WhiskeyProposition Posted March 29, 2023 Share Posted March 29, 2023 Probably not wording the title too well, so here's the dumbed down version: Lucky Seven Proprietor 14 year got rave reviews. It's suspected that it's sourced from Barton. Why would Barton sell 15 year old whiskey to a company like Lucky Seven rather than release it under one of their own brands? Why not release it as a 1792 15 year or something? I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation, I just don't know what it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richnimrod Posted March 30, 2023 Share Posted March 30, 2023 I have zero intimate knowledge here; but, I'll hazard a guess... Sazerac has a goodly number of their own brands. Many of 'em are quite successful, and I'm sure make 'em ooodles of cheddar. The 15-year old stuff possibly didn't fit the profile of any of their brands, it would likely only deteriorate if left much longer, and rather than piss off loyal customers by introducing a "one-off" brand just to sell a relatively small amount of distillate, then stop selling the brand for lack of more whiskey matching the profile, they decided to see if one of the multitude of NDP's wanted to pay 'em a large premium to take it off their hands... and maybe even get to charge 'em for bottling it (Barton has a huge bottling business). Like I said, I don't have a clue if this is what happened; but, it could explain the situation. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flahute Posted March 30, 2023 Share Posted March 30, 2023 Rich is on the right track. Barton has a lot of extra capacity so they can do a variety of things. One is to create new brands and/or line extensions. That involves label creation, new marketing, and a comprehensive plan to manage barrels to support that plan. If they don't want to go to the trouble of all that they can go halfway and create a one off limited edition and charge a lot of money for it. Heaven Hill does this well as do others. Barton does not - they just stick to their core brands. The next thing they can do is add those older barrels to their 12yr product. This kind of thing happens more than you think. That's not as profitable though so if you have hordes of NDP brands out looking for whiskey to bottle (and there are) you can get a good profit on those barrels without having to go to the trouble of bottling them yourself. Another reason that distilleries will sell is if they have barrels that have deviated from their house profiles enough that they can't be blended into a larger batch without changing the profile. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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