American Whiskey History

09/18/2026

My favorite Halloween event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania is back!

On October 9, 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 27, and 29th, the Specters & Spirits whiskey ghost tour walks through New Hope, the most haunted town in America!

8 stops with spooky ghost stories paired with tastings and history...it's a blast!
Get your tickets today- before they sell out!
(Gift bags and skull-shaped glassware are included with ticket purchase.)

Walking WHISKEY GHOST TOUR of New Hope, Pa w/ whiskey & beer tastings along the way! GIFT BAGS & SKULL GLASS included with ticket purchase!

09/16/2026

Last week, I tasted an incredible whiskey at the Revival Vintage Spirits & Bottle Shop in Covington, Ky that represents the end of an era.

Brad Bonds was kind enough to open a bottle of T.W. Samuels whiskey that had been distilled in 1942 and bottled in 1950. (He and C. Smith are owners of the business.) The label was missing, but the tax stamp revealed its source to be the T.W. Samuels Distillery of Deatsville, Ky, and the sticker on the shoulder of the bottle read “8 Years old.” The fill level was high on the bottle’s shoulder, and the liquid was mahogany in color and pristine. For me, the most interesting thing about the bottle, besides the fact that its contents were insanely delicious, was that it had been distilled in 1942- just before an important transition took place at the T.W. Samuels Distillery. The whiskey in Brad’s bottle was manufactured during the final year that the Samuels family was still managing the output of its stillhouse.

In 1943, the T.W. Samuels Distillery in Deatsville was sold to Foster & Company of New York for $10 million. The sale of the distillery followed the retirement of Robert L. Block of Cincinnati, who had been president of the company since 1934. The distillery had history going back to 1844, and its ownership had changed many times, but somehow, the distillery’s production always managed to maintain its ties to the Samuels family.

Before Prohibition, T.W. Samuels’ distillery was known as the Old Judge Distillery, and it was located about a half mile east of Deatsville. After Prohibition, a new distillery (the T.W. Samuels Distillery) was built in an open field beside the railroad tracks at Deatsville Station. While Robert L. Block and the other owners of this newly erected plant were from Cincinnati (Country Distillers Products Corp.), T.W. “Bill” Samuels, great-grandson of the company’s founder, served as the company’s vice-president. Samuels was not the distiller, but he was able to manage the quality of the products being manufactured in the new facility. (The distiller, Morgan Edelen, had been distiller for the company since 1899, so he certainly helped to smooth out the transition to the new plant.) When Robert Block retired and the company was sold to Foster & Co. in 1943, there was little that Samuels could do. He left the company and his position was filled by Martin R. Doane of Joplin, Missouri. Doane had been distiller for an industrial alcohol plant (Ozark Mountains Distilling Company), which made sense because Foster & Company intended to manufacture industrial alcohol. The company later reorganized to become the Foster Trading Corporation. Perhaps it goes without saying that the character of the whiskey that was manufactured at the T.W. Samuels plant after 1943 was never the same. Samuels moved to Louisville in 1944, and in 1953, he purchased the Old Happy Hollow Distillery, a small distillery near Loretto that would become his family’s future (Maker’s Mark).

Getting back to that bottle of T.W. Samuels…When it comes to pre-Pro whiskeys, tax strips are handy in revealing the year they were manufactured and the year they were bottled. When it comes to determining the quality/value of antique whiskeys, knowing the history of the distillery and the circumstances under which that distillery operated when that whiskey was bottled is important. In many cases, a bottle's label can be misleading because it only reflects the period of time in which it was bottled. The brand name can also be misleading because brands were bought and sold and shuffled around to be manufactured in different locations. Thankfully, tax strips reveal WHEN and WHERE that whiskey was manufactured. Obviously, the warehousing of a whiskey affects the final outcome of a product, but the quality of any whiskey is determined by where and by whom it was initially produced. Companies like to talk about brand history and provenance in their marketing, but when it comes to pre-Pro whiskeys, the bottler has very little to do with the character of the whiskey in the bottle. What one looks for in a vintage whiskey is where and by whom it was manufactured. In the case of this TW Samuels bottle, the manufacturer was clearly Country Distillers before it sold to Foster & Company and, more to the point, before T. Williams Samuels left the company. This bottle was likely one of the last whiskeys to have been distilled by Morgan Edelen at T.W. Samuels Distillery in Deatsville. And after tasting that incredibly delicious whiskey, I can completely understand why the Samuels and Edelen families earned such stellar reputations. While several references hint that Bill Samuels, Sr. did not think highly of the products manufactured at T.W. Samuels Distillery, he was clearly referring to the whiskeys made AFTER 1943!

Sadly, the bottle pictured below is the only photo I took! You can see the Bakelite cap and the candle wax seal which, at first, may seem suspect to a vintage whiskey collector, but the cap was not unusual for the 40s and 50s and that wax likely helped to preserve that bottle's contents. The missing label also makes a bottle like this less than ideal for an auction, but that is PRECISELY what made Brad decide to open and share it. In the end, it doesn't matter what the bottle looks like. The whiskey is unbelievably delicious with no off flavors to speak of- many of which were probably eliminated by that Bakelite cap! The finish lingered on and on and on...It was an honor to taste it. Thank you again, Brad! It was a genuine privilege to meet you and to taste that beautiful whiskey.

09/14/2026

What an incredible article! This full page was published in Louisville, Kentucky's Courier Journal on October 26, 1941. It brilliantly summarizes the state of the American whiskey industry...6 weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor changed everything.

The introduction made me cringe a bit-
"This is not a greedy, grasping campaign of a trust, trying to rule or ruin every small business man who dares to take a fling at legal whisky making. It is not a cruel foreclosure on underprivileged men in a period of tight money, high interest and declining inventory values. Rather it is the studied decision of hard-headed, two-fisted operators, who have found mass distribution a perplexing problem for corporations with small capitalizations."

Studied decision, indeed. I disagree with the writer's assessment that the campaign to consolidate distilling interests was not a greedy, grasping campaign (capitalism is as capitalism does, right?), but he cuts to the heart of the issue quickly. The three-tiered system created a HUGE issue for America's independent distillers. Go big or get out. Distribution is and has always been the choke point of the liquor industry.

Before Prohibition, distillers were free to build their own networks for distribution. They could fund their own railroad or build their own satellite locations from which they could move products from one end of the country to the other. The Whiskey Trust recognized the value in these distribution networks and focused on buying up the largest companies with the largest networks. During Prohibition, clever businessmen narrowly focused their attention on distribution. Companies like Schenley and National Distillers created subsidiaries to manage product distribution. After Prohibition, the freedom that small companies once possessed to distribute their own products was removed. The largest companies had loaded brand portfolios that created a one-stop shop for second tier distribution companies. While the distilling industry was still pretending to exist as it had before Prohibition, it took less than a decade for reality to hit hard. The new three-tiered model had created a "perplexing problem" for the little guy. This article beautifully highlights the crossroad where the distilling industry found itself idling in 1941. 6 weeks later, once the country entered WWII and the industry shifted to the production of industrial alcohol, American distilleries were forced to pivot once again. Guess who was prepared to meet that challenge?

09/11/2026

Where did the word bourbon come from? (Yes, I realize I may be beating a dead horse, but I believe it’s worth it. My recent trip to historic Maysville, Ky inspired this post.)

I have seen every explanation for the origins of the term “bourbon”, but my reasoning is based only upon historic evidence, not on theory or conjecture- though I'd love to hear your thoughts on the topic.

Bourbon, like Parmesan cheese or champagne, began as a regional product that earned national and international recognition over time. Today, in the corporate world, when a brand becomes a household name that describes any/all similar products, it’s called brand genericide. (Leave it to corporate America to adopt a term that implies that the death of trademark is a wonderful thing!) “Bourbon whiskey”, however, was NOT a brand. It described a type of whiskey from a specific region. Before Monongahela rye, there was Pennsylvania rye and before Bourbon whiskey, there was Kentucky whiskey. There are plenty of examples of early ads placed by tavern or store owners becoming more specific in their product descriptions as cities grew and the need to differentiate oneself from competing businesses became more necessary. Product specificity became more common once our country began to establish dependable trade routes (better roads, shipping routes, ferries, canals, etc.). Regional specialties arose and began to earn recognition from consumers in neighboring counties/colonies/states.

Bourbon was not used to describe any whiskey at all until the 1820s. The earliest mention of “bourbon whiskey” appeared in print on May 24, 1821 in The Frankfort Argus. Frankfort, today in Franklin County, became the capital of Kentucky in 1792 and sat at the intersection of Kentucky’s three original counties (Fayette, Lincoln and Jefferson). It is interesting to see the earliest mentions of Bourbon whiskey appearing in the state’s capital. Several weeks later, the same ad appeared in “The Western Citizen”, a publication in Paris, KY. The importation of products created a need to provide descriptions for the consumer. French brandy, Holland gin, Monongahela whiskey, Cincinnati whiskey, Philadelphia whiskey, New York gin…descriptions like these were common and all appeared in ads before Bourbon whiskey showed up.

Bourbon County was formed in 1786 from Fayette County and was whittled down in size after Kentucky became a state in 1792. The early 1800s brought a lot of attention to the Bourbons due to the Bourbon Restoration taking place in France. Newspaper articles splashed the news of the political changes taking place abroad. “Bourbon” was becoming a recognizable word across the young American nation. There was a famous racing horse named Bourbon and even a popular type of s***f to***co called Bourbon. Pro-French Jeffersonians would certainly have welcomed a whiskey called “bourbon.” The first governor of Kentucky, who was pro-French, was largely responsible for making a deal with the Spanish to open up reliable trade traffic on the Mississippi River all the way down to New Orleans. It’s worth noting that the first appearance of “Bourbon County whiskey” in print (1824) was in a Natchez, Mississippi newspaper.

To add to all this “bourbon” discussion, the Georgia territory, which extended all the way to the Mississippi River until 1802, had been in dispute as part of the Yazoo-Georgia Land Controversy. And guess what the name of the Georgia “county” bordering the Mississippi was named in 1785? That’s right- Bourbon County! Of course, THIS Bourbon County, though short lived, would have been part of Tennessee and Alabama today. It didn’t stick and the borders of Georgia were pushed east behind the Chattahoochee River, but there’s no doubt that the use of the word “bourbon” was quite popular at the end of the 18th century into the 19th.

From what I have seen, there is no reason to believe that bourbon didn’t evolve the same way any other name has- from a consumer connection to quality and regional recognition. Bourbon may or may not have been manufactured in Bourbon County, KY as time wore on, but as long as consumers associated bourbon with good whiskey, it would continue to carry weight in advertising. The name “bourbon” would conjure images of old corn whiskey from the south just as Old Monongahela rye would conjure images of old rye from western Pennsylvania. It should come as no surprise to know that many of Pennsylvania’s most famous Monongahela rye whiskey brands were NOT manufactured along the Monongahela River or even in the Monongahela Valley! Kentucky distillers, just as Pennsylvania distillers had before them, adopted a name for their whiskeys based on the success that the name was having with consumers. It may have started with a handful of men calling their whiskeys “bourbon,” but the trend grew. Bourbon became a universally recognized whiskey style over a half century of building a name for itself. This reality of brand and name recognition remains unchanged today.

09/09/2026

A Visit to Old Taylor Distillery- Missing History.

I have not written anything the last few days, but the road trip that busied me during my time away was productive. I took a trip down to Kentucky to visit some very historic sites. One of these sites is well known by most whiskey enthusiasts, but I wasn’t there for the whiskey. I wanted to tour and photograph the site.

The stories I’d heard from John Lipman, writer of ellenjaye.com, about how the Old Taylor Distillery appeared when he visited in 1999 have always amazed me. He had been touring defunct distilleries since the 90s, and I hadn’t developed my love for American whiskey until the early aughts, so John has always been a wonderfully reliable and credible source for historic information over the years- not to mention a very good friend! During my tour of the Old Taylor Distillery (Castle & Key) on Sunday, I learned about the transformation of the distillery since it was purchased by Will Arvin and Wes Murray of Peristyle, LLC in May of 2014. It only took a year of construction and renovation for them to get the distillery up and running again with the help of Marianne Barnes as their distiller...but this relatively recent work on the site is well-recorded. Unfortunately, a small but impactful part of the distillery’s modern history has been entirely excluded from its timeline.

Old Taylor Distillery was closed by Prohibition but was refurbished for use by National Distillers in 1935. They operated the plant until at least 1972, but even after discontinuing production, the company continued to offer tours of the property as “Old Taylor Distillery and Museum” into the early 1980s. The plant remained idle until the distillery was purchased by American Brands/Beam in 1986. By this time, the property was only being utilized for its warehouses until about 1994 when Beam abandoned the site and put it up for sale. The Old Taylor Distillery and Museum, which included displays on the distilling process and plaques celebrating employees and partners that had been inducted into the “Old Taylor Hall of Fame,” was left to rot.

In 1994, Fulton Cecil Withrow and his partner, Robert Sims, of Stone Castle Properties, Inc. purchased the Old Taylor property for $400,000. They had been employees of National Distillers who were frustrated with Beam’s management of the site and with its unchecked state of disrepair. Withrow, an awarded Vietnam veteran, planned to revive the space and convert its bottling house into an antiques mall. He also planned to sell bottled water from the site’s famous keyhole-shaped spring and bottle his own whiskeys under the “Stone Castle” brand. He was successful at bottling sourced whiskey- see image of bottle below- and several articles were published in 1997 touting Withrow’s efforts. (One article mentioned in passing that Brown Forman was restoring the Labrot & Graham Distillery at the time, as well, which had been renamed Woodford Reserve.) Unfortunately, F. Cecil Withrow passed away in 2000, leaving the site without a caretaker. Another 14 years would pass, and mother nature certainly took its toll.

On Sunday, I saw the intense amount of restoration that has been done on the property since 2014. It’s obviously still a work in progress, but the site was far better than I could have anticipated. It’s fascinating to look at old photos and compare them to the distillery as it exists today. The old boiler room has been converted into the gift shop, but traces of the old boilers still remain! I would love to see post-Prohibition Sanborn maps to be able to compare and contrast the layouts. Much of the property had been updated before Prohibition (1920); the octagonal yeast tower and railroad lines were some of the glaring examples of additions not yet recorded on available Sanborn maps (1907). Changes were constantly being made in the early 1900s, and the property as it exists today, while well preserved, has been significantly altered by its owners over the years. It's a shame that previous owners didn't preserve the contents of the Old Taylor Museum so that the new owners could add their own stamp to it. It would be wonderful to be able to see how the property has changed over the years in a visual timeline or a display of some kind. It's a shame that the people inducted into the Old Taylor Hall of Fame back in the 70s and 80s have lost their place on the walls of this famous distillery.

09/01/2026

Well, this was a first for me😊 While researching Old Crow whisky, I came across an 1862 ad advertising both "Old Crow" and "Young Crow."

I have never heard of anyone using the description "Young Crow" before, so I needed to look more closely. Before excise taxes on whiskey were implemented during the American Civil War, warehoused barrels weren’t stamped or labeled and there was no expectation for distillers to do so. Distilleries sold whiskey to retailers who were free to choose whether or not to display their names on packaging. Liquor firms were free to advertise their wares as they saw fit, so they’d only use the distiller’s name if it was beneficial for sales. Why shouldn’t they differentiate a man’s whiskey as an old or young version of the whiskey they purchased? It seems odd to us now because “Old Crow” is such a household brand name, but it wasn’t always so.

"Crow whiskey", simply put, was commonly advertised during James Crow's years as a distiller in Woodford County, Ky (1833-1856) because his name commanded value. "Old Crow" or even "Old Old Crow" was used by advertisers in the 1850s to sell Crow’s whiskey after it had been allowed to mature for several years in buyers’ warehouses. "Superior Old Crow" or (my favorite) "Super Old Crow" began showing up in ads after Crow's death in 1856. I think these descriptions help to make an important point. "Old Crow" was not an official brand name until W.A. Gaines & Co. began enforcing their ownership of Crow’s name in the late 1860s. To be clear, neither W.A. Gaines & Co. or its predecessor, Gaines, Berry & Co., even existed until after the deaths of James Crow (1856) and Oscar Pepper (1865). Gaines Berry & Co. began leasing the Oscar Pepper Distillery in 1867. (No, the company was NOT founded in 1862 as is often stated. )

These age statement variations on "Crow whiskey" (young, old, superior, etc.) also help to drive home the fact that Old Crow was not sold by just one company. James Crow may have been the man behind the whiskey, but it was Oscar Pepper’s employment of James Crow and his ability to capitalize on Crow’s name that drove the creation of the brand in the 1850s and 60s. Oscar Pepper’s use of Crow’s name was a brilliant marketing strategy; The whiskey was delicious, but the name was catchy, too!

Crow was a Woodford County distiller. He worked briefly in the 1830s for Willis Field at his distillery- a few miles southwest of Versailles along Greir’s Creek (a tributary of the KY River). He went a few miles north to work for Alexander Johnson at his distillery along Glenn’s Creek (also a tributary of KY River), several miles northwest of Versailles. By the late 1830s, Crow continued his path north to begin working for Oscar Pepper, also along Glenn’s Creek. He remained with Oscar Pepper for about a decade until 1855 when he returned to Johnson’s Distillery. He lived on Johnson’s property until his death in April 1856.

The 1862 ad for “Young Crow,” placed by William H. Walker & Co., was advertising barrels bought from Oscar Pepper after Crow’s death. That “Young Crow” whiskey had been distilled by William Mitchell using James Crow’s old equipment and his original recipe. The only reason we know that is because the following year (1863), W.H. Walker & Co. describes the Crow whiskeys he owned as being 16 months to 8 years old. Those ages clue us into Walker’s barrels of Crow whiskey being made at the Oscar Pepper Distillery after 1855, or after Crow was no longer working for Pepper’s distillery. W.H. Walker & Co. was just one of many liquor firms buying from Oscar Pepper, by the way. Their business at 25 Main Street in Louisville dealt in all sorts of bulk spirits, so it's no surprise that they came to own hundreds of barrels of Old Crow!

08/28/2026

Charles Jacquin Et Cie, Inc., a.k.a “Jacquin’s.”
Jacquin’s is a Philadelphia-based distilling company that has somehow managed to fly under the radar during the modern craft distilling movement. Even as modern Pennsylvania distilleries began to make claims about being “the first this” and “the first that” in the early aughts, Jacquin’s sat quietly in the corner and said nothing. Meanwhile, they still held the distilling license that was first issued to them for their new Philadelphia location in 1933. Jacquin’s outlasted them all and never sought to publicize their status as Pennsylvania’s oldest. If you look at the licensee numbers (DSP) assigned to Pennsylvania’s distilleries, most of them have numbers between 15000 and 21000. Meanwhile, Jacquins is listed as PA-S-44. (Pennsylvania Spirits Producer 44)

I’ve not done too much research into the history of Jacquin’s because 1. They were a New York firm before Prohibition and 2. They were making cordials, not whiskey. Jacquin’s was originally a rectifying firm out of New York, and my focus was always on pre-Pro Pennsylvania rye distilleries. Now, that being said, Jacquin’s has an incredible story and Maurice Cooper, Sigmund Hochstadter, and Emanuel Osterman, who came to own the company after Prohibition, are very interesting historic figures in the spirits industry. Let's look at some of that history!

Charles Jacquin came to America in the early 1880s and established himself as a hotel owner and restauranteur in New York City. He had come from a prominent family of cordial makers in France, so when Sigmund Hochstadter, a local liquor dealer/rectifier in New York, met Jacquin, he convinced Jacquin to partner with him. Together, the two men (along with Hochstadter’s 16-year-old assistant, Emanuel Osterman) founded Charles Jacquin et Cie in 1884. Et Cie, by the way, is the French abbreviation for “and company.” They would produce old-world style cordials for an American market.

During Prohibition, Jacquin’s stopped making alcohol-based cordials and rectified spirits and began making “no-intoxicating beverages” consisting of “cordials, vermuths (sic), grenadine” and “special concentrated punch (all flavors), which (made) an elegant home drink…used for ice cream, puddings, sauces, etc.” Still in New York, Charles Jacquin and Sigmund Hochstadter kept their company alive with these non-intoxicating beverages. When M.Hochstadter died in 1924, he left 1/3 of the shares in the company to Osterman. In December 1933, almost immediately after Prohibition, Osterman reincorporated their New York cordial company in Philadelphia. The original location for the business was established at 16th and Callowhill Sts. In 1934, Osterman was in his mid-60s, so he chose to take on a much younger partner named Maurice J. Cooper (38-years-old), formerly an imported foods merchant and executive. The men continued to expand production at their original Philadelphia headquarters until 1941 when they moved production to Trenton Avenue, where the factory sits today.

Osterman remained board chairman and majority shareholder of the company until his death in 1962, a year after the company went public. Cooper would serve as president for the company, and his children, Ruth, Jerome, Nathan, and Norton Cooper, took on supporting roles within the company. The Cooper family kept Jacquins relevant within the post-Prohibition liquor industry landscape by maintaining their niche category in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. The company brilliantly bribed and coaxed their way into legitimacy even when larger companies were pushing out other competition.

Pennsylvania, with its state store system, remained a comfortable buyers’ market for Jacquin’s because they filled a niche that no other producer could. People wanted cordials and mixers for their cocktails and Jacquin’s supplied that need. The company faced a series of lawsuits for bribes and “pay to play” scheming in the late 1970s, but they came out of all of it fairly unscathed. This was largely due to Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board unofficially granting forgiveness for their transgressions (because they collaborated). Norton J. Cooper agreed to buy all of Jacquin’s assets for $13.6 million through his Delaware based corporation, Chatam International, Inc (unrelated to Chatham Imports). After the scandal, Jacquin’s threatened to leave Pennsylvania and move operations to Florida. Instead, the company was awarded tax incentives and given priority over other products by the state stores. Unsurprisingly, they chose to stay in the state that purchased most of their products.

Whatever their legal issues may have been, Jacquin’s remained very successful. They employed “missionaries” (brand reps) to put Jacquin’s products in every bar and restaurant in the country throughout the 1970s and 80s. There are few cocktail drinkers from Philadelphia or its surrounding suburbs that have not tasted a cocktail mixed with a Jacquin’s product. Jacquin’s famous “Forbidden Fruit” brandy was renamed “Chambord” in the 80s and was incredibly popular for the company. Chambord was sold to Brown Forman in 2006 for $255 million- in cash. That same year, Robert J. Cooper and Katie Cooper launched their own company, Cooper Spirits, out of the Philadelphia cordial company’s buildings. Their first product launched was St. Germain elderflower liquor. Cooper Spirits proceeded to release Hochstadter’s and Lock Stock & Barrel rye whiskeys, some of the finest and oldest rye whiskeys on the whiskey market today.

08/25/2026

Finally transferred my write ups on E.H. Taylor, Jr. onto my Dram Devotees blog. They were written back in March and April of this year. A big thank you to David Thomas Tao for the push:)

https://www.dramdevotees.com/a-history-of-e-h-taylor-jr.../

The following is a history in 7 parts. It covers E.H. Taylor, Jr.'s life before 1872.