Whiskey Of The Week: I.W. Harper 34 Year Old Bourbon

Forbes

2 days ago

You won't find many bourbons aged 20 years or longer. 25-year-old bourbons are almost unheard of. And 30-plus year old bourbons are vanishingly rare. The climate in Kentucky, where the vast majority of bourbon is made, is simply not conducive to aging whiskey that long. Unlike Scotland, which basically has cold and crappy weather year-round (and plenty of long-aged whiskies to show for it), Kentucky can have blazingly hot summers and icy winters. Those seasonal variations accelerate barrel aging, pushing the liquid into the wood and pulling it back out.
The fact that bourbon must be aged in new charred American oak (Scotch is typically aged in previously used barrels) also means it gets more of the tannins that, when whiskey ages too long, wind up imparting a lot of heat and astringency to the finished product. And yet... many a booze collector mistakenly assumes that older is always better, and is willing to pay a steeper price for a higher number next to the age statement. Which, in general, makes collecting and flipping extra-aged whiskeys more pleasant than drinking them.
I still remember the first time I tasted a 30-plus year old bourbon, more than a decade ago. A friend in the industry had a small flask of it and offered me a taste. It was, the saying goes, like licking an oak stave — an oak stave coated with black pepper, no less. 'Yeah, it's pretty terrible,' he admitted. That very bourbon now sells for tens of thousands of dollars on the secondary market, and I wonder if a single one of the (very few) bottles produced has ever been opened and tasted.
Say what you will about a bourbon this old, the bottle is gorgeous. Photo courtesy of Diageo
When I was recently offered a taste of a 34-year-old I.W. Harper bourbon, distilled in 1989, I didn't say no, but I certainly didn't have high expectations. My skepticism grew when I heard the eleven bottles' worth of whiskey produced were harvested from four damn near completely evaporated barrels. They may have been selected and deemed worthy of bottling by Nicole Austin, longtime distiller/distillery manager and currently Director of American Whiskey Development and Capabilities (DAWDAC for short) for spirits behemoth (and I.W. Harper's parent company) Diageo. But my respect for her didn't change my opinion. I merely wanted to try it for the same reason George Mallory wanted to climb Mount Everest — because it was there.
Much to my surprise, I.W. Harper 34 Year Old Bourbon is... drinkable. Not amazing, but better than it has any right to be, given its circumstances. Oaky as hell, yes, but not chewing-tree-bark oaky. I got a ton of menthol and gentian on the palate; my host for the tasting, Zev Glesta of Sotheby's (more on them shortly), tasted 'horseradish and overripe cantaloupe.' At 63.1% ABV, this is no pinky-in-the-air refined sipper — it's more a hold-onto-your-hat, try-to-enjoy-the-ride bourbon. But like I said, it's not bad. And after I left a couple of sips' worth in my glass for an hour or so, it opened up quite a bit. The gentian notes I originally got were more like root beer, and the alcohol's bite was not quite as sharp.
The bourbon's provenance is a bit of a mystery — it was aged at the famed Stitzel-Weller distillery, which ceased operations in the early 1990s, but it was not distilled there. Educated guessers think it may be from the Bernheim distillery, but that hasn't been confirmed or denied.
The five bottles for sale (I don't know what will become of the other six) were auctioned by Sotheby's — all fetched in excess of $10,000, well above the pre-auction estimates. The project is a collaboration with famed actor/director/philanthropist Colman Domingo, with proceeds going to Native Son, described by Sotheby's as 'a platform dedicated to empowering Black queer excellence through visibility, leadership development and community-building initiatives.' The package, which includes bespoke labels, a silk scarf, and a paper ruff that goes around the neck of the bottle, explores the theme of Black dandyism and is unequivocally stunning.
In the end, a 34-year-old bourbon is a curiosity more than a serious sipper. But it's for charity — and for bragging rights, too. Owning one of 11 of damn near anything is pretty cool. Who knows if any of the proud owners of a bottle will ever actually open theirs. But that's what I'm here for — I tasted it so they don't have to. And I'm always happy to provide that sort of assistance.