Mount Vernon now selling "Vatted American Whiskey"

[Sijan]

Unfortunately, not whiskey actually distilled at Mount Vernon

And it's a whopping $25 for a 50ml (airplane size) bottle

At Mount Vernon, a Shot of History

[...]

Now, for the first time in the 209 years since Washington's death, whiskey will be sold at the distillery to the general public.

There's only a thin veneer of historical authenticity: What you'll get isn't Washington's old recipe. And the stuff isn't even made in the reconstructed distillery. This "vatted American whiskey" is a hybrid of 11 brands of modern-day whiskey -- Jack Daniel's, Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, Rebel Yell, Wild Turkey, and on and on. (The folks at Mount Vernon prefer to call it a "marriage" of flavors.)

The mixing prevents a lot of perfectly good whiskey from going to waste. At the groundbreaking of the Mount Vernon distillery renovation project in 2001, 11 whiskey distributors each donated 50 gallons of their product. Over the years, the companies bottled their own "Mount Vernon" whiskies out of these barrels, until there was a little left of each brand here and there.

"We had these 11 barrels sloshing around, and we made the decision that we might as well vat it all together," said Coleman.

[SippinJim]

Anything for a buck.

[barturtle]

Wow $375 for 750ml worth of the stuff...well it is for a good cause...

[HighTower]

Sounds.....interesting:skep:

Gary, have you been feeding these folks ideas??

Scott

[Gillman]

This is the first time (that I'm aware) that the term vatted appears on an American whisky label! Maybe I had somethin' to do with it indirectly at least. Actually I think I did see the term on another label recently, maybe from a non-distilling merchant, but apart from those two I can't think of another instance.

Hey I'm glad too see this whatever the explanation (save the price tag but I think it's all for a charitable cause). I wouldn't have been as tentative though as that ad copy! Vattings can gain value far beyond not (in their case) wasting the individual whiskeys. I am sure it tastes very good and in fact vattings like these (not using that term though) were very common at one time in American whiskey retailing.

I'd love to try this.

Gary

[cowdery]

This is the whiskey I helped "make" a couple of years ago. In fact, there were so many literal hands and arms in the pot, mine and those of many other people, that I'm sure there's a little bit of me in every bottle too.

I have one of those little bottles and to carry it on the plane, I put it into my 3 oz. or less liquids and gels baggy. The confused look on the TSA agent's face was priceless.

What Frank said is not exactly correct, in that there actually was a blend created. It wasn't just everything thrown together willy-nilly.

The whole purpose has been fundraising for Mount Vernon since, as Frank says, 2001, so you can't think of it as a retail item. It's a unique souvenir and a contribution to the cause.

One reason it was called "Vatted American Whiskey" was because it contained some Tennessee whiskey and, I seem to recall, something else that wasn't bourbon. The only word there that has any meaning in the U.S. regs is "whiskey."

[OscarV]

literal hands and arms in the pot, mine , that I'm sure there's a little bit of me in every bottle too.

I'd still like to try it:grin:

[cowdery]

What's interesting about it is that, while it's pretty tasty, it doesn't have much depth. Instead of complexity, blending so many different whiskeys together actually produced something pretty superficial. When we were blending it and when we bottled it a month later, I pretty much had access to all of it that I cared to drink, as did everyone involved, and drink it we did, so I'm not basing this on one little sip.

[MJL]

I think it is a wonderful idea to recreate the distillery at Mt. Vernon and to hopefully make whiskey there to Washington's likes but I have to wonder why they do not take a clue from Colonial Williamsburg and make an economic go of this product. I really see no one buying this product at this price; regardless of how good it may be or what it was made. Colonial Williamsburg has an entire industry devoted to manufacturing product for sale in their shops and on line. Those products are usually priced quite modestly considering the hand work that goes into much of them. Indeed, many Williamsburg products are sold via other Colonial historic sites. I could imagine reenactors, historically minded folks or just the inquisitive buying.....but, not for that price.

[cowdery]

I think the proper ladies who run Mount Vernon could only get behind this distillery idea to a point and the idea of actually making whiskey on the property, in volume, for sale, was more than they could swallow.

In fairness, it would require a fairly specialized staff and might, ultimately, be incompatible with tourism from an insurance perspective, since these aren't modern stills in 18th century dress, they're authentic replicas of 18th century stills, which did have a nasty tendency to blow up unexpectedly.

I would love to see them establish a program to study 18th century distilling methods by running the distillery for, say, six weeks a year at a production level, staffed by interested scholars supervised by experienced distillers. They could do it in the winter when tourism is slow and either limit tourist access or just close it to tourism for that period each year. But that's just my idea and nobody asked me.