Aggie Therapist said:

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Brauny has been quiet here……rough times

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I'm surprised that hasn't brought him here more often!

Finally opened up my Booker's Springfield Batch I bought about two months ago after wife and I closed on our house yesterday. Outstanding juice.

There's a ton of great history about sourced whiskey that you may be interested in. A lot of the best whiskey around right now is blended sourced product.

Paying two companies, yes, but I don't think you are overpaying. MGP model was mass produce barrels and don't pay for marketing, bottling, etc. Other companies didn't invest in barreling, but did in the other stuff.

MGP juice is amazing.

I'll let other users explain it to you. I'm more of a "are you kidding me" type of guy on the boards.

Several brands made their name with older stocks of MGP before the run on their products for every new brand under the sun. Smooth Ambler, Smoke Wagon, and High West are a few good examples. Early 10yr Smooth Ambler was VERY good. As these brands and all the newer startups either transition to their own juice, or have to survive on younger and younger MGP, their product typically just isn't what it used to be.

MGP makes good whiskey, but most of it is really good when it's older. Between their own brands they've spun up and buying Penelope (who was using MGP from the start), they thought is they are holding onto their best stuff for themselves, as should be expected, but we'll see.

MGP (technically Ross & Squib now) has a very interesting history. They were previously the Seagrams plant. In fact if you stumble onto some Rebecca Creek 16yr, it was Seagram's juice, and supposedly very very good.

Tom Cardy said:

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There's a ton of great history about sourced whiskey that you may be interested in. A lot of the best whiskey around right now is blended sourced product.

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The sourced whiskey debate is an interesting one. I don't mind a sourced whiskey as long as they are clear where it comes from.

To me there are three basic types of sourcing -

1 - Those distilleries who buy sourced whiskey until their own distillate becomes available, ie Rebecca Creek. We all know that RC got some honey MGP barrels. I am kind of mixed on this type of sourcing. I understand why they do it, folks need income, they just need to be transparent with the source. using RC as an example if they have a product that is sourced but really good, ill grab a bottle with no qualms, but it typically wont be something i randomly grab off the shelf like i do with bottles that are distilled by (even if those do suck a lot of the times)

2 - Blenders - Bardstown et al. This is a whole different situation. I personally don't buy these but i know some of the best bottles are coming from boutique companies blending various sourced stuff. Personally it isn't for me but i respect it as they are usually very transparent with what they are doing.

3 - Relabels - i think this is the group ConfidentAg is talking about. Those bottles where they come up with a fake name and story for their product and slap on a fancy label when it literally is just a bottom of the barrel MGP or even worse Dickel barrel that they slap a fancy label on and charge 80 dollars. I think we can all agree these should go away.

I will say it will be interesting to see what happens now that MGP has their own in-house brands. How will that change things? We all know they can make some damn good whiskey. What about the TW brands that clearly list being distilled at Barton? Do we see more of that?