A fellow whiskey enthusiast and a reader of this blog (aka a “WhiskeyBender”) sent the following amazing specimen of a pre-prohibition bottle of Golden Wedding Whiskey. For those of you who remember my Dad’s Golden Wedding post, this is quite the polar opposite of those examples. Distilled by Jos. S. Finch & Co. of Pittsburgh, PA, this beauty has held up well over the years and looks like it would be Mmmm mmm good. You don’t see old stuff out of Pennsylvania that isn’t Rye very often. This bottle comes to us from Slovenia. How it got there, I have no idea. The owner plans to open it upon the receipt of “first great news.” I would say getting up in the morning would work for me! Send samples, please.
Let me introduce myself. My name is David Spaid, former editor of The Miniature Bottle Collector, which is now out-of-print. I’ve been collecting bottles of all sizes for over 50 years and, apparently, I’ve had some impact on my son, Scott. From time-to-time I will be writing for WhiskeyBent.net. Cheers! Now, on to the article.
Perhaps some of the most beautiful bottles ever made were Golden Wedding whiskey in carnival glass. I’ve seen them in full pints before but don’t let that mislead you. The bottles pictured here are 1/10 pint miniatures and probably the best set of variations ever assembled in one place (my collection). Let’s take a closer look.
Golden Wedding Ryes
The Ryes pictured above are major variations in that one is an “Old Rye” and the other is “RYE Whiskey A Blend”. Notice the one on the left does not mention Schenley as the distiller. The one on the right has the distinctive Schenley gold medal neck label, however.
Golden Wedding Bourbon Whiskies
These three bourbons are my favorites of the bunch. Rather than ryes, we have bourbons with similar variations like the first two bottles. The bottle on the far right has to be the most handsome of them all and Schenley’s had no problem putting their name and gold seal on this one.
More Golden Wedding Ryes with the Schenley’s masthead.
Finally, we have another set of ryes all with the Schenley’s masthead and gold seals. As far as dating these bottles go, I’m going to leave that to Scott to figure out so I can test his knowledge. Do you own a different variation of a Golden Wedding bottle in any size? Let Scott know so he can catalog it on this blog.
