A question about HH barrels

[macdeffe]

Wandering around scottish distilleries I noticed two types of Heaven Hill barrels

One with DSP KY#1 and one with DSP KY#354

It is well known that Heaven Hill has sourced some whisky from early times. I assume they did so when they didn't have their own distillery, but recently the rittenhouse rye was also from DSP KY#354 as can be seen on the BiB versions

Now my question is this, if you see a Heaven Hill DSP KY #354 barrel, delivered today, how likely is it to have held rye whisky opposed to bourbon whisky ?

Steffen

PS So far noone has been able to give me a sensible answer if an ex-rye cask differs from classic ex-bourbon when used for further maturation of scotch, but first step is for people to actually know

[ChainWhip]

Do you have pictures? 354 is Brown-Forman right?

[squire]

Yes, 354 is Early Times/Old Forester owned by Brown-Forman. When the Heaven Hill distillery burned down in 1996 they entered into an agreement with B-F to continue making HH whisky using HH mashbills, yeast and production techniques.

As for the barrels I should think a Scottish producer would be far more concerned with residual wood sugars (a 4 year old barrel has some, an 8 doesn't) than with whether the original contents were Rye or Bourbon.

[PaulO]

I've only seen two Heaven Hill brands that listed DSP 354 on the label: Rittenhouse Rye bond, and Mellow Corn bond. At the same time the HH bonded bourbons all listed distilled DSP 1, bottled DSP 31. This includes HH 4 year old, HH 6 year old, Evan Williams bond, JTS Brown, JW Dant, Henry McKenna, Old Fitz. I suppose it's possible HH may have had DSP 354 contract for other labels that are not bonds. The newer Rittenhouse hitting shelves is now DSP 1. They are coming out with a new label too.

[macdeffe]

So PaulO it would be right to conclude that there is no reason that a 354 is an ex-rye barrel?

Steffen

[PaulO]

There definitely would be DSP 354 barrels that held Rittenhouse Rye. What I don't know is were they marked "rye" on the barrel head, or were any sent to Scotland. The other possibility is HH used DSP 354 for bourbon that was not bottled in bond.