NOT BOTTLED-INBULLSHIT
A brief history of the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, its fall to irrelevance, and resurrection as a proof WRITTEN BY GEORGE B. CATALLO of origin for craft distilleries.
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his isn’t exactly breaking news, but there was this big to-do a few years ago about craft distilleries bottling whiskey not born of the fruits of their own labor. Now, there is nothing wrong with using sourced whiskey! The issue there was honesty. Weaving a tale about greatgrand-pappy’s secret family recipe for Prohibition whiskey while never actually distilling a single drop is supremely uncool. While on the calendar it may be long behind us, honesty is still lingering on consumers’ minds. One way to boldly prove to the world your whiskey is your own and not bottled under pretense is the bottled-in-bond designation. Before getting into just how to do that, let’s talk about the history and contents of the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897.
IF YOU DON’T KNOW NOW YOU KNOW, DISTILLA! So way back before TTB regulations, whiskey producers were pirates. They used tea leaves and iodine to color whiskey to seem older, bottled whiskey at lower-thanstandard proof to spread batches out, and so on and so forth. There was no standard of quality. A man by the name of Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr. had a vision to change this. While he was far from alone with his vision, he is the most legendary figure associated with the act. Taylor, a man of no actual military service, was in his early life a banker known for funding several distilleries around Kentucky. His title of Colonel was awarded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in an honorary fashion, much like another notable Kentuckian known for finger lickin’ buckets of chicken. Taylor went on to open some of his own distilleries such as OFC (now part of Buffalo Trace),
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Carlisle, and the beautiful Old Taylor Distillery that has been recently revitalized as Castle & Key. Taylor, a band of distillers, and John Garrett Carlisle, who was then the Secretary of the Treasury, lobbied to enact a series of guidelines to ensure the quality of a whiskey with a seal of guarantee granted by the Federal Government called bottled in bond. This proposed law required that:
>> The spirit is the product of one distilling season
>> The spirit was produced by one distiller
>> The spirit was produced at one distillery
>> The distillery is noted on the label
>> The spirit is bottled and stored in bonded warehouses under government supervision
>> The spirit is aged for no less than four years
>> The spirit is bottled at precisely 50% ABV or 100 proof
>> The spirit is without any alteration save for the addition of water to bring the spirit to proof
The proposed act also had financial implications for distillers as well. As an incentive to utilize this program, all excise taxes on the production of the spirit stored under this act were deferred until the end of aging. A true win-win for distillers and consumers alike. The act was signed into law on March 3, 1897.
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