2007 Bourbon County in Pappy Barrels?

Can no one read?

After reading Pangaea's post though, I wanted to know the price of a bottle of 21yr, so I checked Whisky Advocate, but what I found was evidence against the poster. It seems there is no 21yr, there's only a 20yr! I can't believe there weren't any whiskey drinkers here to bring that up!

So it looks like there's no hard evidence either way now, and to Highbrow, no one who's responded so far has been a brewer, which is why I don't put much stock in what they've said. I'm sure someone knows, but they probably don't care whether or not we find out because it's good publicity.

 

that's because, like many don't seem to understand other basics, that point is NOT valid. what's obvious is a lot of peeps don't understand the legal definitions nor the actual practices of the producers/bottlers so many of us are speculating about.

factually, Van Winkle Family Reserve Rye became 13 years old in 1998. Julian bottled a batch yearly. each year the subsequent batch/release actually became a year older until the remaining barrels were tanked around 2003 or 2004, by then it was about 19 years old - yet the label always stated it as "13" year old product.

the point is legally, 1,000 year old whiskey can be bottled & sold as 4 year old whiskey, what you can't do is the other way around (4 year old whiskey CAN'T be marketed as 1K year old). there are other reasons & actual examples that defy the specific reasoning but hopefully that's enough to clarify the fact that you can't base your argument on what's on a label nor what's standard on store shelves.

 

The difference between 20yr and 23yr is a valid point to Pangaea's argument though, because as he said, 23yr is $250 bottle, but 20yr is less than $100. I'm sure the cost of the barrels reflects that.

I completely understand your point that the 23yr barrels Goose Island filled in 2008 didn't turn into 25yr barrels by the time they were emptied (maybe that has been what's confusing people). From the limited research I did, I learned that the reason a whiskey is called 20yr or 23yr isn't because it's aged for that long, it's because each one has its own recipe, and the recipe for that specific whiskey calls for it to be aged that long in the barrels for it to reach its prime. Interesting stuff.

 

the validation is because the actual PVW 23 barrels yield VERY little spirit, a number of the barrels are actually empty or unusable @ the 23 year mark. Julian dumps the usable barrels the day they turn EXACTLY 23. IOTW, to counter the lost "Angels' share" the price has to be ramped up - make sense?

also let me lay this tidbit on all of you. quiet as it's kept the original green glass Pappy 23 was rye formula bourbon. the Weller/Van Winkle family only produced wheat formula bourbon - which says what about the original Pappy 23 release? let me know if you can't read between the lines & figure out the obvious there.

that's completely flawed. you do realize that Buffalo Trace's Old Weller line & Maker's Mark are the EXACT SAME RECIPE as Stitzel-Weller's Old Rip/ Pappy Van Winkle - right? the recipe doesn't have anything to do with what year is attributed to the bottled product.

excuse my lecturing on the subject, i'm sure some are worn out by now. since bourbon barrel aged beer is such a popular segment, it would do you great justice to learn more about the actual history & what's transpired. something you're probably missing is the fact that NO bourbon maker 20 years ago set out specifically to make a 20 year old bourbon. the bourbons you're talking about got to be 20 & 23 years old because NOBODY bought up the juice when it was at usual market prime (6-12 years old). not selling means it sat, and while it sat it got older. that's it - that's all!

the reality is, & not just PVW, but none of this "old wihskey" available the last 15 years was created by design (not in the sense of it being held to eventually sell as some "extra aged" product). & sure as shit, as any sensible person would anticipate, market corrections occurred - whereas productions went silent. here we are running out of all that MISTAKE by the limestone rivers & lakes - we're moving into the productions after the great silence from the market corrections.

that's why RARE probably is gonna literally live up to it's name........ "rare"! based on current taste, i would NOT hold my breath waiting on Buffalo Trace to have a substantial supply of 23 year old bourbon to replace current PVW 23. they're having problems convincing many of us they're gonna consistently produce a solid Pappy 12 year old let alone 1 damn near twice that age.

 

I'm not sure how me mistakenly saying it was 23-year instead of 21-year invalidates my point. The fact of the matter is, BCS Rare was a $50/bottle special release because Pappy barrels are far and away the most expensive bourbon barrels on the market, leaps and bounds beyond your ordinary Heaven Hill barrels, which are among the least expensive. I even have an article with a guy who sells barrels for a living quoting that Pappy barrels are by far the highest quality, most sought-after after-market barrels. If the barrels used in BCS went from the lower end of the cost spectrum to the utmost pinnacle of it, you would have seen it reflected in the price, which should have jumped substantially. It did not, which, to me, means costs remained relatively consistent.

This is all web-based ridiculousness that has been debunked 7x over from a variety of different angles, including direct confirmation from the brewery. The only evidence to support the Pappy theory is a shoddily-made PDF that lacked any official Goose Island markings, and the desire of beer geeks to think they nabbed a bottle of $50 beer for $7.99. For the love of God, let's let this go the way of 9/11 Truther theories and just die out.

 

for the most part i agree.

the one point i would however reiterate that probably doesn't agree 100% with your conclusion is the fact that as very unlikely as it may be, there is a possibility whatever barrels were used had been dumped for some sort of "Pappy" related bottling/iteration. like i said, with the info we have, it's really impossible to know for sure.

it also does not help that most of us know / understand very little about practices of the distillers or current barrel owners. for that reason, most people don't understand today's value of a true Stitzel Welller DISTILLED barrel versus a generic Heaven Hill OWNED barrel.

 

PVW or not, the '07 was my favorite from a vertical of 06-11.

 

First off, conspiracy theories are fun. I like doing the detective work and am doing my best in my free time to find out as much about this as possible.

Second, I don't think your point is entirely invalid, but I don't think there is as big a cost difference between used Heaven Hill barrels and 20yr Pappy barrels as you think. I'm still doing more research, but I found this blog that states the average price of used barrels to be around $85:

http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2012/02/where-to-get-used-whiskey-barrels.html

That blog lead me to this article, which may be the same one you referenced:

http://draftmag.com/features/beer-in-good-spirits/

It states that 23yr Pappy barrels go for around $125. I would guess that the 20yr would go for less, so let's meet in the middle, around $100 per barrel. I wouldn't put it passed Goose Island, who were pioneers in barrel aging, to pay a little extra for a better quality product without jacking the cost.

Third, the crazy guy humping the bourbon barrel was an official logo for Bourbon County back in the day, I think I do remember that poster being on GI's website, and here's a link to another guy who was trying to redirect someone to it:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/ratebeer/?path=/forums/vintage-bourbon-county-stout_166222.htm

Or course now his link just leads you to the updated Bourbon County page.

Lastly, how many times have you found that the front of house has no idea what's going on in the back? The people who've responded aren't the best sources of information. In fact, I'm going to try to call up Tom Griffin and see if he can give me some real answers on this. In the mean time, don't harsh my buzz bro. I don't care if the 07 was aged in Pappy barrels one way or the other, but good beer conspiracies are hard to come by.