Booze of the World: All in with Ten High Bourbon

“A True Bourbon.”

That was once the emphatic claim of Ten High, back when it was a cheap but honorable straight bourbon whiskey. Today it is a mere blend, 51% bourbon mixed with 49% neutral grain spirits, and it sells at about the same price. One of the sadder developments of the last 25 years is that this old stalwart has degenerated into brown vodka.

Ten High’s roots go back to the legendary Hiram Walker & Sons liquor company. Mr. Hiram Walker started out as a grocery clerk in Detroit in the 1800s and rose from rags to riches distilling a booze he called Canadian Club. His sons continued to pursue this noble calling into the Prohibition era before they finally sold out, though the company would continue to bear the Walker name.

Post-Prohibition, the new owners decided to re-enter the U.S. market with a flourish. They opened a massive new distillery in Peoria, IL and started pumping out the booze, including two new brands of bourbon: Hiram Walker’s DeLuxe and Hiram Walker’s Ten High. The name referred to Walker’s practice of aging the barrels in ricks stacked at least ten high. Tall rickhouses with good airflow make for better-aged bourbon, and the name was a promise that Ten High was professionally made, not some bathtub swill.

“No rough edges!” one 1930s print ad proclaimed. “Aging winter and summer for two years does it!” Two years, of course, is the bare minimum aging period to qualify as bourbon, but for the consumers who survived Prohibition—14 years of drinking popskull whiskey from questionable sources—real bourbon was mighty welcome. You couldn’t beat the price, either: 78 cents for a pint or $1.48 for a quart, according to the same ad.

Ten High soared through the ‘30s and ‘40s and continued to be a solid seller for Walker until the late 1960s. That’s when the U.S. whiskey market as a whole suddenly tanked. Bourbon got a reputation as an old man’s drink, un-hip, the stuff your Nixon-voter dad drank with his cigar. The Peoria operation was shut down, ending that city’s brief run as a booze mecca.

New ownership tried to revive the brand, starting with a new distillery in Bardstown, KY. The proof was upped to 86 and the aging process doubled to four years. An expensive advertising campaign gave Ten High a relaunch, with the “True Bourbon” ads emphasizing Ten High’s new Kentucky home. All this kept Ten High alive, if not exactly thriving, into the 21^st century.

In 2009, just when bourbon was getting hot again, Walker was acquired by the Sazerac Company of New Orleans. Sazerac has a large and diverse portfolio, ranging from Pappy Van Winkle at one end to Fireball at the other. You’d think they’d have room for unadulterated Ten High on their roster, but it was not to be. Instead, they lowered the proof to 80, diluted it with neutral spirits, and added “natural flavors” (vanilla is the only one I can taste). And that’s where Ten High stands today. Sazerac doesn’t even claim Ten High on its website, and you wonder why they bother keeping it around at all.

Apparently, somebody is still buying the stuff. No sane person would want to drink it neat, but I could see it working with a sweet and fizzy mixer. There’s worse rotgut on the bottom shelf, but unfortunately, Ten High’s high-flying days are over.

—Bryan Dent