I am often asked about the history behind the wheat recipe Bourbon; It is a short history to write, but a long history over all. It starts in the early 19th century. There are several mash bills dating to the... Continue Reading →
In a letter of January 1902, Edmond H. Taylor, Jr. admitted that he had some barrels of whiskey for sale that were ten years old and thus were not available to be sold as bonded whiskey. The bonding period for... Continue Reading →
I recently was invited to do my Bourbon Country Institute at the Ben Holladay Distillery in Weston, Missouri. They wanted to do a two day event with the first day, Friday, being a class for the staff of the Distillery... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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 →
