Heaven Hill sourcing from or contract distilling with BF?

[Mako254]

SB,

I know that after the HH fire in ‘96, other distilleries helped out and ran HH mash and yeast to keep them up and running. 

How long did that continue for?

 

My local group picked 2 Elijah Craig barrels back in the fall (I wasn’t on the pick) but looking at pictures I noticed one our of barrels has DSP KY 354 and is stenciled ‘heaven hill’. 

 

The barrel was filled in 2007. 

Was this BF juice that HH bought? HH juice that BF contract distilled (maybe HH was having work done on still etc)

 

Any input is appreciated. 

 

[PaulO]

I have in my collection Rittenhouse Rye and Mellow corn with DSP 354 on the label.

You can check the rye section of the site.  There were some discussions about the switch to DSP 1.

[BottledInBond]

1 hour ago, Mako254 said:

SB,

I know that after the HH fire in ‘96, other distilleries helped out and ran HH mash and yeast to keep them up and running. 

How long did that continue for?

 

My local group picked 2 Elijah Craig barrels back in the fall (I wasn’t on the pick) but looking at pictures I noticed one our of barrels has DSP KY 354 and is stenciled ‘heaven hill’. 

 

The barrel was filled in 2007. 

Was this BF juice that HH bought? HH juice that BF contract distilled (maybe HH was having work done on still etc)

 

Any input is appreciated. 

 

HH bought the Bernheim (DSP KY 1) in 1999 but they continued having products contract distilled for quite a while after that so yeah you’ve probably got a contract distilled barrel there. 
 

To the best of my knowledge, it wasn’t until 2008 that HH was finally distilling everything at Bernheim. For Rittenhouse I believe we started seeing the first bottles switch from DSP 354 (Early Times Brown Forman) to DSP 1 in late 2014. The BIB products like Ritt are where people noticed this more than with other HH products, as BIB required them to list the DSP on BIB labels. EC not being BIB, and also being “small batch” means it certainly can and has been a blend of KSB distilled at more than one DSP, and even today they don’t list the DSP on EC products. I’m sure there are still barrels in HH warehouses today that were contract distilled. 
 

It is not a coincidence at all that right after HH got to the point where they were finally bottling the DSP 1 Ritt, BF started steering that newly available again rye capacity that was finally no longer going to HH into new products. And that is why we ended up seeing Woodford rye launch a few years ago, as well as eventually the Old Forester rye, and also a lot of BF rye going to Michter’s. For the record I was in the camp that preferred the 354 Ritt over the 1 Ritt when the switch happened. No surprise then that I’m also a fan of the Old Forester rye now. 

[Old Dusty]

Nice write up. Agree with you in preferring 354 to 1. Did them side by side when the switch happened and clearly liked the 354 better. Still have a couple of them squirreled away.  

[kevinbrink]

When the switch happened I agreed that 354 Ritt was better to my tastes but, I'm not sure I'd feel the same in its current version. I have both so I suppose I could do the research.

[Bbstout]

4 hours ago, PaulO said:

I have in my collection Rittenhouse Rye and Mellow corn with DSP 354 on the label.

You can check the rye section of the site.  There were some discussions about the switch to DSP 1.

I was just going to say this on Ritt.

[smokinjoe]

One of my complaints of the 354 rye was that I thought it too”bourbony” tasting.  I enjoyed the Bernheim DSP1 more because it had more rye character to it in comparison, manifested in a baking spices and subtle earthy nose and flavor profile to my palate.  More sizzle on the finish, as well.  

[Bbstout]

3 hours ago, BottledInBond said:

HH bought the Bernheim (DSP KY 1) in 1999 but they continued having products contract distilled for quite a while after that so yeah you’ve probably got a contract distilled barrel there. 
 

To the best of my knowledge, it wasn’t until 2008 that HH was finally distilling everything at Bernheim. For Rittenhouse I believe we started seeing the first bottles switch from DSP 354 (Early Times Brown Forman) to DSP 1 in late 2014. The BIB products like Ritt are where people noticed this more than with other HH products, as BIB required them to list the DSP on BIB labels. EC not being BIB, and also being “small batch” means it certainly can and has been a blend of KSB distilled at more than one DSP, and even today they don’t list the DSP on EC products. I’m sure there are still barrels in HH warehouses today that were contract distilled. 
 

It is not a coincidence at all that right after HH got to the point where they were finally bottling the DSP 1 Ritt, BF started steering that newly available again rye capacity that was finally no longer going to HH into new products. And that is why we ended up seeing Woodford rye launch a few years ago, as well as eventually the Old Forester rye, and also a lot of BF rye going to Michter’s. For the record I was in the camp that preferred the 354 Ritt over the 1 Ritt when the switch happened. No surprise then that I’m also a fan of the Old Forester rye now. 

Andy,

How do you even retain this information? This brought back memories of the arguments on SB between which Ritt was better. Now we fight about secondary here....how times have changed. BTW.. I haven't opened my dsp 354, we should SBS with dsp 1.

[Mako254]

Thanks for all the replies. 

Didn’t realize it took Bernheim that long to get up and running at full capacity. 

 

[Vosgar]

9 hours ago, BottledInBond said:

For the record I was in the camp that preferred the 354 Ritt over the 1 Ritt when the switch happened. No surprise then that I’m also a fan of the Old Forester rye now. 

 

8 hours ago, Old Dusty said:

Nice write up. Agree with you in preferring 354 to 1. Did them side by side when the switch happened and clearly liked the 354 better. Still have a couple of them squirreled away.  

 

6 hours ago, smokinjoe said:

One of my complaints of the 354 rye was that I thought it too”bourbony” tasting.  I enjoyed the Bernheim DSP1 more because it had more rye character to it in comparison, manifested in a baking spices and subtle earthy nose and flavor profile to my palate.  More sizzle on the finish, as well.  

I'm another guy who prefers the 354 over the 1, and it's for the exact reason smokinjoe doesn't......it's more "bourbony". I admit to generally liking the barely rye, rye whiskies over high rye's and the older I get the more I lean that direction. And like Eric, I've got a few of the 354's stashed away. Heck, they were under $20, why not?

[Old Dusty]

29 minutes ago, Vosgar said:

I admit to generally liking the barely rye, rye whiskies over high rye's 

You know it’s odd. I like my bourbons bourbony and I like my ryes bourbony. But I like my Scotches anything but. Give me peat or sherry/wine anything but just ex bourbon barrels. I wonder what the mashbill was for the Cream of Ky rye that became the famous KBD bottlings (Doug's Green Ink, Vintage 21 etc) I love those but am guessing it was a “barely legal” mash. 

[flahute]

23 minutes ago, Old Dusty said:

You know it’s odd. I like my bourbons bourbony and I like my ryes bourbony. But I like my Scotches anything but. Give me peat or sherry/wine anything but just ex bourbon barrels. I wonder what the mashbill was for the Cream of Ky rye that became the famous KBD bottlings (Doug's Green Ink, Vintage 21 etc) I love those but am guessing it was a “barely legal” mash. 

It’s always easy for me to tell if a rye is barely rye or high rye. Those older than 20 year KBD ryes however are a different animal. They have their very own flavor profile that I’ve never experienced in any other whiskey and I have no idea what the mashbills are. 

[WhiskeyBlender]

And.....these kind of delicious nuggets of knowledge and great info are exactly why I love Straightbourbon so much! Thanks @Mako254, @BottledInBond, @Vosgar and all the rest of you gents for this history. This is what keeps me coming back over and over again to this forum! I always learn something new.

 

Cheers,

Nancy

[Old Dusty]

48 minutes ago, flahute said:

It’s always easy for me to tell if a rye is barely rye or high rye. Those older than 20 year KBD ryes however are a different animal. They have their very own flavor profile that I’ve never experienced in any other whiskey and I have no idea what the mashbills are. 

It was a happy accident of the glut era that the “overaged” lot was available to KBD. I’m guessing it was a low rye/barely legal mashbill because it was a KY created product. Not a Maryland or PA rye. But I have no direct info.

Whatever it was, it was magical and not likely to be recreated. 

[smokinjoe]

Despite my description of 354 being too “bourbony” and knowing it’s a 51% rye mashbill, I’ve always bristled at the “barely legal” moniker for these Kentucky ryes.  Clearly, several variant profiles have been presented with this mashbill.  Most likely, this somewhat pejorative term is a byproduct of MGP’s ubiquitous 95/5 ryes that have dominated the rye space for several years (and during the boom), now.  Nice ryes for the most part, for sure.  But, not the benchmark to work off of, IMO.  It’s has been proven for decades that in the right hands, 51% rye grain content provides plenty of different rye characters that are nowhere near simply “bourbony”.  

[Vosgar]

Sorry to make you bristle on a Friday night, Joe......

 

I donated a couple of Ritt BiB's for the 2010 SB Bourbon Taster of the Year event at the KBF. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there were 12 whiskies displayed, the contestants were given samples of 6 of them, and they had to try and determine which of the 12 they were tasting, in the right order. As I recall the Ritt was one of the 6, the only rye in the competition, and no one guessed correctly what it was. I don't recall everyone who participated, but it was a group of well respected SB members (I wasn't one of them  ). Two things I learned from that event. 1) Blind tasting is very humbling 2) Ritt BiB is very much like a bourbon. Obviously I'm not going to lump every 51% rye into the "bourbony" category but for me, Ritt 354 is.

 

Now I'm going to have to open one tomorrow and confirm or deny what I just said.......

[0895]

3 hours ago, Old Dusty said:

Whatever it was, it was magical and not likely to be recreated. 

No kidding.

That stuff is just incredible!

[Vosgar]

20 hours ago, Vosgar said:

Now I'm going to have to open one tomorrow and confirm or deny what I just said.......

Opened this bottle tonight, and I'm getting a fair amount of butterscotch, more than I remember ever getting on previous bottles. Also getting a bit more rye spice than I recall as well. However, I'm the first to admit my palate is very inconsistent so this could change tomorrow 

 

Regardless, it's still a very tasty bottle.

 

[TheNovaMan]

All my thoughts on this have already been posted by others, except for one.

 

On 1/17/2020 at 10:11 PM, smokinjoe said:

It’s has been proven for decades that in the right hands, 51% rye grain content provides plenty of different rye characters that are nowhere near simply “bourbony”.  

Heck, WT makes 13% rye drink like a "high rye" bourbon IMHO.  In another thread, someone posted about how different HH's bourbons taste than Mellow Corn, even though they're almost the same mashbill.  And isn't Baby Saz fairly low rye content, at least compared to MGP's 95% rye?  It still tastes plenty like rye to me.  Maybe not quite as much as DSP KY 1 Ritt BIB or any of the MGP 95% cats and dogs, but still distinctly rye.  I have to imagine there are lots more variables at play than just mashbill, like what kind of rye is used, char on the barrels, which warehouse, what level, barrel entry proof, what wood is used for the barrels, what cut of the distillate they take, and so on.

[dboland]

On 1/17/2020 at 1:37 PM, smokinjoe said:

One of my complaints of the 354 rye was that I thought it too”bourbony” tasting.  I enjoyed the Bernheim DSP1 more because it had more rye character to it in comparison, manifested in a baking spices and subtle earthy nose and flavor profile to my palate.  More sizzle on the finish, as well.  

100% agree. I would probably be using more Bulleit rye these days for mixing if RittBiB was still like the 354. I bought a few bottles years ago and compared Old Fashioneds and Manhattens with them but they didn't have the same zip.

[Josh]

Sorry to make you bristle on a Friday night, Joe......

If you hadn't bristled him, he would have been bristling himself anyway Gary.

Anyways, I did a head to head tasting of the two on my blog a while back.

https://sipologyblog.com/2015/01/30/head-to-head-rittenhouse-dsp-ky-1-vs-dsp-ky-354/

[Bbstout]

On 1/17/2020 at 10:12 AM, Old Dusty said:

Nice write up. Agree with you in preferring 354 to 1. Did them side by side when the switch happened and clearly liked the 354 better. Still have a couple of them squirreled away.  

I remember the first precursor to the current boom being a rush on Rittenhouse around 2010. It was hard to find on the shelves for a couple years and the price went from under $20 to 20+. The stocks must have been small when they did the Distillery switch also around that time the cocktail culture was in full swing and once bartenders raved about it, the Taters swooped in. I wish I had kept more dsp 354 bottles. Oh well at least I got to enjoy them.

[The Black Tot]

I'm getting the feeling the switch on Rittenhouse happened before 2014.

 

I moved to the UK in the summer of 2015, and I think at least a year before that I was picking up 354s in the understanding they were already "dusties."

[PaulO]

The first generation after Rittenhouse label changed to DSP 1 was not the best.  Later the whole package changed, and the DSP 1 Pittenhouse seemed to improve.  At this point it had evolved into a much different profile than the DSP 354 version.

 

Were there other HH brands that had DSP 354 on the label at that time?  I only recall Ritt and Mellow Corn.

[EarthQuake]

On 1/17/2020 at 7:31 PM, Old Dusty said:

You know it’s odd. I like my bourbons bourbony and I like my ryes bourbony. But I like my Scotches anything but. Give me peat or sherry/wine anything but just ex bourbon barrels. I wonder what the mashbill was for the Cream of Ky rye that became the famous KBD bottlings (Doug's Green Ink, Vintage 21 etc) I love those but am guessing it was a “barely legal” mash. 

I'm the same way, when it comes to Scotch (or Irish / Japanese) it better be peated, heavily sherried, or both. Otherwise, what's the point? If I want something that sat for years in a bourbon barrel, I'll just drink bourbon.

Edited January 25, 2020 by EarthQuake