The odds and ends that are left when a distillery is sold or shut down are typically referred to as orphans and are retained by the previous owners until they can either be sold off to someone else or some other use is found for them. This was the source of the whiskey that became Rhetoric.

These whiskeys were all distilled at the former Bernheim distillery, between 1990 and 1993, and have the same mash bill. It’s not clear whether the whiskies were at some point blended together or how Orphan Barrel handled the different years.

They have spent the bulk of their maturation at the Stitzel-Weller warehouse. It’s possible that some of the whiskey spent its first few years in the Bernheim warehouse.