Larceny Bourbon By HH

[Ejmharris]

I've been pretty happy with Larceny thus far, but would like to point out a rebate issue. I got a post card denying my rebate because I live in Indiana. Bottle was bought in Louisville, but apparently there are restrictions on payment. Kind of a bait and switch feel which I didn't appreciate. I've bought other Heaven Hill products in Louisville with rebates and have received my check in the past, so I'm wondering what changed. Just passing the information on to other out-of-state buyers.

Joel

My assumption is that it is not a HH issue but a control state issue that controls prices. HH may not be able to give the rebate. Only a guess on my part.

[Young Blacksmith]

Yup, certain states are not eligible for the rebate due to state laws.

[theglobalguy]

Managed to get denied on both my rebates due to lack of date on receipt. Listen, i respect that Heaven Hill outsourced the rebate program but this is crap. I high-lited all date/price/product info. Thinking i wasn't going to be screwed over i didn't make copies (as i learned to do after years of Best Buy type programs). Disappointing way to stumble on an otherwise interesting product launch.

[smokinjoe]

Managed to get denied on both my rebates due to lack of date on receipt. Listen, i respect that Heaven Hill outsourced the rebate program but this is crap. I high-lited all date/price/product info. Thinking i wasn't going to be screwed over i didn't make copies (as i learned to do after years of Best Buy type programs). Disappointing way to stumble on an otherwise interesting product launch.

[Tony]

For the other end, I got my 20$ in less than a month.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

[theglobalguy]

I understand that you're upset, but trust me, HH has no intention whatsoever of screwing you over. None. Somethings missing. There's been a mistake somewhere.

[Flyfish]

Managed to get denied on both my rebates due to lack of date on receipt. Listen, i respect that Heaven Hill outsourced the rebate program but this is crap. I high-lited all date/price/product info. Thinking i wasn't going to be screwed over i didn't make copies (as i learned to do after years of Best Buy type programs). Disappointing way to stumble on an otherwise interesting product launch.

[Sijan]

I just picked up a bottle and tried it today, on the hope that it might perhaps be like my long-time everyday favorite Old Fitz 1849 or VSOF. It does share some similarities, but I get a much more pronounced eucalyptus/menthol note that I always associate with HH bourbons (and generally am not a big fan of). I think the eucalyptus is fairly mild in this bottling, so I don't mind it as much, and even kind of like it for adding some complexity. I'd echo the cinammon & vanilla notes mentioned earlier. This is tasty, albeit not quite what I was hoping for. (I forget now which distillery made the Old Fitz 1849...I was thinking Ancient Age/Buffalo Trace, which I know made the VSOF, but the bottle of Old Fitz 1849 I currently have open says Louisville, not Frankfort, so I'm a little confused.)

(And by the way, hello everybody. Sorry for the long absence.)

[squire]

Welcome back Dan. I wonder if Larceny isn't the style of the future for wheat recipe Bourbons.

[jburlowski]

(And by the way, hello everybody. Sorry for the long absence.)

Hey, welcome back Dan! From your avatar, it looks like you haven't aged a day!

[Sijan]

Thanks. Heh, I just changed it. (Was trying to figure out why updating my Profile Picture didn't seem to do the trick - didn't realize that Avatar and Profile Picture were two different things.)

Can someone confirm whether Ancient Age/Buffalo Trace or HH made Old Fitz 1849? Anyone recall the details on how the Old Fitz brand changed hands between BT and HH?

[squire]

Dan I'm under the impression UD used SW stock for the 1849 brand and there was still some of that stock left over when the brand was transferred through BT to HH in 1992. We could still get Weller stock whisky for a few years but I expect that was used up by the time of the fire in 1996.

[cowdery]

BT never had anything to do with any iteration of Old Fitzgerald, except that back when Stitzel-Weller and BT were both owned by Schenley, which would have been before 1987, BT supplemented SW's stock with some wheated bourbon distilled at BT. We know very little about this except that BT did have some wheated bourbon in its warehouses when it bought Weller in 1999. There's certainly nothing that ties it specifically to 1849.

[StraightBoston]

Thanks. Heh, I just changed it. (Was trying to figure out why updating my Profile Picture didn't seem to do the trick - didn't realize that Avatar and Profile Picture were two different things.)

Can someone confirm whether Ancient Age/Buffalo Trace or HH made Old Fitz 1849? Anyone recall the details on how the Old Fitz brand changed hands between BT and HH?

Hey Dan-- that was quite a hiatus! Just getting to the end of an ORVW15/107 that you procured for me several years back.

I think that all of the Old Fitz expressions went from UD/Diageo to HH and Sazerac/AA/BT got the Wellers (and later the Van Winkles). If your bottle of 1849 says Louisville, it may be Bernheim (or even S-W?) juice. What are the numbers in the glass on the bottom of the bottle?

[jburlowski]

BT never had anything to do with any iteration of Old Fitzgerald, except that back when Stitzel-Weller and BT were both owned by Schenley, which would have been before 1987, BT supplemented SW's stock with some wheated bourbon distilled at BT. We know very little about this except that BT did have some wheated bourbon in its warehouses when it bought Weller in 1999. There's certainly nothing that ties it specifically to 1849.

Like this? (pad...pad...pad...)

[Brisko]

There is a lot to be gleaned from that photo, especially the stickers....

[cowdery]

Enlighten us.

(pad...pad...pad)

[Brisko]

Enlighten us.

(pad...pad...pad)

[cowdery]

That's about right. I'm surprised to learn BT was still making whiskey for Old Fitz as late as 1991. I thought that stopped in 1987, when Schenley sold both the Frankfort distillery (to Age International) and itself (to United Distillers/Guinness). I'm surprised but not stunned. If they had established a pattern of buying wheater from BT to supplement their own production, there's no reason Age wouldn't have continuted to welcome that business. (I'm saying 'BT' for convenience, but this is before Sazerac's acquisition of the distillery in 1994.) They were functioning as a DBA for Old Fitzgerald, but that doesn't necessarily mean the whiskey was aged at SW. Nothing in the picture tells us where the whiskey was barreled and it was likely aged where it was barreled, which could have been either place. At any event, this barrel wound up at BT, as a result of BT's acquisition of Weller in 1999, unless it was a barrel Julian had previously acquired.

Separately, we now have evidence that wheated bourbon made at DSP-113 was used in the 2011 release of Pappy 20. I don't think that's contrary to anything we've been told, but it may be contrary to what some people believe.

[Brisko]

I guess the question that interests me more, is how much whiskey did S-W get from DSP-113 over the years? In the infamous thread (I went back and looked it up) the claim is made that this arrangement went back as far as 1981.

I don't have an axe to grind, at all; I'm just curious from a historical perspective about the nature of that relationship and where (in which brands) the DSP-113 distillate was being used and to what extent. Were they buying white dog and aging it, or buying aged stock from Schenley? The photo of the '91 barrel implies that it was contracted at the time of fill. Was Schenley/Age using a special recipe for S-W or were they selling them something that they already were making?

I don't expect to get answers for those but it's something to think about.

As far as the other non-issue of DSP-113 whiskey going into PVW, there's no reason to believe this was a limited occurrence. If DSP-113 was supplying wheated stock to S-W in any appreciable amount prior to 1992, it's no surprise that some of it would make it into Julian's pipeline. Technically, it's S-W juice as it was manufactured for them, to their specs. Some people may not like that, but it's hardly out of the ordinary in this industry.

[Josh]

Weird FB post today from Larceny "Larceny's mashbill calls for one-third more wheat than its competitors, making it a smoother and more mellow-tasting Bourbon."

So, they have something like 21% wheat? I find that a little hard to believe.

[White Dog]

Weird FB post today from Larceny "Larceny's mashbill calls for one-third more wheat than its competitors, making it a smoother and more mellow-tasting Bourbon."

So, they have something like 21% wheat? I find that a little hard to believe.

Josh, I'm sure they're comparing it to all their Rye-recipe competitors, who use no wheat. Remember their bizarre Fighting Cock claim some time ago concerning the Rye content, I believe?

[cowdery]

Brisko, some of what you ask is known or, at least, I can tell you what normal industry practice would be. Some is impossible to say.

I guess the question that interests me more, is how much whiskey did S-W get from DSP-113 over the years? In the infamous thread (I went back and looked it up) the claim is made that this arrangement went back as far as 1981.

How much is impossible to say.

I don't have an axe to grind, at all; I'm just curious from a historical perspective about the nature of that relationship and where (in which brands) the DSP-113 distillate was being used and to what extent. Were they buying white dog and aging it, or buying aged stock from Schenley? The photo of the '91 barrel implies that it was contracted at the time of fill. Was Schenley/Age using a special recipe for S-W or were they selling them something that they already were making?

I'm sure they were making wheated bourbon to the Stitzel-Weller recipe; same mash bill, same yeast, same distillation proof, same barrel entry proof. It could, therefore, have been used in any or all of the Stitzel-Weller brands; i.e., Old Fitzgerald, W. L. Weller, Cabin Still, Rebel Yell, and Old Rip Van Winkle. The historical context is that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the bourbon glut was growing and distilleries were closing left and right. Some didn't close entirely but took very long holidays and had very short distilling seasons. Producers like Schenley, who owned multiple distilleries, tried to consolidate production as much as possible. What we now call Buffalo Trace was Schenley's largest and most modern distillery. If they only needed, say, a few hundred barrels of wheated bourbon in a given season, it might be more cost effective to run it at BT, rather than crank SW up for such a small batch.

When Schenley sold BT to Age International in 1987, Schenley probably contracted with them to continue to supplement SW's production. That same year, United Distillers (Guinness) bought Schenley and in 1992, opened a new distillery at Bernheim that was more modern than BT and easily able to run multiple recipes, so they probably no longer needed anything from BT.

I don't expect to get answers for those but it's something to think about.

As far as the other non-issue of DSP-113 whiskey going into PVW, there's no reason to believe this was a limited occurrence. If DSP-113 was supplying wheated stock to S-W in any appreciable amount prior to 1992, it's no surprise that some of it would make it into Julian's pipeline. Technically, it's S-W juice as it was manufactured for them, to their specs. Some people may not like that, but it's hardly out of the ordinary in this industry.

All correct. No one has ever said that BT made wheated bourbon for any other purpose except as needed for SW until they acquired Weller in 1999. It was noted then by them that some of the whiskey they got in that deal was wheated bourbon made as DSP-113.

[Josh]

Josh, I'm sure they're comparing it to all their Rye-recipe competitors, who use no wheat. Remember their bizarre Fighting Cock claim some time ago concerning the Rye content, I believe?

[p_elliott]

Why is it everytime we have a thread about a wheated bourbon it turns into a PVW thread? Lets get back on the subject.