Japan has been a major market for Bourbon for a long time. It could possibly trace its roots to the 1850s when Commodore Matthew Perry first went to Japan in a bit of gunboat diplomacy and forced open the Japanese… Continue Reading →
In early days of Kentucky distilling history, the Ohio River was the natural trade route for goods produced by the settlers. Kentucky is blessed with many navigable rivers and it was easier to load trade goods on a flatboat and… Continue Reading →
On March 3, 1897, President Grover Cleveland signed the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897. It was the last piece of legislation that he signed as President of the United States. He signed the act and got into the carriage that took… Continue Reading →
Janet Patton, of the Lexington Herald Leader newspaper, recently wrote an article about counterfeit bottles of Blanton’s Bourbon being sold on the market. This is not a new problem. There have been counterfeit bottles of whiskey since the time that… …
There are many parallels between what was happening to the Bourbon industry in the 1890s and what is happening in the industry today. I thought I would take a look at the industry then and now. First during the 1890s,… Continue Reading →
In the year 1950, the whiskey industry in America was just recovering from the hard times of the past. Prohibition ended in 1933, but it was in the middle of the Great Depression and the distillers needed to build their… Continue Reading →
Repeal Day has become quite an event since I first started celebrating it in the late 20th century. My first celebration of Repeal Day was with some co-workers from the Filson Historical Society. We went to D’Maries, an early Bourbon… Continue Readin…
I have in my archive, several copies of William C. Biles Cincinnati Price Current booklets. They are interesting little pieces of history, full of historic information on American Whiskey. I thought I would share with my readers some of this… Continu…
Winter has always been my favorite time to visit a Distillery. Distilleries are very hot places to work in or visit. The heat of the stills make them very hot places in the summer. That is why traditionally, distilleries close… Continue Reading →
When you look at Sanborn Insurance Maps from the pre-Prohibition era, you often see a distillery warehouses labeled as “Patent Warehouse”. These are warehouses with barrel racks. In 1879, Frederick Stitzel patented the system of barrel racks we see in….
