Portland Hotaling T-55

This year has simply been one of the best years in memory for GOOD whiskeys! I am feeling like a broken record, but it has. Here is one that turned up far from it's home...along with 17 other glob fifths! This hole started out with Bromo Seltzers and similar quality for the first 5 ft. Then a 2 foot clay cap, and PRESTO CHANGO instant embossed glob fifths for two solid feet in depth, and 5X8 feet in demension. This one is now on the shelf. A HAMMER whittled T-55 Portland Hotaling. I believe there are perhaps 8-10 of these at the most in collections. Most are a light honey amber, and are remarkably plain given their age (late 70s) and being non air vented. Every once in awhile "the one" comes out, and this example qualifies to me! It is a chocolate with 100% diamond whittle, bubbles galore, and an enormous top. The embossing is bold and crude. Best of all, in spite of being completely covered in other whiskeys,it is mint. My photographic skills are not good enough to show the crudity, but maybe they can provide an idea of how crude it is.It was not dug in Oregon, and the people involved wish to remain nameless and faceless, but all in all it was one of the most stacked whiskey holes in awhile.

Portland-revisited

My recent purchase of another Rick-Rack(T-56) has spurred me to share a photo of it and it's predecessor , the open face Portland Hotaling(T-55). Sorry about the quality of the photo, but this old shack has exactly two windowsills, both of which have colored glass in them.

A.P. Hotaling opened the Portland, OR, Agency around 1873, and expanded rapidly in the Northwest area. Shortly after he opened offices in Seattle, W.T., as well as Spokane(Falls)W.T.
It is generally accepted that the first bottle Hotaling used in his endeavors in the Portland area was the T-55, or Open Face Portland fifth. This bottle was probably used to promote his wildly successful J.H.Cutter Whiskey, but could also have been filled with his other big names up there, Monongahela White Rye and Our Choice Whiskies. The Rick-Rack came into use in the late 1870s, supplanting the earlier bottle as Hotaling's container of choice for his products. Hotaling remained in Portland until 1894, at which time he sold his interests to the Rothchild Brothers.

Hotaling also used the more familiar bottles such as the A No 1(T-40), OK(T-41), "Bird"(T-42) and the various molds of the Circle cutter(T-44s), throughout the regions where he had outlets and agencies. It is likely that the earlier of these often seen bottles were used conjunctively with the ones that were blown specially for A.P. Hotaling's Northwest Agencies.