Bourbon Supreme, Williamsburg Decanter, bottled in 1969, emptied in 2016

In the past, I've talked about my antique-bottle project. I spend a lot of time in antique stores looking for the information for my spreadsheet. Of course, I almost never go into a store intending to purchase anything. But, of course, intend is the key word there. 

Tonight's review comes from one of my antique store finds. It is a decanter of Bourbon Supreme from 1969. When I bought it, the cork was intact, and the tax seal was intact. So I decided to decant the liquid out and give it a look. 

These days, Bourbon Supreme is a blended bourbon produced for select markets by Luxco. But in days of yore, Bourbon Supreme was a product of the American Distilling Company out of Pekin, Illinois. American Distilling Company was an old company, at least as far as US companies are concerned. Pre-ProWhiskeyMen mentions that the company was formed in the mid-1890s and, after taking over a few other companies, by 1908 was mashing 6000 bushels of grain per day. The company continued to grow from there, though. A 1964 article in the Chicago Tribune Magazine states that capacity had grown to 12,000 bushels per day. Of course, in the end, all things must pass and Mike Veach says that by the early 1980s American itself had been acquired by Standard Brands who was acquired by other companies until pieces of what used to be American Distilling Company found itself part of Diageo.

The Bourbon Supreme brand though did not go with the American Distilling Company. In the thread mentioned above, Mike Veach mentions that the brand passed through the hands of either Heaven Hill or Barton to its final resting spot, the David Sherman Company, today's Luxco.

Today's Bourbon Supreme doesn't sound much like anything I'd want to try, but let's see how a version from almost 50 years ago tastes. 

Bourbon Supreme, Williamsburg Decanter, 1969

Purchase Info: Some antique mall in St. Paul, MN for I'm guessing under $20. (It's been a while).

Details: 86° proof, 74 months old (my label is partially torn, this info was found by searching eBay for images of the bottle)

Nose: The nose starts with vanilla and coconut that transition to fruit, caramel, and floral notes. After more time, the fruit and floral wander away to be replaced by rich leather...mmmm...caramelly leather. 

Mouth: Sweet butterscotch with a little oak spice. 

Finish: Light and short with distinct floral notes. 

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Thoughts: This has a wonderful nose, an ok mouth, and a terrible finish. It's very interesting but this might just stay a curiosity for friends to try when they visit. Serious meh on this one. Maybe it's how the decanter was handled for the last half century or maybe the stuff put into the decanter just wasn't that good to begin with.

A word on lead: There is a forum thread on straightbourbon.com that details the story of a man getting the whiskey from one of his decanters tested for lead and finding very high levels of it. I do not have the equipment to test this myself. I did, however, allow the bourbon from this decanter to evaporate and then drip the contents of a lead paint tester into the residue (saving a drop or two for the confirmation strip) and there was no red for lead. I won’t say this bourbon doesn’t contain lead or that any of the bourbons from old decanters you find will or will not contain lead. But this test satisfied my curiosity enough to allow me to do the small tasting I did for this post without fear of too much harm.

For more information on lead poisoning visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002473.htm

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Federal Law Forbids Sale or Re-Use of This Bottle - A BourbonGuy project

The video is 10 minutes long. Long story short, I want your help gathering data on old liquor bottles. Prohibition until the mid-1960s. I'm putting together a spreadsheet that when it reaches a useful mass I will be giving to the bottle dating people at sha.org to make available to the folks who use to their site. Download a pdf of the spreadsheet as it stands right now if you are curious what sort of info I'm gathering. 

If you feel like helping, here are examples of the images I'm requesting (I didn't include a label image I figured we all know what label look like). Thanks!

If you want to support our work at BourbonGuy.com, please consider a one-time donation at ko-fi.com/bourbonguy or paypal.me/BourbonGuy. Or you could buy some merch that I’ve designed and/or built (tasting journals, t-shirts, stickers, pins, signs, posters, and more) at BourbonGuyGifts.com. Use code BOURBONGUYREADER at checkout for 5% off any order of $50 or more.

Observations on old liquor marketing and a 1979 Ezra Brooks

Ezra Brooks from 1979 aged 101 months.

I’m a big fan of old liquor bottles. We’ve talked about this. I tend to go to antique stores, estate sales and bottle shows to look at and occasionally buy old bottles. Most of these are empty and I almost always get the comment: “too bad this isn’t full, huh?” But sometimes they are full. And when they are, I like to check the contents and the seal. If it’s bourbon, it hasn’t been opened and isn’t very expensive, I’ll bring it home with me. 

When I search through old bottles, I also see a lot of decanters. Collectable decanters were a way for a struggling bourbon industry to try to stay afloat while tastes changed. And it must have worked because we have bourbon today, and there are a lot of old decanters for sale out there. 

At some point in the mid-Twentieth Century, whiskey making changed. In the United States, the uncertainty of war coupled with changing fashions led whiskey makers to lobby for an increase in the bonding period of aging whiskey. In other words, they wanted to be able to sit on their aging stocks a bit longer before needing to pay taxes on it. It was granted and whiskey making and marketing started to focus on longer aging times. Larger age statements begins to appear and age became associated with quality. Around the same time proofs started dropping as well. Where 100 (and 101) proof were once fairly standard 86 proof was becoming more and more common. 

With an increasing focus on age and decreasing proofs, it isn’t terribly surprising that the largest number on many of the old decanters you find is the age. What is surprising is that the age is stated in months not years. Unlike many of today’s whiskeys who use months for their age statements, it isn’t because the whiskey is young though. 100 months is the most common age I’ve seen on Jim Beam decanters (though I’ve also seen 155 on a few occasions). And I’ve seen numerous 101 month Ezra Brooks decanters. 

I can think of a couple of reasons why 100 months might have been used. Much like the producers who put out three year old whiskey today and label it 36 months, 100 just sounds bigger than 8. The other reason I can think of is that 100 and 101 months bear a striking resemblance to the 100 and 101 proof that consumers had been used to seeing before proofs started dropping. Kind of an early version of the Very Old Barton “6” that Sazerac uses today. I don’t know if the actual answer is one, the other, or both. In any case, 35 years later, it is fun to ponder. 

1979 Ezra Brooks Bengal Tiger decanter

Ezra Brooks - Bengal Tiger, 1979

Purchase info: $15 at a bottle and advertising show

Details: From the Ezra Brooks Wildlife Collector Series. 101 months old (8.417 years). 80 proof.

Nose: Green apples, baking spices and a faint earthiness to go along with some oak. After some time it transitions to a strong butterscotch bomb.

Mouth: Not as sweet as I was expecting. Baking spices, brown sugar, oak and earthiness. 

Finish: On the longer side of medium. Sweet with lingering baking spices and green apple. 

With Water: The mouth gets a bit livelier and the green apple comes through more. The nose gets spicier with a touch of anise. Water kills the finish. 

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Thoughts: As Ezra Brooks has always been a sourced whiskey, it was really interesting to see what was being sourced in 1979. With it’s apple and spice notes, it reminds me a bit of a Brown-Forman bourbon. (Though I doubt that it is since Ezra Brooks debuted by impersonating their biggest brand and were sued by them). Based on this bottle, it is the equivalent of an ok $30-45 bottle today. But that said, I don’t know that I’d seek out another bottle of it. It’s pretty good, but not the best I’ve ever had.

A word on lead: There is a forum thread on straightbourbon.com that details the story of a man getting the whiskey from one of his decanters tested for lead and finding very high levels of it. I do not have the equipment to test this myself. I did however allow the bourbon from this decanter to evaporate and then drip the contents of a lead paint tester into the residue (saving a drop or two for the conformation strip) and there was no "red for lead." I won’t say this bourbon doesn’t contain lead or that any of the bourbon from old decanters you find will or will not contain lead. But this test satisfied my curiosity enough to allow me to do the small tasting I did for this post.

For more information on lead poisoning visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002473.htm

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, The Carolers

A very long time ago, by today’s standards, bourbon was not popular. It was so not popular that many people selling it almost of included it as a kind of “value-add” when they sold ceramic decanters. Ceramic decanters seem to have been immensely popular during the 1970s. I have people in my own family who will reminisce about purchasing a couple of them for a decent amount of money and then claim: “I don’t know that [the buyer] ever did drink any of that…”

Now the buyer in question above was a prolific drinker. And if he didn’t drink the bourbon, you can bet that he was not an edge case. This is born out by the fact that I have bought multiple ceramic decanters that are still full and sealed at antique stores or shows for under $25. Including the one above. That one only cost me $18. $18 at a bottle and advertising show where I saw a piece of Four Roses ad signage marked up to over $100. 

The piece was put out by the Hoffman Distilling Company from Lawrenceburg, KY. Haven’t heard of them? Well, don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either. They seem to be one of those pieces of history that has left very little mark on the internet. But here is what I have collected. 

  • Sam Cecil, in his book Bourbon: The Evolution of Kentucky Whiskey claims that the distillery was built in 1880 and after passing through many hands, was in disrepair by the mid 1970s. Saying on page 98 of his book: “I visited the distillery in the mid-1970s, and the still house was falling down.”
  • Mike Veach tells us on BourbonEnthusiast.com that in 1966 “The Hoffman Distilling Company of Lawrenceburg, Ky. with a capacity of 300 bushels per day is listed with Ezra Brooks as one of its four brands. The executives of the distillery are Ben G, Ripy, William R. Ripy, and Robert Ripy (1966 Red Book, p.33).”
  • He also says on another post “The Hoffman distillery is the distillery that created Ezra Brooks in the 60's. It went out of business in the 70s and Julian Van Winkle bought the old distillery.”
  • Speaking of Ezra Brooks, our friend Brian at Sipp’n Corn mentions Hoffman in his post on the lawsuit where Jack Daniel’s sued Ezra Brooks over the marketing of Ezra Brooks in the 1950s and 60s. If you want to read more about that lawsuit, you can. 
  • Ellenjaye.com has a post about what became of the Hoffman Distillery after it was purchased and renamed by one Julian Van Winkle III. You may have heard of him. He really doesn’t figure into this story except as a footnote though. 
  • And finally a reclaimed wood supplier in Oregon has a nice long post about the distillery from the point of view of one who might want to sell you wood from the rick houses. 

Most of the research I found claims the distillery went out of business in the mid-1970s and the location was used as a bottling house by various brands and run by a member of the Ripy family at that time. One of the brands that seems to have been bottled there was Hoffman Originals, a brand that seems to have survived the distillery proper (though I can find no mention of any actual relation between them other than having the same name and bottling location) by selling ceramic decanters of the variety described above. They put out quite a few decanters throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Jim Crawford at jimsbottles.com has an extensive set of posts on their Mr Lucky series (the series of decanters which included the Carolers decanter shown below, click for larger images).

This decanter depicts two leprechauns singing Christmas Carols. It is a full sized (4/5ths quart) decanter bottled by the Hoffman Distilling Company, Lawrenceburg, KY. And because neither bourbon nor the bottle were enough to sell this, it is of course also a music box. It is from 1979. The cork was intact and the tax stamp was unbroken. It was $18. I decided to pick it up. 

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, The Carolers Base (back)

Hoffman Originals, Mr. Lucky Series, Carolers, 1979: The Bourbon.

Purchase info: $18 at a bottle and advertising show. 

Details: Bottled by the Hoffman Distilling Co, 80 proof, bottle copyright 1979.

Nose: As is to be expected from a bottle that has been closed for over 35 years, this smells of acetone at the initial pouring. After letting it sit in the glass for a while, we started picking up notes of rich butterscotch, cloves, ripe apples, fresh flowers and hints of lemon zest.

Mouth: Peppery and sweet with more butterscotch and cloves along with a large dose of floral notes.

Finish: The finish follows the mouth and nose with lingering sweet, clove and floral notes along with a gentle, medium length burn.

Thoughts: This whiskey is pretty tasty though not to the standards of other older bottlings I’ve found. Being sourced whiskey, maybe this was lower end stuff bought only to fill the bottle? Or maybe, time just hasn’t been kind to this one. I don’t know. It’s fine, just kinda…meh when neat. Adding water does open it up allowing more sweet notes to come to the forefront, but it loses it’s burn. It goes to show that just because a whiskey is a “dusty” doesn’t necessarily follow that it is really good. Fun to try though.

A word on lead: There is a forum thread on straightbourbon.com that details the story of a man getting the whiskey from one of his decanters tested for lead and finding very high levels of it. I do not have the equipment to test this myself. I did however allow the bourbon from this decanter to evaporate and then drip the contents of a lead paint tester into the residue (saving a drop or two for the conformation strip) and there was no red for lead. I won’t say this bourbon doesn’t contain lead or that any of the bourbon from old decanters you find will or will not contain lead. But this test satisfied my curiosity enough to allow me to do the small tasting I did for this post.

For more information on lead poisoning visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002473.htm

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

A Tale of Two (Wild) Turkeys

A few weeks ago I ran across something a little too good to pass up. I was out antiquing and found a seller who had a bunch of miniature liquor bottles for sale. Full, sealed bottles. They were only available as a set so I took the entire lot. Out of that lot I got three bourbons of varying antiquity. A early 1970s IW Harper, a Blanton’s (can’t be older than the early-mid 1980s when the brand debuted) and the one I was most excited about a Wild Turkey from 1979. 

Since I am a lover of most things Wild Turkey, and constantly have a bottle of 101 on my shelf, I thought it might be fun to taste this along side of the current release. The 1979 version is eight years old and both are the 50.5% ABV that Wild Turkey built their reputation on. I was initially going to do the comparison blind. Unfortunately for the plan (but fortunately for me) the 1979 juice was so much darker that I had no trouble picking out which was which. So I decided to just taste them side-by-side and compare them that way. 

The 1979 pour needed a lot of time to breathe before we got down to business. Upon pouring it was very strong with the scent of nail polish remover. After about a half hour or so that dissipated and instead there were thick notes of maple, brown sugar and oak with a lovely fruitiness underneath. By way of comparison, I found the 2016 pour presenting an anise note that I had never picked up in it before. 

Back to the 1979. The mouth had a nice thick mouthfeel with herbal hints of mint, spice, brown sugar and oak. It reminded me very much of a barrel proof Four Roses Q yeast bourbon. The finish was warm and long. 

Moving over to the 2016, the mouthfeel was thinner but retains a nice velvety texture. There were fewer sweet candy flavors from the oak and the rye flavors were more pronounced. The finish was warm and while shorter than the 1979, was still of decent length. 

I found this to be a fascinating process. While I would have said that the 1979 pour was tasty if tasting it by itself, I don’t know that I would have had quite as much fun if I hadn’t had the current release to contrast it off of. And as for the current release, I might not have found the interesting anise notes in the nose or realized how pronounced the rye notes were on the palate if I hadn’t had the older one to contrast it with. Overall this was just fun. And honestly, isn’t that why we do this?

BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!

Antiquing and Bottle Dating: Four Roses and Related

Due to a recent sickness I’ve been talking about buying old bottles and how I go about figuring out a little about what I’ve just bought. How old it is, what’s the story of the company, etc. I couldn’t end this little series without a look at the bottles I picked up from one of my favorite brands of whiskey: Four Roses.

Once again I’m presenting a little bit of how I got to where I gave up with each bottle and this time I show that the results you come up with aren’t always as firm as you’d like them to be.

Paul Jones Whiskey Bottle

Picked up for $8 at a bottle and advertising show.

If you are a Four Roses fan, you’ve probably heard the name Paul Jones. He is the man who they credit with starting the brand. Less well publicized is that Four Roses was just one of Paul Jones’ brands. One of which was just named: Paul Jones Whiskey.

I found this bottle at a Bottle and Advertising show here in the Twin Cities. It was being sold by the man who dug it up, I believe locally. Being a Four Roses fanboy, I noticed it right away in the mess of bottles he had on his table. Unlike most of the tables, he hadn’t really spent a lot of time polishing the years of age off his bottles. They looked like they were dug up and washed, still containing all the scuff marks that time and elements had put on them.

Once I got home, it was time to see what I had. I opened my usual bottle dating site and found that to my surprise, it was no help. Bottle dating as is done on that site depends on a lot of small features: mold seams, embossing, makers marks, etc. The problem was this bottle had no marks, no seams, no embossing. The only thing it had was a glass seal containing the name of the whiskey and the words Louisville, KY. This seal had been applied to the shoulder of the bottle after the bottle was formed. Other than that, nothing. It’s a very well made, cylindrical and symmetrical bottle of uniform thickness that was somehow made without seams, or the seams had been polished off either during production or after. In either case, it was of no help to me.

So knowing that this whiskey was from one of the most well known historical whiskey men, I turned to my next favorite site for help in dating bottles: Google. And there I found a lot of interesting information. Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men has a great write-up of the man Paul Jones and his business interests. Pre-pro.com has another that contains similar, though slightly different information. But the biggest bit of information came on an image search. There I found tons of examples of this or very similar bottles for sale. All of them said they were from the 1880s or 1890s. How did they get that info? No idea. But it is all I have to go on so I’ll have to tentatively go with that. If I ever see the bottle seller again, I’ll need to see if he has any further info.

Four Roses Embossed Bottle

Picked up for $10 at a bottle and advertising show.

Speaking of Four Roses, the other bottle I picked up at the same seller was a bottle from Four Roses itself. The amber bottle is embossed on the front with four roses on vines and space for labels. In the upper space is the battered remnants of a label. On the label are the words: “Four Roses, Spiritus Frumenti, 100 Proof, An Alcoholic Stimulant Made From The Fermented Mash of Grain.” Along the tattered edges of the label are a few leaves.

I have an inkling that this bottle was a medicinal whiskey bottle as it looks a lot like others I have found online. Right down to the threads for the screw on “shot glass cup” that others in much better shape still have. So let’s see if I can glean any info from the bottle itself.

The “FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS SALE OR REUSE OF THIS BOTTLE” statement is not on the bottle so the bottle is either pre repeal or post 1964. Other than that, the bottle dating site isn’t of much help. There is a scar on the bottom of the bottle, the statement: TM REG U.S. PAT OFF, PAT PENDING,” what looks to be a 7 and what looks to be a Diamond makers mark. Unfortunately, the scar runs right through the diamond obscuring if it has an I inside if there was, it is an Illinois Glass logo if it is empty it would be the Diamond Glass company. Either could be in use during Prohibition. So no help. 

Once again Google image search is my answer on this one and this particular Pinterest pin by friend of the blog Coopered Tot makes me think I was correct all along. The label is the same (though in better shape), the metal cover matches where the screw threads are on mine. I’m calling it. Prohibition-era medicinal whiskey pint.

Four Roses Mini

Picked up for $10-$20 at an antique mall in Southern Minnesota.

This little miniature bottle of Four Roses was purchased about a year or so ago so I’m not quite sure on the price, but I’m thinking it was in the $10 to $20 range. I picked it up both becasue I am a Four Roses fanboy and because I noticed that there happened to be something in it. Now I’m not quite crazy enough to put something in my mouth that has been sitting in a partially full bottle for half a century or more, but I will smell it. And it smells pretty tasty.

Miniatures can be a bit harder to date as it seems many of the federally mandated features that allow me to date a bottle of whiskey are allowed to be missing. Those features only being mandated on items over 8 ounces.

Starting with the basics. I notice this bottle has both a state and federal tax stamp. This little guy came to southern Minnesota by way of New Mexico. I often wonder about things like this. Why did a mostly empty bottle of whiskey travel from New Mexico to Minnesota? How did it end up on that shelf in the store? These bottles only have about 2 ounces in when full. Why leave two-thirds of an ounce or so behind and why not return later if it was good or at least dump it out if it wasn’t? I picture all sorts of stories when I think of things like this. Maybe one day I’ll write one of them down.

The bottle is amber with a metal cap and a black foil label. The label reads: “Four Roses Bourbon, A Blend of Straight Whiskies. Blended by Frankfort Distillers Incorporated, Louisville KY Baltimore MD.” The back label is intact as well reading: “Four Roses, Reg U.S. Pat Off. 100% Straight Whiskies • 90 proof. Blended by Frankfort Distillers Incorporated, Louisville KY. A Blend of Straight Whiskies. 90 proof. 1/10 Pint. The Straight Whiskies in this Product Are 5 Years or More Old. Contains not less than 51% Straight Bourbon Whiskey.”

The bottom of the bottle is stippled and includes the Owens-Illinois logo. To the left of that is a 6. To the right is a 41 and below it is a 5. If the placement of everything is as usual, the 41 should be the date code. The description of the state tax stamp for that time period matches so I’m pretty confident in that being the date. Meaning that this little guy was made in 1941. Purchased in New Mexico. Partially consumed. Sealed back up and left to sit for almost 75 years. Somewhere along the way it made its way halfway across the country before ending up in rural southern Minnesota where I found it. I know the story is probably mundane, but I wish I had a way of knowing it. Thoughts like these are what keeps me going back to antique stores.

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Antiquing and Bottle Dating: Two Old Fitzgerald Bottles

So I’m feeling great! The antibiotics are gone, the cough is almost gone, the tastebuds…well I guess you could say that they are gone too. I’ve had whiskies I normally love taste like pure ethanol and ones I think are normally find just ok seem quite good. 

In other words everything is out of whack. Until I get my little tasters back in line I’m presenting an educational series based around some antiquing I’ve done lately. This is the second in the series. In it I’m showing what can be found for relatively little money and showing how I go about finding out more about the items I pick up. For me these are not only items that will look cool on the shelf, but stories waiting to be uncovered. 

Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond Empty Mini: 

Picked up for $1 at an antique mall in Southern Minnesota.

This is the cheapest thing I’ve purchased recently. It was in a box of small empty bottles each selling for $1. This was the one bourbon one in there or I might have purchased more. I wasn’t expecting much out of this. In fact, I was thinking it might make a fun addition to my party lights. What I wasn’t expecting was that this would be one of the hardest things to date that I purchased that day. 

As with any time I try to date a bottle, the first thing I do is look at it to see what clues it will give me. I know from the label that this was Bottled in Bond, 100 proof, distilled and bottled at Stitzel-Weller. I also notice that there is a Wisconsin Tax Stamp, a fragment of a green Bottled in Bond Federal Tax Stamp, a painted label and a legal statement. 

There was no UPC and the volume was given in imperial measurements so we can put an upper limit of somewhere in the late 70s. The bottled in bond statement referenced Sections 5205 and 5233 of the Internal Revenue code which puts the lower limit at about 1959-60. So I’ve narrowed it down to about 20 years. Now I need to to do a little digging. 

I know that tax stamps change over time so I tried to find examples of when this style was used. Luckily there are very fanatical people on the internet willing to give us this information. In this case though, the info I received wasn’t lining up. The tax stamp seems to be in a 1949-1950s design, but the serial number style is that from the 1960s. So that’s a clue. Maybe some sort of transitional style? At this point I’m just lining up evidence. 

Now I turn to the label design itself. Surely there is a photo of this design online somewhere. After a couple hours of searching I stumbled onto an auction selling a full mini just like the empty I picked up. As Bottled in Bond tax stamps tell when it was distilled and when it was bottled, I’m going to trust them to be telling the truth in their description. They say theirs was bottled in 1965. 

Finally I turn the darn bottle upside down. In a normal case, I would have done this first. But this one was a bit hard to decipher. Due to which letters and the logo that happened to be embossed in the glass, I couldn’t tell which was was up. The bottom has a 9 (or six) the Owens-Illinois glass company logo (an O with an I inside it), a zero, and a 6 (or nine) below (above?) it. So I did a little digging. One of those numbers on either side of the logo should be a plant code the other should be the year. The one on the right is the year the one on the left should be the plant. On the Society for Historical Archaeology website I found a list of bottle maker permit numbers and sure enough neither permit 6 or 9 was owned by Owens-Illinois. Shoot. It was probably too much to hope for since that requirement was for bottles 8 fluid ounces or larger, but you never know until you look. They did have plants numbered with both a 6 and a 9 in use during the time I was considering. Plus nobody has a permit zero, which is what really gave me a clue as to which was was up and which number was the year. In this case the zero should be the year the bottle was made…maybe.

So the evidence is piling up to point to 1960 or at least the early 60s. The post-1959 Bottled in Bond statement, the zero date code, the late 1950s/early 60s tax stamp and a bottle design that was in use during the time frame. It wasn’t easy, but I think I have this one puzzled out as far as I’m going to. That was a lot of fun for $1.

Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond Decanter-style Bottle:

Picked up for $15 at a bottle and advertising show.

This is something that I might or might not have picked up if I hadn’t just picked up the mini the day before. I thought they might look nice displayed together since even though the design painted on the label is different, the shape of the bottle is similar. It is a decanter-style glass bottle with a painted label.  The closure is cork with a glass pull screwed into it.

So what do we know about it that can help me figure out when this is from? There is no UPC and the volume is listed in imperial measurements so we know that it is from before the late 1970s. The bottled in bond statement references sections 2903-9…which isn’t referenced in the helpful site I referenced above. So no help there. 

Looking at the base, though I hit a treasure trove of information. First off, the post-Prohibition statement “Federal Law Forbids Sale or Re-Use of This Bottle” is present. This gives us both an earliest date and a hint as to the latest date it could be. This statement was mandated on all liquor bottles produced from the end of Prohibition until 1964. Though due to the cost of changing the molds it was phased out after that point. So this should be in that range. So we now have a 29 year range to work with. But there is more information there so let’s narrow that down a bit further.

In the center there are three lines of information that will help me narrow this down further. After Prohibition, it seems that everyone who made anything that touched liquor needed a permit. And it all needed to be in the glass. The top line says D-379. The D stands for distiller and the number is Stitzel-Weller’s code to have liquor bottles created for them. The next line could be arranged in a few ways. In this case it is a two digit code a dash and another two digit code. Below that is the logo for the bottle maker (other arrangements have the logo between the two codes instead of a dash). 

Referencing the SHA.org website manufacturer logos table pdf, we can determine that the logo shows the bottle was made by Owens-Illinois Glass Company. It also shows that this bottle is pre1960-ish as that is the end of the usage of that logo (Owens-Illinois changed their logo in the early 1950s but continued to use mold plates until they wore out). The liquor bottle permit pdf shows that Owens-Illinois had permit number 58, but not 53. I know that the left code is normally the permit number and the right is normally the year, but it is nice to get confirmation since the arrangement seems to have been a matter of custom not enforcement.

That means this is a 1953 bottle of Old Fitzgerald. Looking at ads online I see there should have been a paper label around the neck and possibly a key draped around it. But in any case this one still looks good and it was fun to find the answer so easily. 

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Antiquing and bottle dating: Old Quaker and Hayner Whiskey

I’ve been sick. Like go on vacation, ride in an airplane, get the flu and have it turn into pneumonia sick. As such, I’ve had no tastebuds to do tastings for the last few weeks. But last weekend, after a few days of antibiotics, I was feeling better. And I was sick of being in the house. So what to do when you finally feel good enough to leave the house, but still sound like you’re dying? 

Go antiquing and scare some old folks into think they will catch their death from you. And when I say antiquing, I obviously really mean go buy old whiskey advertisements and bottles…sadly mostly empty. 

But it isn’t just the liquor inside that I would want in any case. I really like old bottles and advertising. Someday, I’ll have a good place to display them all. But for now, I love discovering the stories behind these bottles or memorabilia. Discover a little about who made them and when they did it. Dating a bottle is a puzzle. One that isn’t always easily solved. Or at least as completely solved as we might like.

And as I still have no tastebuds for tasting, I’ll be breaking this up into a few posts until I get them back, and then I’ll throw one in here or there as well just to keep things interesting. 

Old Quaker Bottle: $3

Picked up at an antique mall in Southern Minnesota.

So here’s the thing, the type of antique stores I favor can’t always be trusted to tell you the age of the thing you are buying. Not that they are lying or anything, but often they just don’t tell you. Some dude rents a shelf and fills it up with things that might be really old…or just from a few years ago. In this case, there was just a bottle on a shelf with a price on it. Knowing that the Old Quaker brand was around both pre- and post-Prohibition means that at best I have something quite old and at worst I have something a little older than me. Either way I liked the look of the bottle and it was only three bucks. 

Ok so what do I have here? This is a colorless glass bottle embossed with the name Old Quaker, an image of an old man in a hat and a couple bundles of grain under that. The bottle looks to have had a cork closure. There is still a dried up cork in the bottom of the bottle, but even if that was a latter addition the top looks similar to other cork closure bottles I’ve run across. Obviously this was, at some point, filled with Old Quaker – a brand owned by Schenley for many years. (Schenley being one of the companies that went on to be acquired by companies that merged to become Diageo.) But at what point was is filed with Old Quaker? That it the question I’m most interested in. 

Looking at the front of the bottle, you get your first clue as to the age of this bottle. Right across the shoulder is the statement: “FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS SALE OR RE-USE OF THIS BOTTLE.” This was mandated to be on every liquor bottle from the end of Prohibition until 1964. So we have a range of of about 30 years to play with, somewhere between 52 and 82 years ago. After that things get a little less obvious and Google becomes my best friend. 

After doing a bit of searching online, I found a very nice article from 2010 that detailed how a group of bottle daters determined who made a certain Old Quaker Bottle. Reading some of their notes, I determined where the date code on the bottle should be. It looks like it is a 6 which means that this particular bottle should be from 1936 as they didn’t think about using 2 digit date codes until they realized that if they didn’t, they would need to repeat them in 10 years. That was at some point in the early 1940s. And though apparently some companies slipped in a single digit through the mid 40s, it was apparently unusual enough that I’m just going to go with 1936 on this bottle. Pretty cool and it was well worth the $3 to me since it’ll look very nice on the shelf once I get it cleaned up.

Two Hayner Whiskey Bottles: $12 & $5

Picked up at an antique mall in Southern Minnesota.

The Hayner Distilling company was a mail-order whiskey company in business from 1866 until 1920 when Prohibition forced them out of business. They operated out of Ohio but had branch offices around the country including ones in St. Louis, MO, St. Paul, MN and Atlanta, GA. From what I can gather even though they went out of business almost 100 years ago, Hayner bottles are pretty common due to both the increasing number of states that were going dry during their heyday and from the very attractive price their whiskey was sold for (I’ve seen an advertisement for four quarts of 7 year old rye whiskey for $3.20 postage-paid). The Hayner business took a big hit in 1913 when the Federal government passed the Webb-Kenyon Act which prohibited the shipment of liquor to dry states from wet ones. 

Both of these bottles are made of very slightly purple glass with a fluted neck and embossing on both the body and the base of the bottles. The base of each states: “Design patented Nov 30th 1897.” As seen above.

The two bottles I bought are a bit different from one another. Even though these are both likely to be mouth blown bottles, one looks as if it had a much more refined mold used to create it as the type on both the body and the base is crisp with more flourishes. Evidence of a more refined mold continues on the neck where the flutes end in nice crisp rounded edges. The first bottle reads “Hayner Whiskey Distillery Troy, Ohio.”

The second bottle reads “The Hayner Distilling Co. Dayton St. Louis Atlanta St. Paul Distillers.” The flutes just sort of fade out and the typefaces on both the body and the base have no flourishes. The second bottle does have a cork still stuck in the neck so I’m going to assume that both of these used a cork closure.

Because the bottles state that the design was patented in 1897 I’m going to assume they are younger than that and since the company was out of business by 1920 that is our end date. According to the Society of Historical Archaeology most of these bottles date from 1905 to 1917 and that will have to be close enough for me. 

Due to the sheer number of these bottles, I didn’t really have to do any dating on these myself. There are quite a few pages that detail the history of the company and their bottles including a history of the company by Cecil Munsey, a site where the Society of Historical Archaeology details their bottles as an example on a “How-to-date-your-bottle” page (it’s about halfway down), Pre-Pro.com has a company history and a lot of examples of company bottles and advertisements, Bottlepickers.com has another illustrated history, and there is even the page of a Hayner museum in Troy, OH that I totally plan to visit if I am ever in the area.

I spent $20 on these three bottles and got much more than that in enjoyment so I’m completely happy with the purchase.

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