing, owned by Heaven Hill. For those of you who know Bardstown, it is located where the railroad tracks cross Bloomfield Road northeast of downtown. Schenley also owned what is now Buffalo Trace in Frankfort and, presumably, they had bottling at both. Schenley bought Fairfield from McKesson Robbins in 1945. Schenley also bought the Chapin & Gore brands from McKesson, possibly at that same time. Distilling stopped there in 1955 but they may have kept bottling the contents of the warehouses for a few years after that. When the warehouses were empty, they sold it to Heaven Hill, which refilled the warehouses and tore down everything else. I suspect this was the first bunch of off-site warehouses Heaven Hill bought, because it is the closest one to the main campus.

So, probably the window is between 1945 and no later than 1960. Aged whiskey was scarce right after the war so the fact that it's 6-years-old suggests something closer to the 1960 date. If anyone knows definitively when Schenley closed the bottling operation at Fairfield, that would clarify the end date.