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….
When I started working at the Stitzel-Weller Distillery, I crossed a railroad track every day going into the distillery. This track had a spur leading up to the distillery building. It was no longer in use, but had been in… Continue Reading →
I was filing my backlog of papers and I found an interesting article from a 1936 Spirits magazine on the popularity of cocktails served in hotel bars. The Manhattan cocktail replaced the Martini as America’s most popular cocktail in that… Continue Re…
Before Prohibition, Paducah, Kentucky was an important Bourbon town. Isaac Wolfe Bernheim and his brother Bernard started their business in Paducah. Dreyfuss and Weil had a distillery in Paducah. Early Times was being distributed by Friedman, Keller &#…
I am often asked as to when I think was the “Golden Age” for American whiskey. My general thought is that there is no such thing as a “Golden Age”. Every era has made both excellent whiskeys, as well as… Continue Reading →
