As a part of our winter series on bonded spirits, in this episode we will be comparing three bottles of the same bourbon, Old Fitzgerald, Bottled-in-Bond. Two are from the same distillery (presumably). Special thanks to White Dog & Tommyboy for giving me these bottles (yes they were gifts, those guys are both outstanding individuals).
All three are 100 proof wheated straight bourbons with no age statement (NAS).
The bottles
1) 200 ml bottle with faux tax stamp, distilled & bottled at DSP KY 16 (Stitzel-Weller), Louisville, Kentucky, USA
2) 1 liter bottle, no tax stamp, distilled at DSP KY 16, bottled at DSP KY 24 (Glenmore) Owensboro, Kentucky, USA
3) 750 ml bottle, distilled at DSP KY 1 (Bernheim), Louisville, Kentucky, bottled at DSP KY 31, Bardstown, Kentucky (current edition)
Appearance
1) Medium copper with fairly thin legs and necklace.
2) Darker, with similar legs and necklace.
3) Same as #1 but with thicker legs
Nose
1) Alcohol, tea, tarragon, caramel corn.
2) Oak, toffee, corn chips, old wood, ancho chilies.
3) Grape bubble gum, alcohol, spearmint
On the palate
1) Full bodied and sweet. Alcohol, creamy caramel. The vegetal notes are gone.
2) Full bodied and slightly drier. Oak, toffee, Mexican chocolate.
3) Medium bodied and even drier. Dry oak, a bit of caramel corn and mint.
Finish
1) Sweet and hot. Seems to get drier as the finish goes on. A bit of oak, then fading back into caramel corn.
2) Woody. The wood lingers for a long, long time with pralines in the background.
3) Pretty hot and minty with touches of oak, eventually settling down into a caramel sweetness.
Parting words
I’ve been wanting to try this line up for a long time. A few things interesting things arose in this tasting. First was how much oakier the later Stitzel-Weller bottle was than the earlier one. The logical explanation for that would be that the bourbon going into the later one was older than that going into the earlier one. Why the maker would do that is a puzzle. Perhaps the infamous whiskey glut was reaching a climax when bottle 2 was filled? Bottles labeled with “Bottled-in-Bond” have to be filled with spirit from the same distillery and the same distilling season. So another explanation for the greater wood influence could be a series of hot summers during the aging period for that batch of whiskey.
Another interesting phenomenon was how minty bottle #3 got as the tasting went on. #1 had an herbal note at first, but that went away within a few minutes. That mint is considered one of the signature notes for the Heaven Hill stable of bourbons. Bottle#3 has convinced me that Heaven Hill, the current distiller of Old Fitzgerald, is now using its own house yeast strain in its manufacture. They are clearly not using Stitzel-Weller yeast or the “Schenley yeast” master distiller Parker Beam reported finding at DSP KY 1 when Heaven Hill took it over.
Finally, while differences certainly showed up between the three, I was surprised at how similar they all were too each other. There was none of the sweet vanilla in #1 & #2 that many of us who are accustomed to drinking our Stitzel-Weller from bottles labeled “Van Winkle” might expect. Aside from the minty finish on bottle #3, I doubt I could distinguish any of these from each other in a blind tasting. Not to say #3 is the equal of #1 or #2; it’s not. But they are all middle to lower shelf wheated bourbons and they all perform that role well.
Old Fitzgerald, Bottled-in-Bond, whatever the distiller, is recommended.
