Bottle 15: Chicken Cock Kentucky Straight Rye
Chicken Cock Kentucky Straight Rye
Distillery: Region/Country: Bardstown, Kentucky
Age: 2+ years
ABV: 40%
Cask type(s): Grain Bill: 95% Rye, 5% Malted Barley
Tasting Notes
- Nose: Dominant Spices, Pepper, with a hint of Cinnamon, Grassiness and sweet Oak Lactones
- Palate: Tremendous complexity of spices, vanilla, butterscotch, pepper with a hint of dryness and slight overtones of citrus and oak
- Finish: Very long, slow peppery finish with a hint of sweet honey and a wonderful buttery mouthfeel
Whisky Stuff
Chicken Cock is an old brand of whisky, originally starting up in Paris, Kentucky in 1856.
“Chicken cock” was a popular name for a rooster in the southern United States. Prior to the Civil War, it was a symbol of defiance. Its origin goes back to the War of 1812, when American ships were under attack by British ships on Lake Champlain. Legend has it that a spent round broke open a chicken coop on board the USS Saratoga and a rooster flew to the rail of the ship and began crowing incessantly, inspiring the Americans. Organizations including the Democratic Party would use the chicken cock as a symbol of strong will and defiance.
They survived prohibition by moving their production up to Montreal, Canada, which was then smuggled into the US in tin cans. Duke Ellington writes about it in his memoirs; from the distiller’s website:
Chicken Cock was smuggled across the border in tin cans, where it rose to fame as a popular serve at some of the era’s most famous speakeasies, including the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem. At the Cotton Club, when patrons ordered a “Chicken Cock,” waiters would present the tin can tableside and ceremoniously open it to reveal the bottle of Chicken Cock Whiskey inside. Duke Ellington writes about Chicken Cock in his memoirs, referring to the “brand that was served in a tin can.” At a rumored $15 per bottle Chicken Cock wasn’t for the light of pocket, but it was a small price to pay to secure a prime table near some of the greatest musicians of the era.
Ultimately, Chicken Cock was lost to a fire in the mid-1900s. What we drink today is a revival of the brand, started in 2011.
Advent Reflection
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.
Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory to the Lord, and declare his praise in the coastlands.
Alleluia 1
He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth. Isaiah 42.4
Suddenly, now, in the first of four of Isaiah’s Servant Songs, the tone has changed. The shifting, careening plates of rock under our feet have fallen into place. The torturous labor appears finished. Resolution is coming! What a joyous, mature, supple, marvelous text! “Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth! (v.10).”
Perhaps now, with these passages, we begin to catch a breathtaking glimpse of an answer to the question we raised at the beginning of this week: Why shouldn’t God just let the haughty and ruthless carry on? Given our unending failures, why shouldn’t chaos, violence, and death have their way? Today’s passages settle on an answer something like this: Because all that God has made is still good. It is worth saving. If the haughty and the ruthless were permitted to carry on, then they would undo God’s ongoing act of blessing humanity and all of life (Genesis 1:22; 8:22-9:1; Exodus 1:7). If the inattention, the magic, the sleep of our time and indeed of all the ages were permitted to gain the upper hand, they would bring chaos and ruin; they would dismantle God’s stunning handiwork. They would obstruct God’s desire to have the creation be the blessing that God intends it to be! This is why God chooses to humble the haughty and ruthless.
As citizens in pursuit of public justice, this too forms the source of our passion. God did not send his son into the cosmos to condemn it, but to save it through him. The world court exists for blessing, not for condemnation.
And so it is that all of creation from every corner bursts into exuberant song - from the sea and all that is in it, to the coastal lands and their inhabitants, the desert and its towns, the villages and their inhabitants, all the way to the tops of the mountains (v10-12)! Creation sings because the weakest have been protected: the eyes of the blind are open, the prisoners are released (v.7), the bruised reed miraculously survives, and the candle’s dying flame does not get blown out (v.3). In the economy of the Kingdom, the practice of justice and righteousness are intimately linked to the fertility and inhabitability of the creation. The creation is finally attuned to the ways of God.
In the end, all of God’s people will be led as if in a new exodus out of Assyria, Babylon, Rome; out of unjust, skewed family, economic, and political relationships; out of the dark shadows and into the light; out of the burning heat of all of this and into the cool shade of the trees. Then the song on everyone’s tongue will be: Alleluia! Advent, the coming of God to dwell among us: Alleluia!
Footnotes
Walsh, Brian J., J. Richard Middleton, and Mark Vander Vennen. The Advent of Justice: A Book of Meditations. Edited by Sylvia Keesmaat. Illustrated by Willem Hart. Sioux Center, Iowa. Dordt College Press, 1994.↩︎