Rich,
Thanks for the information. I knew that there were many strands of wild yeast, but did not realise that it was quite that many. I always thought the count was closer to 10 or 12. It would still be interesting to experiment with this process.
I have seen many historical documents with mash bills and such and I am curious as to what this whiskey would taste like. Part of that taste would be from the local yeast. I know several people that can tell from smell alone whether the yeast is right or not, so I would imagine that the same skill could be used to tell if the wild yeast was right or not as well. I often wondered if the best distillers in the early 19th century were simply the one with the best sense of smell and could tell when something was not right.
Now here is another question - if you have some wild yeast and placed in some backset, would that help make it more like the ones used before by killing off some of the variants?
Mike Veach