Angostura bourbon?

[arsbadmojo]

From today's Cincinnati Enquirer:

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070912/BIZ01/709120326

Angostura, the Caribbean rum producer that acquired the Lawrenceburg distillery in June, on Tuesday purchased the closed Charles W. Medley distillery down river in Owensboro, Ky."

"One of the gaps in our portfolio has been Kentucky bourbon," said Duprey, who said his company paid more than $3 million for the distillery.

...Patel said Angostura wants to produce about 5 million gallons of bourbon annually from the Medley distillery.

Very interesting. Anyone know much about the history of the Medley distillery? When did it close, and what brands did it produce? I wonder if the still were intact, or if they have built new ones.

I also wonder if Angostura aquired the rights to those brand names, and if they'll market those same brand names or come up with something new?

How does 5 million gallons per year compare to some of the others?

[arsbadmojo]

Just doing a Google search for the Medley distillery revealed something interesting; apparently they used to make Wathens brand.

[barturtle]

Charles Wathen Medley was the previous owner and Master Distiller...I hope they will keep him on as MD, it would be good to see his knowledge returned to use in that capacity, while passing it on the the next generation of distillers.

5 million gallons is about a million barrels every 10 years BT produced its 4 millionth in 1971 and its 5th millionth in 1981...seems like very healthy numbers

[arsbadmojo]

Fascinating, thanks for the info barturtle. I too would love to see Charles Wathen Medley as MD, even tough I've never tried (and to be honest, never even heard of until a few minutes ago) Wathen's brand, just for continuity's sake if nothing else.

I don't know for sure if Angostura aquired the Wathen's brand name though. Wathen's has a web page up, and I was just reading this article which indicates that he is still doing some limited bottlings with what I gather is old stock.

[doubleblank]

If you want to know if an idled facility is getting restarted, look for air and water discharge permitting activity. I had heard a rumor the Medley distillery was being restarted, so for kicks I did a quick search for permits at the Medley distillery several months ago. I recall seeing at least two items. One was for an air permit to restart the boiler and another was for water discharge into the nearby river. So the Medley's were at least getting their ducks in a row for someone to resume operations there. Unfortunately, it won't be them (as owners, anyway).

Randy

[mozilla]

Wow, I just talked to Charles the other day....he seemed very proud of his and HH's family owned businesses. Hard to believe that he was on the verge of selling. Are we sure that it is DSP 10? Maybe they picked up one of the other Owensboro distilleries?

[Hedmans Brorsa]

What good news!

To me it really doesn´t matter which distillery it is. The very fact that a "new" distillery might be up and running is enough case for celebration, methinks.

[mozilla]

From what I understand, Charles has been making bourbon there. So, it would not be a completely new facility. ie. Wathen's

[cowdery]

There used to be a thriving whiskey-making industry in Owensboro and the Medley family was a big part of it.

Here's the history of the distillery Angostura just bought. Most of this comes from Sam Cecil's book, with some gaps filled in by other sources.

It was built originally, pre-Prohibition. by Richard and Will Monarch, who also built the Monarch Distillery that eventually became Glenmore's main Owensboro plant. (All that's left of that distillery is a bottling plant, now owned by Barton.

I'm not familiar with the layout, but apparently the two distilleries are close to each other. The distillery Angostura bought was originally RD#12, the Sour Mash Distilling Co.

After Prohibition, it was rebuilt and, in 1940, sold to the Medley Brothers, Wathen and John. It became Medley Bros. Distilling Co., RD#49. They eventually sold it but stayed on to run it. It changed hands several times until ultimately passing to Glenmore, in 1988. When Chris Morris was at Glenmore, running their Ezra Brooks brand, the distillery they invited you to visit as the Ezra Brooks Distillery was, in fact, this Medley distillery. Charles Medley, son of Wathen, was the distiller, from 1967 on.

What is now Diageo (then United Distillers) bought Glenmore in 1991. After they rebuilt Bernheim they shut down all of their other Kentucky distilleries, including Medley, which stopped producing in about 1994.

When UD closed the Owensboro distillery and put Ed Foote, who had been at Stitzel-Weller (which UD also owned), in charge of the new Bernheim plant, Charles was out of a job. He bought the distillery back, along with a stock of whiskey made there. He created the Wathen's brand and sold the whiskey that way, but never restarted the distillery. He sold the cypress fermenters to Maker's Mark. They used the wood to repair their aging fermenters.

Otherwise, Charlie and Sam (his son) kept the place in good shape, but it's not a big distillery. Angostura isn't going to produce five million gallons there without a lot of expansion. Just to put it in context, the entire Kentucky industry produces about 50 million gallons a year.

Angostura, which most of us know only from the bitters, is actually part of a big insurance and financial services company with reserves of something like $13 billion dollars, so they have the money if they want to invest it in bourbon production.

As for brands, they are not acquiring any brands unless Charlie sold them Wathen's, which is the only brand he owns. No one seems to know if Charlie is going to work for them or not, but most people think it unlikely. Angustora is most likely intending to supply the now very tightly stretched bulk whiskey market, primarily in Asia.

[craigthom]

Thanks for the info. I'm still a little unclear on where the bourbon going into Wathen's comes from. Is it in their warehouses? Was it distilled there or at Glenmore? Is he still hand bottling there, or is he bottling somewhere else?

I had never heard of it, either, but a friend of mine is a distributor in Atlanta and is carrying it, so I did some googling.

[cowdery]

Someone else probably can supply a date, but the Wathen's distilled at Medley ran out a few years ago. Wathen's disappeared from the marketplace for a time. Charlie then found another, undisclosed source of whiskey and another producer to distribute Wathen's for him, and he was back in business. I believe he is still bottling it himself.

But most likely if you buy a bottle of Wathen's tomorrow it won't be from that pre-1994 Medley-made stock. Most likely what he is bottling now is from a current distillery.

[craigthom]

Thanks. That's what I was thinking, based on the Web site. If the bourbon was made at that distillery I'd expect it to be mentioned. The lack of any information about the source of the bourbon made me suspect that it was from somewhere else, maybe HH or BT.

[mozilla]

This is what I have put together from my conversations with Charles Medley: After UD took over and sold him back the distillery, he watched over thier bourbon stocks that had filled his warehouses to some degree. Some of this whiskey was made by Charles others were made in a variety of places, I would guess. UD owned so many distilleries and stocks of others from transactions. Charles had options on barrels, though not all. HH (after the fire) and Julian VanWinkel are some of the few that came to Owensboro to buy barrels. Charles kept all he could and monitered the rest for UD. He is having Wathen's bottled at Frank-Lin in Ca.

[arsbadmojo]

I think it will be very interesting to see what brands come out of this, and how soon. Do you think they'll wait until they've actually got their own aged barrels to get something on the market - or do something like Woodford Reserve did?

And if they're trying to fill gaps in the Asian market, if they'll even have a stateside product at all.

Also - what does RD# stand for?

[cowdery]

RD = Registered Distillery, an older terminology that Sam Cecil used in his book. The contemporary equivalent is DSP, which stands for Distilled Spirits Producer.

Brown-Forman had another distillery to get whiskey from. Angostura doesn't have that option. I don't expect they're going to develop brands at all, but will sell bulk whiskey to non-distiller producers. They don't have any meaningful brands now and when they bought the Florida company that owned Cruzan rum they kept the production facility but sold off the brands, so building a brand portfolio doesn't seem to be their strategy. Also, sometimes when companies start buying up facilities like this they try to clear the decks and get rid of any business the operation is already doing. Angostura has done the opposite, informing everyone who was doing business with the Lawrenceburg, IN, distillery and Russelville, IN, grain silo that they want to continue to do business with them.

I expect one of our agents in Western Kentucky/Southern Indiana to drive over to Medley and give us a report of what, if anything, is happening on the ground. Let's go, people!

[arsbadmojo]

Brown-Forman had another distillery to get whiskey from. Angostura doesn't have that option.

But don't a lot of labels purchase buorbon from other distllers? PVW doesn't have a distillery, for example.

[mozilla]

Talked to Charles Medley today and found out some information regarding the pending sale....

Before I start I would like to say that Charles has been a typicle Kentucky gentlemen in our conversations, very open and honest regarding some issues that I would have figured to proprietary secrets and other things. He also has a great, dry sense of humor.

....Yes, the distillery will be sold to Angostura. It has been prepared to begin production in the near future. No, the Wathen's label is not part of the deal. Yes, they are looking for label/s to use. Not sure how hard they are searching? Yes, Charles will stay on as a consultant to keep things going the "Medley way". As far as I know, he will only be in Owensboro.

Some of the other questions I remember people asking: No, Charles has not distilled for some time(I got that one wrong). Yes, he has bought and sold bulk whiskey to about every major distillery I know. From what I gathered it happens alot more than we all think it does. Charles mentioned that he had an agreement with Seagrams, back in the day, to make 5000 barrels a year, every year. That blew my mind! Not just Seagrams but the thought that (pick a bourbon) is not real (same bourbon).

Let's see.....I know there was more, but I refereed a couple of football games this evening and can't recall yet. :falling:

[cowdery]

Buying whiskey might make sense if they were launching a new brand, but that does not seem to be their strategy at all. This is going to be a bulk whiskey operation, which is what Medley was when Charles was barreling 5,000 barrels a year for Seagram's.

As I've often said, none of the distilleries sell bulk whiskey except when they do, but for the last couple of years, virtually all of them have sold all they can make as their own brands and then some. Some have standing bulk whiskey contracts but the spot market for bulk has just about dried up. That's the niche Angostura wants to fill.

[Hedmans Brorsa]

Buying whiskey might make sense if they were launching a new brand, but that does not seem to be their strategy at all. This is going to be a bulk whiskey operation, which is what Medley was when Charles was barreling 5,000 barrels a year for Seagram's.

As I've often said, none of the distilleries sell bulk whiskey except when they do, but for the last couple of years, virtually all of them have sold all they can make as their own brands and then some. Some have standing bulk whiskey contracts but the spot market for bulk has just about dried up. That's the niche Angostura wants to fill.

If this is true, then you just took the excitement out of it for me.

Alas, it was too good to be true, anyway.

[mozilla]

I would not expect them to come out with a new product right away. I know that Charles will be using the bourbon they make to fill his own label. Past that I can not say what will exactly happen to thier bourbon. Like Chuck says, it will be sold as bulk for a time, until when they get a label /s. After that I'm sure the market will dictate where the bourbon goes.

[HBUSSELL]

The Wathen brand is currently( as of June 2007) being bottled by the Frank-Lin Company of San Jose, CA. Prior to this current arrangment it was being hand bottled and labled by father and son, Charles and Sam Medley

When the Glenmore property was purchased the existing stock was not purchased. Charles Medley obtained some of that stock and that is what is currently being bottled as Wathen.

[squire]

More power to them. I hope they bring Yellowstone back, or even better, Mellow Mash.

squire

[barturtle]

More power to them. I hope they bring Yellowstone back, or even better, Mellow Mash.

squire

Yellowstone is owned by David Sherman(Luxco) last I checked

[squire]

Hi Timothy, yes, I'm aware the brand name is now owned by the David Sherman co. I'm talking about the Medley made Yellowstone we enjoyed in the 70s that was also the best selling Bourbon in Kentucky. My point was I hope the new owners would, using the same still and mashbill, provide us with an equally good product. Professional men and blue collar alike put the 7yr 90 proof Yellowstone on their table for guests as 'good stuff' because it was. I don't care if the new owners call it 'Old Washtub', just give me the same whiskey. It was a good whiskey at a good price.

Regards,

Squire

[Gillman]

Old Yellowstone was great! It had a strawberry-like top-note and a pleasing elegance. In a sense (I now see) it was a notably "winy" bourbon.

Gary