bourbonveachdotcom

There has been a great growth in brands of Bourbon using a wheat recipe Bourbon in the last two decades. I thought I would look at the history of this growth in this blog.

The use of wheat as a flavoring grain is quite an old practice. I have seen some early mash bills from the early 1800s that state they would use either wheat or rye in making their Bourbon, depending upon availability of the flavor grain. However, rye was the grain of choice for most distillers from that period. Then came Prohibition. Julian Van Winkle wrote in a letter from 1935 that they are using a mash bill that gave better tasting whiskey at a younger age and that the recipe was one developed by the Stitzel family. It does not say that they are using wheat instead of rye, but they were doing so since 1928 when they were one of the distillers allowed to distill to replenish stocks for medicinal whiskey during Prohibition. In fact, they kept this use of wheat as a secret and even labeled their grain bin as “rye” at Stitzel-Weller at the time. When Julian Van Winkle gave Bill Samuels Sr., the recipe for Maker’s Mark in the early 1950s, Maker’s Mark did not talk about the wheat in their recipe for many years. It was not until after Julian Van Winkle died and W.L. Weller Special Reserve took off in sales in Texas, that the Van Winkles started talking about the wheat in their Bourbon. They had an advertising campaign that discussed the “Whisper of Wheat” in their Bourbon.

Moving ahead in time to the early 1990s and Julian Van Winkle III and the introduction of his Pappy Van Winkle Family Reserve Bourbon. Julian’s father, when he sold the Distillery in the 1970s, made part of the deal that he could purchase barrels from the distillery and bottle the whiskey under the Old Rip Van Winkle brand. Julian III kept purchasing barrels of wheat recipe Bourbon from them until the early 2000s when after the distillery had closed and he signed on with Buffalo Trace to make his whiskey. Pappy Van Winkle was a hit and everyone wanted it. It is ironic in that the original Pappy Van Winkle was not even a wheat recipe Bourbon [editor’s note: it was Old Boone], but after those barrels were gone, he started using Stitzel-Weller Bourbon to support the brand. When the brand became hard to get because of the shortage of barrels owned by Julian, and the Buffalo Trace whiskey was still years away from being aged twenty years, people started drinking Weller Special Reserve and Antique because they thought it was the same Bourbon as Pappy Van Winkle, just younger in age.

Then there is Maker’s Mark. It was a popular brand in Kentucky, but until the 1980s, it was a very regional brand. In the 1980s the Wall Street Journal published an article about the brand and demand for the brand took off nationally and internationally. It was well known by this time that Maker’s Mark was using wheat in their recipe. The distillery was sold by the family in the late 1980s and the new owners expanded the market for the brand. It became a popular brand nationwide by the 1990s.

The next big jump in the popularity of wheat recipe Bourbon comes in the 21st century with the growth of artisan distilleries. I have heard several distillers state that they wanted to make a Bourbon that tasted like Maker’s Mark and started distilling wheat recipe Bourbon. Nowadays, just about every distiller has a wheat recipe Bourbon along with a traditional Bourbon mash bill made with rye. Wheat gives the Bourbon a sweeter flavor as wheat allows the vanilla and caramel from the barrel to come forward at a younger age, as Julian Van Winkle claimed back in 1935. Wheat also gives the Bourbon more of a nutty flavor than rye grain does. It has become a very popular style of Bourbon and distillers sell a lot of bottles of wheat recipe Bourbon today.

Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller