Author name: Chuck Cowdery

Whatever Floats Your Boat

 Navy foresters at NSA Crane assess a white oak tree set aside for future use in repairing the USS Constitution. (U.S. Navy/Bill Couch)Whiskey has only four ingredients and one of them is white oak, but there is a certain 50,000 acre stand of whit…

A Tale of Two Jacobs

 The furnace at Bourbon Iron Works, established by Jacob Myers in 1791 in Bath County. It was the first iron mill in Kentucky. Jacob Boehm was born in 1760 in Pennsylvania. You may know him better by the Americanized version of his name, Jaco…

Every Label Tells a Story, Don’t It?

 Front labelThis pint bottle, probably from 1937, has me hooked. It raises so many wonderful questions. Such as: how can a blend of straight whiskies contain whiskey that is just eight months old? Clearly this product was made when fully aged whis…

The World that Made Me

 Isaly’s was a chain of dairies and stores that began in Mansfield, Ohio, my hometown.For a simple advertising sign, the image above packs a ton of information. It tickles my memory. It is easy to date because coonskin caps such as the one wo…

Hard Pants and Rabbit Holes

 Alice gets it.As a writer I have two audiences, you and me. It’s kismet when they align. When I started this blog in 2005, I intended it as a platform for whatever I felt like writing. In those early days I wrote about American whiskey but also p…

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