Henry Clay -Joseph Finch

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

I am new to the forum so please direct me if I am in the wrong area. I am searching for any information, and availability, of Henry Clay and Joseph Finch Bourbons. If anyone knows where some may exist I would like to find it.

Thanks. Marc. 770-522-1813 or email

[cowdery]

The Henry Clay and Joseph Finch brands were a short-lived project of United Distillers before their parent company merged with another giant to form Diageo and, as a consequence, decided to virtually exit the US whiskey industry. They were intended to be the first of many limited bottlings of rare whiskeys that the company had obtained over the years through mergers and acquisitions. Nice idea. Too bad it didn't go anywhere.

But to answer your question, they should still be around. Try Sam's, here in Chicago. That's where I got a bottle of Finch.

--Chuck Cowdery

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

Another, very encouraging, answer might be found in Sazerac's press release dated April 28th of this year, which concerns the purchase of the Weller and Charter brands from Diageo. Among the information is the following (quoted verbatim)...

<font color="ffc000"> "In addition, Sazerac has acquired a unique collection of rare and valuable 'wheated' bourbons and rye whiskies, which added to its current stocks of older bourbon whiskey will allow the company to make available a very special series of limited edition American whiskies."</font>

Perhaps the Clay/Finch concept has not become a casualty of the sale.

While I'd love to see this idea re-flourish, there is something vaguely disturbing to me about this press release:

The press release itself comes from Sazerac, not from Buffalo Trace. It's printed on Sazerac letterhead. In fact, the words "Buffalo Trace" do not appear anywhere on the press release itself (although it arrived in a Buffalo Trace press kit). In the press release, Sazerac (of New Orleans, Louisiana) is identified as a producer and marketer of fine spirits and wines, and its current portfolio is listed as including such well-known brands as Blanton's and Ancient Age. Others are also named... but not Buffalo Trace. No mention is made of the Buffalo Trace Distillery, either. Buffalo Trace literature, on the other hand, mentions only Buffalo Trace, and never any others, even when describing the distillery's history. Anyone have any idea what gives here?

-John Lipman-

http://w3.one.net/~jeffelle/whiskey

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

My apologies for not responding sooner...thanks for the information. My quest continues to buy both brands and any suggestions of stores in the US that might have some would be appreciated. I did find some at Sam's in Chicago.

Marc

[bourbonmed]

Chuck,

Henry Clay and J. Finch sure are beautifully packaged. Maybe that's why they are among the most expensive bourbons around. A couple of my friends have them, but have no immediate desire to break open the seals. Idiosy!! I didn't see any reviews on the board. Have you tasted either one?

Regards,

Omar

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

I've tried Henry Clay. At a trendy restaurant in Spring House, Pennsylvania (I think it's called "The Drawing Room") where they serve very small portions that somehow manage to be both overcooked and cold at the same time, they have no problem with breaking open the seal... at $15.98 a pop! It's pretty good, but very old. And worth every bit of half what it costs (i.e., $50 a bottle would be about right)

=John=

http://w3.one.net/~jeffelle/whiskey

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

Omar,

I too have a bottle of Joseph Finch and I am reluctant to break the seal. There will not be anymore of this product bottled and the bottle was given to me as a gift when I left United Distillers. I have tasted both products. It has been several years but I remember them as having a caramel and wood nose with a slightly woody finish. Good products but not as good as some that I have had.

Mike Veach

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

John,

The retail for these products was about $100.00 a bottle.

Mike Veach

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

Yeah, I know. That's why I suggested that ~$50 would be about half that :-))

It's funny how "sacred" a bottle of bourbon becomes once you know it will never be available again. But it only seems to apply to SOME bourbons. That bottle of Old Taylor we shared from will never be made again, either; nor will the Cascade that you didn't care for.

But we open and drink them. Because if we didn't, then they might as well have stopped making it before those bottles were ever filled, for all it would matter to us. All single barrel bourbons are the same way. That wonderful decanter of Kentucky Spirit bottled on 10/17/97 Bbl# 13 Rick# 26 Whse B is only a memory now, but the memory says it tasted so much better than my current bottle from 11/12/99 Bbl# 1 Rick# 2 Whse E (same as Linn's, as a matter of fact). If I'd never opened it, it might as well never have existed.

By the way, you can add Pappy's 20 year old Reserve to that list. It's all gone now; the bottles are beginning to vanish from the shelves, never to be replaced (price has gone up about twenty bucks on the remaining bottles, too).

=John=

http://w3.one.net/~jeffelle/whiskey

[MashBill]

I just purchased a bottle of each from Spec's Online, a Texas based liquor retailer. Here is a link to their website:

http://www.specsonline.com/

Their online ordering is not up yet, but they promptly processed my email order and shipped to Kansas.

I intend to break the seal, but it will require a special occasion.

Bill

[MashBill]

Mike,

Wasn't Joseph Finch distilled in Pennsylvania? I recall reading this somewhere, or it could be a bourbon-induced hallucination.....

Bill

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

Bill, Thanks for the tip about Spec's; I'll be contacting them today!

I'm not sure about Jos. Finch (although I think I read that about Pennsylvania, too, somewhere). I believe Henry Clay (and maybe both of them, as well as others) is the remains of what United Distillers found in the warehouses of the Astore & Belmont distilleries which they tore down to construct the Bernheim plant in 1991. I understand (from Mike, I think, or Chuck) that there were actually several old brands with only a small amount of each and Clay/Finch were the first two of what was going to be a line of limited-quantity "classics". Unfortunately, that idea was lost in the buyout frenzy that resulted in UD getting out completely. The upside is that all that old whiskey was apparently purchased by Buffalo Trace along with the Old Charter and Weller stuff, and they seem to be quite excited about the prospects of releasing them. I'm not sure, but I believe the Sazerac 18 year old rye (which no one except magazine reviewers seems to have ever seen) is also one of those.

=John=

http://w3.one.net/~jeffelle/whiskey

[cowdery]

I tasted the Joseph Finch and reviewed it in Volume 3, Number 4 (June 1997) of The Bourbon Country Reader. Here is some of what I wrote:

"The color is copper, bright and clear as if buffed to a high gloss. It is very attractive, but not as dark as one might expect a 15-year-old bourbon to be. In the nose of the undiluted spirit, I caught a scent of spicy Italian sausage, a pleasant but unexpected aroma. This is, perhaps, another way of saying that the nose is both spicy and rich, which would be expected of a long-aged bourbon with a lot of rye in the mash.

"A splash of water unlocked the aroma of fresh rye grass.

"People who generally don't like bourbon or who like it to be very mild should avoid Joseph Finch. It is very flavorful and assertive. The effects of the wood are apparent mostly in the fullness of the mouth feel. There is very little smoke, vanilla or caramel, tastes usually associated with long-aged whiskey.

"Another way the age reveals itself is in the finish, which is very dry and clean. Smoke finally reveals itself a few seconds after the whiskey is swallowed."

Of course, I continued in a similarly brilliant and insightful vein.

If Sazerac now owns some of the stocks intended for the Rare Bourbons Collection, I hope they will do things a little differently. UD chose not to identify where the whiskey was distilled, or when, or by whom, or from what type of mash bill, etc. The type of aficionado who buys this sort of thing (i.e., me) would consider the experience enhanced by having that information. I hope Sazerac will go that route. One thing UD had that Sazerac may not is ownership of many of these old names. My guess (maybe Mike knows) is that Diageo retained them, so maybe Sazerac will feel they need to trumpet the heritage of the whiskey (a better decision) instead of just hanging a venerable, but unrelated, name on it.

--Chuck Cowdery

[jvanwinkle]

John & Chuck,

Just for the record, Buffalo Trace did not purchase all the whiskey stocks from UD. They don't have that much $$$. UD still owns about 66,000 barrels of Bourbon. In 1990 alone, they made over 24,000 barrels. They are long on rye also.

Re the Joseph Finch label,(Mike probobly knows better than I), the original Jos. Finch distillery was founded near Pittsburgh in 1856.The distillery moved to kentucky after WWII. UD had some "extra" old whiskey, and bottled the Finch and the Clay labels a few years ago-then let the brands die.

Julian