Bourbon Heritage Month Day 13: Breaking Bourbon "Reward If Found" Trio from Heaven Hill
Picked by the team at Breaking Bourbon, this trio - two Elijah Craig and one Larceny - pays homage to several troupes from Heaven Hill’s history and mythology:
The “Reward” bottle references the big red “12” that was on Elijah Craig bottles as the age statement until just a few years ago when the Bourbon Boom depleted stocks enough that Heaven Hill had to take off the age statement to keep the product on the shelves (to many fans’ chagrin at the time and since!). The Elijah Craig Barrel Proof line is still officially age-stated at 12 years, but the 94 proof Elijah Craig Small Batch is between 8-12 years old and is non-age-stated. Just before the time the switch was made, Heaven Hill publicly stated that they would be keeping the age statement on the Small Batch, which quickly proved untrue.
The “If” bottle is of Larceny Small Batch, one of Heaven Hill’s wheated bourbons and a recent addition to their lineup. The bottle is shaped like a keyhole, and the name references John E. Fitzgerald, a U.S. Treasury Agent tasked with making sure Heaven Hill’s federally-bonded warehouses were kept in order. Before the days where every warehouse in the U.S. was bonded, this designation meant a great deal to whiskey makers since it was a governmentally-ensured quality standard stemming from the Bottled-in-Bond act of 1897, the first consumer protection legislation in the U.S. For a deeper dive on the Bottled-in-Bond Act’s importance to U.S. history in general as well as its significance to American whiskey, look no further than Heaven Hill’s own Bernie Lubbers, the recognized expert on all things bottled-in-bond. Mr. Fitzgerald - also the namesake of the Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond line - was known to have stolen a few (or more) sips from the warehouses he held the key to, and his supposed actions inspired the larceny line, the “key” allusions, and the key on this pick’s label.
The “Found” bottle of Elijah Craig honors the Deatsville warehouse site (one of six sites throughout Kentucky), where Heaven Hill has nine warehouses (AA, BB, CC, DD, EE, FF, GG, HH, II). Deatsville was once the site of the old T. W. Samuels Distillery (of the Samuels family now famous for Maker’s Mark) and is the only location whose warehouses have tiered roofs. Many Heaven Hill die-hards analyze single barrel picks for specific warehouses they really love, and here is no exception: all three of these picks came from the Deatsville location.
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