Seagram's Benchmark / Benchmark SB Question

[Enoch]

One of my favorite bourbons is old Benchmark from the 70s or 80s. I buy all I can when I find it. Benchmark was sold in 1989 to Sazarac. Around 1999 they offered a 10 year Benchmark Single Barrel for a couple of years. I have a couple of bottles of it. I find it taste much more like Seagram's Benchmark than it does any Sazarac version in the last 10 years or so.

My question: Did Sazarac get the Benchmark in barrels when they acquired the brand, and if so, could the Benchmark SB be the last of the old stuff in barrels?

[barturtle]

Possibly. However, one must note that from the time Sazerac bought the brand until they bought the Ancient Age Distillery, they were a bulk bottler, so it could be anything (that being said, it is known that Sazerac bought quite a bit, if not all, of its stock from Heaven Hill)

[Gillman]

Kind of makes sense though that it might be an aged version of the regular Benchmark, which was 6 years old I believe, the timing sort of fits that.

Rummy, caramel-like, not complex but very flavorful bourbon.

Gary

[cowdery]

Barturtle is correct. Sazerac probably received whiskey from Seagram's, as that is the custom, and Sazerac's partnership with Heaven Hill during that period was more overt than the typical bulk whiskey relationship.

The original Benchmark was mainly made at Seagram's big Louisville plant but probably contained whiskey from Four Roses and Athertonville too.

[sailor22]

How likely was it that the "Single Barrel" was actually a single barrel? I get a very uniform taste from all the ones I have had. Not even any variation in the range found in ETL or Blanton's. Even Bookers as a small batch offering has more variation.

Thought your description was dead on Gary.

[cowdery]

I'm confident it was legit. The uniformity is probably because they didn't make very much of it.