hotaling's whiskey

[Randy Quad]

dear whiskey drinkers -
two years ago the anchor steam distillery (of anchor steam brewing) put out a special edition of their Old Potrero whiskey dubbed Hotaling's Whiskey. The concept was the duplicate the san franciscan distiller's recipe as it was at the time time of the 1906 earthquake and fire. it is a rye, but aged 11 years. all the same the stuff is harsh as all hell. i wouldn't drink it with a pint of water. having given it this review i will say that there were less than 60 cases produced and most of the bottles went to restaurants as gifts for carrying other anchor steam distillery products. the stuff if extremely rare and in theory offers the chance to see if you are man enough to drink what was being consumed 100 years ago.
anywho - my neighborhood liquor store must have uncovered a long lost case or something because there are six bottles out that are selling for $70. at initial offering they went for 60 bucks, but as they grew in scarcity their price topped 200. the craze has died significantly as i've collected two already from other spots for about that price. (and i'll most likely never drink any of them).
if any one is interested i can pick up a bottle and ship it at cost. you'd do the same for me.

written on the label: One hundred years ago, earthquake, fire, and dynamite destroyed nearly 4.7 square miles of San Francisco, a swath of destruction that claimed 28,188 buildings and an incalculable number of lives. After the disaster, several clergymen asserted that the catastrophe had been divine retribution, visited upon the City by the Old Potrero Hotaling's WhiskeyBay for its wicked ways. Thanks in no small part to the pluck, resolve, and ingenuity of its staff, however, A.P. Hotaling & Co.'s Jackson Street whiskey warehouse survived. And so, "while millions of dollars worth of normally non-inflammable material was reduced to ashes," as the Argonaut would later report, thousands of "barrels of highly inflammable whisky were preserved intact in the heart of the tremendous holocaust."

After the fire, UC Berkeley Professor Jerome Barker Landfield bumped into poet and wit Charles Kellogg Field. "He accompanied me to Berkeley," Landfield recalled, "and I put him up at the Faculty Club for the night. As we walked down to the station on our way back to San Francisco, Field asked me for a blank piece of paper on which to write. I handed him a used envelope. On the back he penned these lines:

'If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling's whiskey?'"

[jimfet]

That was a horrid time for San Fran. So I say we must put this behind us. So go ahead and drink the rye. That way you can feel the pain that they did. Smash the bottles. And now the past will be the past.
If I were within 50 miles of ya, I would come help you feel the pain.

[onepixel]

Interesting...what are they going for now?

[Randy Quad]

Originally Posted by onepixel

Interesting...what are they going for now?

i dont know what the current market price it. the whiskey shop on union has one bottle for 135 and then royal liquor has about five out for 70. nasty nasty stuff - tastes like burnt dirt. but supposedly authentic to the recipe, technique and process as the 1900s whiskey.

[onepixel]

Originally Posted by Randy Quad

...nasty nasty stuff - tastes like burnt dirt. but supposedly authentic to the recipe, technique and process as the 1900s whiskey.

hmm...nasty, nasty stuff, huh?

I'll keep it in mind if I find one down this way. Thanks!

Cheers

[KeninDC]

Old, authentic rye is to be avoided it seems. They just started selling rye whiskey made to George Washington's recipe down the road at Mt. Vernon. Apparently, the color is beautiful, but the taste is nasty. Alcohol content, rather than taste, was the raison d' etre of colonial whisky.

Cheers,

Ken

[onepixel]

I went down to the local liquor store which has just about everything. I got to talking to the owner who is an older Indian Sikh gentleman who is really cool. Calls me boss whenever I drop in. He must be doing pretty good because he put two daughters through medical school.

I forgot about the "nasty" stuff and asked him to recommend me some Scotch. He came up with Isle of Jura - Superstition, a blend of 15 and 25 year old scotch. From the Island where George Orwell wrote 1984.

It's was reasonably priced and I just had taste. mmm...smooth and very refined! So now I'm gonna go work out.