When Prohibition was made law in 1919, taking effect in 1920, there needed to be a law passed to enforce the 18th Amendment. The Republican Congressman from Minnesota, Andrew John Volstead, introduced the enforcement law to Congress and it passed… Co…
When Prohibition went into effect on January 16, 1920, many distilleries had barrels of whiskey stored in their warehouses. Some of this whiskey was being taken out by illegal means and sold on the black market. In 1922, Congress passed… Continue Rea…
Back in August 1917, the government passed the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act. This measure was passed, in theory, to control food and fuel during the First World War. It passed with the support of prohibitionists. What the act… Continue Reading …
Master Blender Billy Leighton’s recent decision to step aside from day to day work at Irish Distillers gave his longtime apprentice the dream job of… Read More
Valuations for rare whiskies have started to slow down after being one of the best performing alternative investments over the last ten years. The latest… Read More
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…
There is a romanticized image of Prohibition era speakeasies in the modern world. There are many bars that call themselves “speakeasies” in most every major city in the United States and even overseas, where speakeasies were not found in the… Continu…
Our latest Happy Hour Live webcast features OurWhisky.com co-founder Becky Paskin just after she unveiled the Our Whisky Foundation to increase diversity within the whisky world. We’re also joined by first-time guest cocktail and spirits writer Camper English and Scott Brunow from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and the Scotch Test Dummies for a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from medicinal cocktails to the latest SMWS releases and more. We’ll start this episode off with breaking news, though…as the United States and Great Britain have cleared the way for the end of the UK’s tariffs on Bourbon and other American whiskies Read More »
August 23, 2021 – Jack Daniels became the world’s best-selling American Whiskey without an age statement, but that’s not how Jack Daniel himself made his whiskey. Before his death in 1911, Jack Daniel regularly bottled whiskies with age statements ranging from 10 to 21 years old. After Prohibition ended and the Motlow family resumed distilling, the lack of older whiskies forced them to bottle Jack Daniel’s without an age statement. That changes with the debut of the new Jack Daniel’s 10 Year Old Tennessee Whiskey, the first whiskey from Jack Daniel’s in more than 100 years to carry an age Read More »
Brian Nation is best known for his work as Master Distiller at Ireland’s Midleton Distillery, and he shocked Irish whiskey lovers when he stepped down nearly a year ago to join the startup O’Shaughnessy Distilling Co. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Covid kept him from making the move with his family until a couple of weeks ago, so he did much of his work remotely from Ireland with occasional trips to Minnesota. Now, the distillery is complete along with Brian’s first batch of Keeper’s Heart Irish + American Whiskey, a blend of Irish Single Pot Still and grain whiskies with American Rye Read More »
