Jack Daniel’s brand family (2025)The photograph above was used today by the Kentucky Herald-Leader to illustrate a story about quarterly results from Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman. As a public company, Brown-Forman’s quarterly results…
Finished last night after I got home from the Marty Stuart concert in Skokie.I have a running joke with another writer on the whiskey beat. When we contrast our experiences with producers, she inevitably quips, “yes, but you’re Chuck Cowdery.”That I am…
Karl liked his brewski as much as the next guy.According to etymologists, the word ‘socialism’ has its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. To many on the political right, ‘socialism’ is a word they use to scare people, …
That’s a wrap.Some of you figured this out before I did. The last post on this blog was August 4th, more than two months ago. I’ve never posted on a regular schedule, but two months is a long break. I knew I was wrestling with some things and did…
In 1991, in anticipation of 200 years of Kentucky statehood, which occurred in 1992, the Kentucky legislature appropriated money for the state’s public television network, KET, to award grants to independent producers to create original programs …
Stamping Ground is a small town in Kentucky’s Scott County (pop. 780). It is about 25 miles northwest of Lexington and eight miles from Georgetown, the county seat. Settled in 1790, it was named for the bison-trampled earth around a fruitful spri…
What might have been? A brand new distillery, shuttered by its lenders.Kentucky’s best source for dependable bourbon news is the Lexington Herald-Leader, but they put some noses out of joint with a recent article about four unrelated but negative…
Mr. and Mrs. J. K. Cowdery, July 1, 1950.My mother’s family was Roman Catholic and devoutly so. My father’s family was, as he described it, “vaguely Protestant.” They didn’t go to church and didn’t talk about religion. He had, however, been bapti…
Denver’s Leopold Bros is an example of a successful, independent craft distillery.Many new non-distiller producers want to become distillers, or at least say they do. Some eventually build or buy a distillery, but many don’t. The term “non-distil…
The former Seagram’s Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana was the source of many “craft” whiskeys.Craft distilling grew through the 80s and 90s, but slowly. It took off as the 20th century transitioned into the 21st. Other related phenomena w…
