Campari America launched The Whiskey Barons Collection of long-forgotten, pre-Prohibition brands.
The first two Bourbons to rise from the annals of whiskey history are Old Ripy and Bond & Lillard.
Both played a significant role in establishing this pocket of the Kentucky as a hub of Bourbon distilling during the 1800’s.
Before Prohibition, more than 180 distilleries dotted the Blue Grass State’s countryside, each with their own unique family recipes. Though most of the original recipes and distilling techniques pioneered by those industrious families have been lost to the ravages of time, the Whiskey Barons project sought to piece together these forgotten treasures. Recreating these whiskies involved consulting original tasting notes from historical files; finding old product descriptions and taste profiles from packaging and news articles; and interviewing surviving family members who still recall the taste of the original liquid.
“Resurrecting Old Ripy and Bond & Lillard has not been an easy task. The distillers didn’t have the luxury of magically discovering old barrels of the original whiskies, and so it has taken two years of detective work and trial and error to piece together as accurately as possible how these lost original recipes would have looked, smelled and tasted like,” said Robin Coupar, Campari America Global Whiskies Brand Ambassador.
First bottled in 1868, Old Ripy was created by Irish immigrant James Ripy in Lawrenceburg, Ky., and continued to be made in Lawrenceburg, KY up until 1950 near where the current Wild Turkey Distillery stands.
Old Ripy is a 104-proof (52% alc./vol.) combination of eight-year-old Kentucky Straight Bourbon with 12-year-old and younger whiskies for added complexity and oak. It is non-chill filtered to retain congeners, fusil oils, lipid fats and proteins that are believed to have existed in the original. This results in more natural and complex flavor characteristics, fuller body, and a smooth but “chewier” mouthfeel.
The Bond family had been distilling in Kentucky since 1820, however Bond & Lillard wasn’t born until 1869 when William F. Bond and his brother-in-law, Christopher C. Lillard, formed a partnership.
This Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is 100 proof (50% alc./vol.) and charcoal filtered, a process that simulates the aeration process that happens in the barrel, converting more aggressive congeners to esters that end in more elegant top notes. The result is a lighter colored and flavored Bourbon with more floral notes. As the judges at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair declared, this recipe represents “real delicacy of flavor, beauty in the sparkle and superiority in strength – it bears no equal.”
The team that brought back to life the Old Ripy and Bond & Lillard recipes is comprised of T.B. Ripy IV and Tom Ripy, great-grandson and great-great-grandson of T.B. Ripy and W.F. Bond; Norm Matella, Ph. D. and Campari America North American Technical Center Manager; and Robin Coupar, Campari America Global Whiskies Brand Ambassador. The whiskies were distilled at the Wild Turkey Distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY, which sits approximately where the Ripy distillery once stood.