An Old Weller Question

[jbutler]

All,

I received the following email, and have no clue about the answer. I figure that at least one of you amazing SOB's knows however, so I'm putting it to the masses:

In 2004 I "inherited" from my Dad two bottles of Old Weller, The Original 107 Proof, Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. What I'm curious about is each is labeled with what appears to be a hand-written (serial?) number -- 7341-M on one and 7267-M on the other. Dad never explained what, if anything, is significant about the numbers. I did a google search, which didn't yield anything other than the distillery, Buffalo Trace (which you undoubtedly already know -- duh on me). They couldn't help -- "... unfortunately our staff has not been able to find out much as this bottle is from a long time before we bought the brand." They did however give me the link to you, hence this inquiry. If you can shed any light on my curiosity I'd appreciate it.

[johnnybogey]

Per www.whiskyid.com, it looks like this bottle is from or around 1981. If you select "weller" from the drop down menu under "Photo Libraries", it looks like in 1981, they started the serial number format which included the dash followed by letter.

[gblick]

In my experience, every bottle of Weller 107 from Louisville (that I've ever seen, and I've seen many from the early 1980's all the way up to 1999) has had those hand-written numbers. Once they started putting Frankfort on the label in 2000, they quit writing in those numbers (I've never seen a bottle from Frankfort with a number written in). Unfortunately, I have not been able to garner any significance, because the numbers seem to be all over the place without any logical convention (though there may be). I imagine that the numbers are just barrel codes or something like that. Wish I could be of more help. Those bottles he has ought to be very good drinking!