Last week I was at my computer and was feeling down and dufass. So I reached over and moving aside my Jack Daniels and Platte Valley whiskeys found my last bottle of B. J. Holladay's Private Keep. There was just about two shots left in the bottom of the bottle. So I took a couple of ice cubes out of a glass from which I had been drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and found the least dirty drinking glass in the room and poured that last liquid from the bottle over the cubes. It was as mellow a sipping whiskey as ever.
I was turned on to B.J. Holladays by Dayton Duncan in his book ' Out West: A Journey through Lewis and Clark's America '. I won't go into detail about the sampling contest recorded in the book, but to say B.J.'s Private Keep won.
It took me a while to find a source, but finally I found it at the McCormick Country Store in Weston, Missouri next to the McCormick Distillery itself. Over the years I have made three pilgrimages there and stocked up on B.J. Holladays Private Keep. It usually took me about six months to sip my way through a bottle, unless there was a wedding or funeral or something like that that required serious thinking.
It was July 3, 2004 the last time I was there. I was celebrating the Lewis and Clark Bi-centennial and stopped by and bought a case while chasing the L&C keel boats up the Missouri. In the fall of that year I talked with Duncan in Bismark, N.D. and reminded him of his comments about that particular whiskey. He said he hadn't had any in decades so I told him where to get it.
The whiskey has more of a L&C connection than just Duncan's book. They discovered the clear water spring there in Weston and noted that the site would make a good boat landing and the water was good enough for a distillery. A decade latter both were opened there.
Any ways so I sipped away my last Private Keep. I decide then that I would go to Weston hang out a couple of days and stock up at the Country Store. So I wrote then an e-mail knowing that
a. they weren't always open
b. they only distilled B.J. Holladay ever so often
c. they sometimes sold out of it.
I got this message back:
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 12:52 PM
From:
"Country Store" cstore@mccormickdistilling.com
To:
(drlobojo)
Sorry, we no longer make B.J Holladay. We sold our last bottle 2 years ago. Thanks for asking. We still have Gold Label, and you should be able to get it in Oklahoma. Next time you are up our way, stop in to see us.
Shit shit shit, double shit.
And to think I actually even gave some of the bottles away as gifts.
Had I known last sips would have waited for a very special occasion such as my funeral or something.
Oh yes, a message to the Weston Chamber of Commerce no B. J. Holladays no need to visit you.
I was turned on to B.J. Holladays by Dayton Duncan in his book ' Out West: A Journey through Lewis and Clark's America '. I won't go into detail about the sampling contest recorded in the book, but to say B.J.'s Private Keep won.
It took me a while to find a source, but finally I found it at the McCormick Country Store in Weston, Missouri next to the McCormick Distillery itself. Over the years I have made three pilgrimages there and stocked up on B.J. Holladays Private Keep. It usually took me about six months to sip my way through a bottle, unless there was a wedding or funeral or something like that that required serious thinking.
It was July 3, 2004 the last time I was there. I was celebrating the Lewis and Clark Bi-centennial and stopped by and bought a case while chasing the L&C keel boats up the Missouri. In the fall of that year I talked with Duncan in Bismark, N.D. and reminded him of his comments about that particular whiskey. He said he hadn't had any in decades so I told him where to get it.
The whiskey has more of a L&C connection than just Duncan's book. They discovered the clear water spring there in Weston and noted that the site would make a good boat landing and the water was good enough for a distillery. A decade latter both were opened there.
Any ways so I sipped away my last Private Keep. I decide then that I would go to Weston hang out a couple of days and stock up at the Country Store. So I wrote then an e-mail knowing that
a. they weren't always open
b. they only distilled B.J. Holladay ever so often
c. they sometimes sold out of it.
I got this message back:
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 12:52 PM
From:
"Country Store" cstore@mccormickdistilling.com
To:
(drlobojo)
Sorry, we no longer make B.J Holladay. We sold our last bottle 2 years ago. Thanks for asking. We still have Gold Label, and you should be able to get it in Oklahoma. Next time you are up our way, stop in to see us.
Shit shit shit, double shit.
And to think I actually even gave some of the bottles away as gifts.
Had I known last sips would have waited for a very special occasion such as my funeral or something.
Oh yes, a message to the Weston Chamber of Commerce no B. J. Holladays no need to visit you.
6 comments:
By the way B.J. Holladay (Ben) established and ran the Overland Stage Company and Mails, was part owner of the Pony Express, and various and sudrey other historical adventures in the West. Oh yes, and it was B.J. Holladay that gave use the iconic Western version of the Concord Stage Coach so familiar to the mobies and TV.
Every sip was a connection to history.
mobies? OK, movies.
Discontinued products. Sore subject. My favorite pipe tobacco
Crosby Square, was discontinued about 1990. Never able to find anything else close...
So coming up soon is a trip to Weston after all. I will make it a point to scour the surrounding mom and pop stores for a chance dusty bottle of the nectar Private Keep.
I have access to an unopened fifth of B.J. Holladay's Private Keep. What would you pay for it????????
Thanks for the article, I have an unopened bottle and wondered where it came from.
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