I.W. Harper

[Hedmans Brorsa]

Couldn´t find anything about the bourbon I.W. Harper on this site. A brand I have yet to taste (very hard to find where I live). Could someone please enlighten me? 12 or 15 years old? Or is it recommendable at all?

[cowdery]

I.W. Harper was, for many years, the flagship bourbon of Louisville's Bernheim Distillery. Issac Wolfe Bernheim, the owner, is responsible for the "I.W." part of the name. The "Harper" part was the name of a friend, possibly a salesman. At the time, Bernheim reasoned that "I.W. Bernheim" didn't sound like the name of a bourbon. Today the brand is owned by Diageo. It isn't a big factor, sales wise, in the U.S., but is very popular in Japan. For a time, the company actually limited U.S. availability to discourage "gray market" exporting to Asia. If you can't find Harper but can find Old Charter, they are essentially the same whiskey. I have always found it a quality product, but nothing special.

- chuck

[bobbyc]

Thanks Chuck, I realize this is an old post but it relieved a concern that I had . I had walked past the I W Harper Gold medal at Liquor Outlet to purchase things like Beam, HH ,and the like . One day it was gone and after checking found it to be unavailable ,needless to say I beat myself up over that. There still seems to be plenty of Old Charter presently.

[koji]

Hello,

Yes IW Harper is a big brand name in the asian market.Well atleast in Japan.There are four available bottles right now.

I.W.Harper Gold Medal 80P

I.W.Harper 101Proof

I.W.Harper 12Years 86P

I.W.Harper President Reserve 86P

My favorite would be 101Proof,from the taste and price wise.

Koji

[bobbyc]

I got to taste a bottle of the Gold Medal I W Harper and was very happy with it , I guess that was why I was so dissappointed when I could not find it . There may be a bottle somewhere I haven't gone looking for treasures lately. It was priced a little steep relatively speaking about $35.00 for 750ml and at 80 proof .

Bobby Cox

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

Bobby let me reccommend a twelve year old version of Old Charter called 'Classic 90'. It's only $14 at Liquor Outlet and quite delicious in every way, with a fine finish.

Linn Spencer

Have Shotglass. Will Travel.

[cowdery]

I second Linn's endorsement of the Old Charter "Classic 90." That is my choice when I want one of the Bernheim bourbons.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://cowdery.home.netcom.com>--Chuck Cowdery</A>

[ratcheer]

I looked for Old Charter in the Alabama ABC store, but I only found the "regular" kind. It was just $10 for 750 ml, so I decided to pass.

My inexpensive bourbon of choice is (and I think it will remain so, for a long time) Old Forester. It is damned tasty.

Tim

[texascarl]

I figured that if Linn and Chuck both recommend Old Charter 'Classic 90' 12 year old, it's got to be worth a try.

They were right, boy howdy, they were right in spades. I've since bought up every bottle of 'Classic 90' at my local discount likker store, have them ordering more for me. The 'Classic 90' is now one of my daily pours.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by texascarl on Mon Apr 8 05:23:28 2002 (server time).</FONT></P>

[Guest **DONOTDELETE**]

You got that right Carl! I also agree with Chuck when he opined that you must live in "bourbon heaven". Party at Carl's!

Linn Spencer

Have Shotglass. Will Travel.

[Gillman]

Just bumping this thread and trying to obtain a coherent overview of Harper.

Koji describes various brands available in Japan 4 years ago.

My questions:

i) are all these still available in Japan? (Ed, feel free to reply since I am not sure how often Koji looks in to the board)

ii) if not, which are the brands of Harper currently available in Japan?

iii) who made the ones available in 2002 in Japan?

iv) who makes the ones available in Japan today?

v) UDV/Diageo sold Bernheim in about '96 to Heaven Hill. Does this mean all Harper on the market today was made before the sale? Presumably any 12 and 15 year old Harper on the market (anywhere) today was made by UDV/Diageo, but what of the younger whiskeys? Does HH (or someone else) make it under the Harper label (i.e., did HH or another company buy the Harper label when the plant was sold? This would seem unlikely because Chuck said recently HH makes only one rye-recipe bourbon and I doubt they would fill current Harper bottles with that. If as I think is the case Diageo still owns the label, who makes the whiskey for them (unless all current inventory is pre-plant sale stock)?

I guess I am looking for a synthesis of the older threads to understand the I.W. Harper picture and whether taste changes can be noted as a result of different plants making the brand.

Gary

[Hedmans Brorsa]

These are interesting questions you raise, Gary.

All I can tell you, is that Mike Veach, not so long ago,told us that I.H. President´s reserve came from Stitzel Weller stock. (I believe him.)

As for the Harper 12yo, well, I´ve been getting more and more confused for each passing month about this one. When I bought it, I took my cue from J. Murray´s Bourbon book and regarded it as a product from one of the distilleries that preceded Bernheim.

I thought, hey!, this is 12 years old so the obvious thing to do was to compare with the OC Classic 90 which, by then, I was pretty familiar with. To this day, I wil stick to my guns and say that they have very similar noses but to taste is something altogether different.

As noted by many on this forum, OC 90 has a surprisingly strong rye presence for a purportedly rye-poor Bourbon. The 12yo Harper, on the other hand, has very little, if any, rye presence. I would describe it as sweet and dry. So maybe this is a SW product as well?

By the way, I am not 100 % sure, but I think that the post who started this thread was my first ever post on SB.com. Back then I was a newbie in extremis. The only high-end bourbons that I had tried were the Beam SB collection, Blanton´s 93 proof, Maker´s red, W. Reserve and W.T. Rare Breed.

Stuff like Harper and Fitzgerald held an almost mythical status in my small world, which no doubt was what prompted my question in the first place.

Aah, those were the days!

[cowdery]

No mystery. Diageo still owns I.W. Harper and all Diageo bourbon is made at Four Roses. Kirin owns Four Roses, but about half of its output goes to Diageo, by contract. I don't know this for a fact, but I assume that contract was a condition of the sale.

[Gillman]

Thanks Chuck, and Hedmans, looks like things have come full circle for you! Current (e.g. 80 proof gold label Harper) is (must) be made at Four Roses, then. I wonder if it shows to some degree anyway the fruity-like tastes of Bulleit, Four Roses and FRSB. This would not seem part of its profile based on what Hedmans said about the 12 year old Harper's. Maybe Harper's in its pre-Bernheim sale years was all made at S-W, at least since S-W was bought by the predecessors to UDV/Diageo? Maybe only some of it was. What about between '92 and the sale of Bernheim? Presumably in that time it was made at Bernheim. Before '92 it must have been made either at the predecessor to Bernheim owned by UDV in Louisville or again at S-W. I could see that a special version of Harper's might have been sourced at S-W while the regular run was rye-recipe from old and new Bernheim. Oh boy, this gets involved. Be interesting to do a vertical tasting of Harper (I am not sure I have ever had any).

Gary

[Edward_call_me_Ed]

The oly IW Harper that I have seen here in Sapporo is the Gold Metal 80 proof and the 12 year old. That doesn't mean that other expressions aren't available down in Tokyo.

Ed

[Hedmans Brorsa]

Oh boy, this gets involved.

Well, you can say that again! :grin:

It would, in any sense, be fascinating to get the full story on this one.

Mike V. shattered any hopes of an Astore/Belmont connection to Harper when he told me that these distilleries had been silent for years before the Bernheim distillery was built. After reading Murray´s book I came away with the misguided notion that there had been a continuum between A/B and Bernheim, i.e. that they were in production all the way up until the opening of Bernheim.

All I can say abot the Harper 12yo, is that it, in my view, lacks that certain S-W feel. I´ve had VSOF which is clearly from S-W stock and I didn´t find any obvious similarities (the lack of rye character, apart.), especially the nose was miles apart.

But as I stated earlier, I don´t know what to think about this, anymore.

[ratcheer]

I thought, hey!, this is 12 years old so the obvious thing to do was to compare with the OC Classic 90 which, by then, I was pretty familiar with. To this day, I wil stick to my guns and say that they have very similar noses but to taste is something altogether different.

That doesn't surprise me in the least. Consider that Elmer T. Lee and Blanton's are exactly the same whiskey, just selected from different barrels, and they have markedly differing taste profiles.

Tim

[Gillman]

I too thought that UDV owned a working plant in Louisville before building Bernheim. If it did not it must have obtained its rye-recipe whiskey from elsewhere. I am sure the answer is in Chuck's book. Actually (and this happened after I revived this thread with no connection to it) I was told by a friend in Santa Fe (New Mexico) that he is bringing a bottle of I.W. Harper to me in July when he will be here for a visit. I know he is a fan of it but he does not have en especial interest in bourbon apart from that. I don't know what expression it will be but I look forward to trying it.

Gary

[Gillman]

I checked Chuck's book, and it states that when the current Bernheim plant was built in '92 it replaced the plant previously on the site which is the conjoined Astor/Belmont plant Hedmans is referring to. That A/B plant was the original "new Bernheim", because dedicated to the manufacture of I.W. Harper whiskey in the 1930's when the predecessors to Schenley bought the Harper label (but not the original Harper plant which was in Shively) from the Bernheim family (the principal lived until 1945). If as Mike Veach has apparently said A/B did not operate for some years before 1992, then UDV, which had bought the brand and the Schenley plants in the mid-80's, and Schenley before that, sourced the whiskey elsewhere. Schenley owned Glenmore and what is now Buffalo Trace and no doubt other distilleries so there was no lack of places to source the whiskey and some it appears was from the S-W plant (maybe just the I.W. Harper 12 year old).

If anyone on the Board (Doug Phillips maybe, or Tim Sousley?) has a bottle of bonded I.W. Harper, it would be interesting to know the distillery of manufacture on the label.

Gary

[ThomasH]

This thread is quite a puzzle. Now for my question. I have a bottle of I.W. Harper 15 year old that was originally from the bourbon heritage collection. it was made in 1995. I found it while vacationing in Florida last year. Where was this particular version made? I have a particular interest in this brand as it is also my last name!

Thomas

[cowdery]

I don't believe S-W ever made rye recipe bourbon, hence no Harper from there.

When Mike says Bernheim (the Astor/Belmont names are really ancient history) had not operated for "some years" my guess would be less than ten. What was then Schenley sold Ancient Age (i.e., Buffalo Trace) in something like 83. During the 80s it was mostly drawing from stocks, there being an industry-wide glut, but did fill in with some whiskey made under contract by Age and Brown-Forman (i.e., Early Times). I have it on good authority that part of the decision to build the new Bernheim was based on a desire to duplicate the whiskey they were getting from Brown-Forman.

So, figuring out where a given bottle of Harper or Charter from that period was distilled is damn near impossible and, in fact, a given bottling may well have included whiskey from several sources.

It may also be worth noting that whiskey matures rather slowly in the brick warehouses at Bernheim, to the point that Heaven Hill won't even use them. They have brandy aging in them, but no whiskey. While Heaven Hill doesn't like this now, it may have been a good thing during the glut era, preventing well-aged whiskey from becoming too woody.

[Gillman]

I know that S-W is believed not to have made rye-recipe bourbon but Hedmans said the profile of the Harper 12 year old seemed very un-rye-like and suggested that maybe the 12 year old version came from S-W. In view of the multiplicity of possible sources for Harper at that time the brand owners may not have been too concerned about sourcing a special version from stocks of wheat-recipe whiskey; but anyway this is all speculation. Interesting too (per Chuck's book) that the Harper trade mark was well-established before Bernheim built his distillery in Shively. He must have gotten the whiskey from different sources before.

Gary

[cowdery]

Bernheim, like many others, began in the business as a distributor and only later built a distillery.

I would not discount the possibility that, somewhere along the line, Schenley was combining S-W wheated bourbon with rye-recipe bourbon from other sources to make Harper, though I find it unlikely that Harper was ever entirely a wheated bourbon. It is possible, however, that at some point it was an actual four-grain bourbon.

When bourbon first began to become popular in Japan, sometime in the early 1980s or perhaps a little earlier, the leading brand there was I. W. Harper. The high price it commanded there, even as it was declining (in popularity and price) here led to "grey market" exporting, in which entrepreneurs would buy it at wholesale or even retail in the U.S. and ship it to Japan for resale. This led to its removal by Schenley from the market in most of the U.S.

How I. W. Harper came to be the brand that led the way among bourbons in Japan is unknown to me and I would appreciate any insights.

[Rughi]

I have it on good authority that part of the decision to build the new Bernheim was based on a desire to duplicate the whiskey they were getting from Brown-Forman.

Well, that's a bit of synchronicity!

I was just setting out bottles of 1970s quarts of Early Times and Old Charter, and a circa 1980 Harper BIB 750ml to take to Doug's tonight when I paused to read this thread. I have been trying for some time to get a tasting of low-rye bourbons onto the D-Day schedule to no avail, but I now feel tonight is the night.

I'm not sure that the dates line up correctly, bu the thought that all of these may be the same whiskey (or rather whisky) from Shively 354 is an interesting thought.

Roger

[Hedmans Brorsa]

Link to the thread where Mike Veach tells me that Harper President´s Reserve is a S-W product.

He also informs us that between 1989 and 1992 Harper was made both by Brown-Forman and Stitzel Weller. The source is one Mike Wright.

http://www.straightbourbon.com/ubbthreads/showthread.php?t=4476&page=4