Kentucky whiskey was somewhat lighter than the rye whiskey from the East, and it was a product they could call their own. proof) in 1825 was seven gallons per person over the age of 15. Did Lincoln enjoy the warmth of an occasional glass of whiskey? Among its offering is a whiskey, sold in ceramic jars and bottles, that Canale names Old Dominick. It is the federated church, and under all circumstances loyal to the church. To a large extent, it worked. When Prohibition ended, not everyone was happy about it: Dry Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas (during Prohibition, most politicians were referred to as Wet or Dry), one of the authors of the eighteenth amendment, made a speech on January 16 (the date that Prohibition went into effect) of every year since 1920, commemorating the Noble Experiment. By 1786, the whiskey we now call bourbon was known as Kentucky or Western whiskey--just so people could distinguish it from Pennsylvania, Monongahela, or Maryland rye whiskey. The distillery operated for a few years, but Hope was shattered and forced to close when all of the capital was spent. Some canny souls of the period between, say, 1800 and 1840, probably savvy distillers who managed to put two and two and two together and eventually arrive at six, must have noticed that, not only was this aged whiskey smoother than the raw product straight from the still, but also that the stuff that came from expensive brand new casks didnt have quite the finesse of that from the used casks that had been charred to clean them up. But still, no hard cash was changing hands. But, in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln was forced to reintroduce the excise tax on whiskey to help pay for the Union war effort. Rumors of the Whiskey Ring were rife at this point, and many upstanding aides at the White House breathed a sigh of relief when Benjamin Bristow was appointed to the Treasury--he was a very well respected man. It is the first Scotch to sell for six figures. In December of that year the Distilled Spirits Institute (DSI) was formed in the New York offices of the Schenley Products Company. The Cascade distillery in Tullahoma, Tennessee, was founded in 1877 and later purchased by Dickels company. It was split into many smaller companies, but some of these companies then joined together again as the Distilling Company of America, and in 1899, that company found itself under federal investigation. Though many types of grapes were native to America, the wines they produced were unlike the ones the Europeans were used to, and the colonists tried to cultivate European strains. The George T. Stagg Distillery went on to become the Ancient Age Distillery and was sold before Schenley was taken over. (And we are willing to bet that if you had to choose between a one-year-old straight whiskey and a well-made blended whiskey, you, too, would pick the latter.). Most goods at this time were sold locally by portions--the buyer knew to bring his or her own flour sack, barrel, tub, or jug to the purveyor, who filled it with flour, oats, lard, or whiskey. Hard drinks were not sold in "shots". Another humiliation occurred after Grants re-election in 1872, when Vice President Schuyler Colfax was investigated for taking bribes. But until the mid-eighteenth century, whiskey was made in relatively small quantities, mainly by farmer-distillers, and without distinctive or consistent techniques. By 1900, many of the smaller temperance societies had either given their support to or had become part of the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893. A popular anecdote has it that a careless cooper accidentally let his staves catch fire and conveniently forgot to tell the distiller who bought the barrel about the mishap. Browns goal was to assure the public that they would finally know exactly what whiskey was in the bottle. The following morning they discarded the frozen portion, leaving them with very strong cider--the alcohol content was concentrated in the liquid that didnt, or couldnt, freeze. And even east--to exotic ports such as New York City where, according to Luc Sante, author of Low Life, Lures and Snares of Old New York, for under a nickel, you could drink all the whiskey you could manage by sucking it through a rubber tube until you had to stop to take a breath. He had erected stills at Mount Vernon in the 1770s in order to produce rum, and a little later on, James Anderson, his Scottish plantation manager, is said to have been the man who persuaded him to plant rye with a mind to producing whiskey. The truth is no one knows. Distilling wasnt merely a case of, Oh, I have some extra grain, might as well make some whiskey. It was a much bigger decision than that. If temporary refuge from their plight lay in a slug of whiskey, they would find a way of getting it. The choice was simple: Let it mold and rot, or change its form as the ancient alchemists did and produce the water of life. (The word whisky is derived from the Gaelic word uisgebaugh, [WEEZ-ga-bochh] meaning water of life. If you say the word quickly enough--or with a substantial quantity of whiskey in your system--it becomes, with a little shortening, WEEZ-ga, a word that was Anglicized to become whisky.), Distilling grain gives farmers two distinct avenues for profit-making: The distillate, by virtue of having a high concentration of alcohol, can be stored almost indefinitely, and liquor is relatively easy to transport--much easier than huge sheaves of corn or rye. (A wonderful twentieth-century example of this process can be seen in the case of A. Smith Bowman, a farmer in Virginia who, in 1935, produced Virginia Gentleman Straight Bourbon Whiskey using grains grown on his farm, made barrels from the trees on his land, and used the residues of his distillate to feed his farm animals.). The straight wooden staves that are used to form a barrel must be heated in order to bend the wood into the familiar barrel shape. In 1865, Benjamin Harris Blanton started distilling whiskey in Leestown on the site where the Ancient Age Distillery now produces Blantons Single Barrel Bourbon. W. L. Weller (W. L. Weller Bourbon), whose grandfather, Daniel, had owned a distillery in 1800, formed a wholesale whiskey business in 1849, using the slogan Honest whiskey at an honest price.. The first money used for the investigation went to reporter Myron Colony, who was hired by the Treasury Department to gather evidence against whoever was responsible for misdirecting the excise taxes. Albert Stevens Crockett, historian for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, detailed some of the colorful antics that occurred at this bar in The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book. However, it is also true that most people of the time thought that all their neighbors were involved in the antics associated with illegal liquor, when in fact, although many drinkers might have kept a bottle at home, the speakeasies were frequented by a relatively small percentage of the population. In the early years of the twentieth century, large food companies had already started shipping foodstuffs all over the country, and there was growing concern about the preservatives and dyes being used, as well as the sanitary conditions in the packaging plants. They didnt seem to care that these very impurities were responsible for the very flavor of the whiskey. According to Gerald Carson in his book, The Social History of Bourbon, one such tax collector, who had employed the services of a dozen soldiers to guard his house, had it burned to the ground nonetheless. Also in 1935, the Austin Nichols company, previously concerned solely with the food business, took an interest in whiskey and other liquors. The black-market price for whiskey was, in 1863, about $35 per gallon, compared to about 25 cents for the same amount at the end of 1860. But it wasnt until the following year that Carry Nation actually wielded the hatchet that became her trademark when she destroyed a saloon in Wichita. The name firewater comes from the practice of cowboys or tradesmen exchanging whiskey for goods from the indigenous populations. It was cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, and milk in the 1820s than to buy whiskey. Cutter, Chicken Cock and Old Forrester. In 1893, one of the most colorful characters ever to grace the whiskey industry, Julius Pappy Van Winkle, entered the whiskey business as a salesman for W. L. Weller and Son. of Louisville, points out that, although quinine and laudanum were used medicinally in the mid-1800s, few other medicines, apart from whiskey, were available. Okay, we have whiskey made using corn as the predominant grain, and we have some of that whiskey being aged in charred barrels. A. Smith Bowman, a farmer in Virginia who had been in the whiskey business prior to Prohibition, started making Virginia Gentleman bourbon in 1935. After watching people in Saghetti Westerns and Civil War Documentaries shoot whiskey like it was nothing, I was wondering about the strength of alcohol in the 19th century. Rye whiskey was still very popular during the early twentieth century, and the number of bottlings of Pennsylvania Rye or Monongahela rye whiskey generally outnumbered the bourbons in advertisements of the time. And the law had won. In 1830 fewer than 50 miles of railway tracks existed in the United States; 10 years later there were almost 3,000 miles of railroad, and by 1850 you could travel over 9,000 miles on steam-engine trains. Schenley, under the guidance of its owner, Lewis Rosenstiel, had acquired a number of distilleries, brand names, and quite a stock of whiskey during Prohibition. When straight tax collectors who were not part of the ring were due to call, the distillers were forewarned to play safe and pay up. The other two formulas use less straight whiskey but add flavorings such as tinctures of cloves and allspice. By 1934, his company owned the George T. Stagg Distillery (Ancient Age) and the James E. Pepper Distillery (James E. Pepper whiskey) among others. 19 gallons were needed to produce one 16-inch naval shell. Elijah Craig Barrel Proof. At the turn of the century, in Britain, blended Scotches were the cause of much controversy when single malt Scotch producers sued certain retailers of blended Scotch for selling an article not of the nature and substance demanded. Blended Scotch, they said, was a silent spirit, whereas a pure malt went down singing hymns. The Distillers Company (a group of blended Scotch producers) fought back, claiming that because single malts contained many more impurities (flavor-giving congeners) than blends, theirs was the purer spirit. We are tremendously proud to release the first known Bottled in Bond Bourbon produced in Maryland since prohibition on March 4th, 2023 at the distillery. It just didnt taste the same. this 85 proof whiskey . The years between 1920 and 1933 are usually associated with speakeasies, bootleggers, bathtub gin, and gangsters, and, indeed, for some, those were the highlights of the decade. Indeed, Lincoln said just that; but he was not applauding the use and enjoyment of liquor. The biggest problem that faced the wets was that not enough people in the beverage alcohol business took the drys seriously--most people thought that if they ignored the drys, they would go away. proof). Daniel Weller (W. L. Weller Bourbon) floated into Bardstown on a flatboat in 1794. When groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) sprung up, the whole country started talking, once more, about the evils of drink. During the dry years, Seagram had used the same name in Canada, but American bootleggers sold an inferior whiskey that they called Golden Wedding, and thus the public was still very aware of the name. These guys meant business. This was by no means an uncommon practice. The traditional price for a bottle of cheap whiskey in a cowboy saloon was two bits (25 cents). And at times, the reverse is true--whiskey has affected the nation itself. In Europe, the Great War broke out in 1914, and although President Woodrow Wilson initially declared that the country would remain neutral, on April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany. In 1904, the Cascade Distillery (George A. Dickel) was enlarged, making it the largest distillery in the whole of Tennessee at that time. The Molasses Act of 1733 levied five shillings per hundredweight of sugar, six pence per gallon of molasses, and nine pence per gallon of rum. Virginians and pioneers from North Carolina, on the other hand, usually made their way to what became the Bluegrass State through the Cumberland Gap--a route that took them through the Appalachian Mountains on the Wilderness Trail.. Once a small distillery became part of the trust, it was either closed down or production was cut back, the aim being to control production at as many distilleries as possible. The Sassenach. According to an approximate guide in the Dictionary of the American Brewing and Distilling Industries by William L. Downard, the consumption of pure alcohol (200? Whatever his product actually was, however, was strong enough to get a whole bunch of native Americans so drunk that they scalped and killed him in 1622. Since most people were used to the bold body and heady flavors of good whiskey, gin was far preferable to vodka, a spirit that was virtually unknown in America at the time. Its tempting to think that, with that law under their belts, Grant out of the way, and a somewhat standardized method of production, the whiskey men of America were able to sit back and make some money. These were to be trying times for the President. Needless to say, however, soldiers on both sides were, for the most part, hungry, cold, frightened, and sorely in need of solace wherever they could find it. Happily, the atmosphere was nowhere near as oppressive as it had been for our forefathers at the beginning of this century. By most accounts, Prohibition wasnt so dry after all. The Reverend Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, is often recognized as being the inventor of bourbon, but that claim is completely unsubstantiated. Though temperance societies had sprung up at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and grew stronger, larger, and more adamant about their quest after the Civil War, gone were the days of espousing moderation. Taylor William Samuels (Maker's Mark Bourbon) was operating a commercial distillery in Deatsville in 1844. Follow the American Whiskey Trail and the Distilled Spirits Council on Twitter! George Garvin Brown (Old Forester) and his half-brother, J. T. S. Brown, went into the wholesale whiskey business in 1870. Later, in 1861, he did, however, add his signature to a temperance declaration that already bore the names of John Quincy Adams, James Buchanan, Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Jackson, James Madison, Franklin Pierce, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, and John Tyler. And north. The major players in what became known as the Whiskey Ring, were General Orville E. Babcock, Grants secretary; John A. McDonald, the regional superintendent of the Internal Revenue, headquartered in St. Louis; and Benjamin Helm Bristow, the man who initiated the investigation into the affair when he became Secretary of the Treasury in 1874. Years later, under the stewardship of Oscar and Master Distiller James Crow, their distillery reformed and modernized producing whiskey in the United States the distillery revolutionized the concepts of sour mash and yeast propagation. But, in the late 1860s the use of hinged metal molds made it easier to make glass bottles in greater numbers and at far more reasonable prices. Six distilleries were given permits to sell medicinal whiskey during Prohibition--A. Ph. However, they had to contend with a certain Dr. Wiley, head of the Bureau of Chemistry, a part of the Department of Agriculture, and a true believer in straight whiskey. A Few Other Whiskey Men Who Appeared in Kentucky Before 1800, All of these families helped bring the tradition of American whiskey-making into the nineteenth and right through to the twentieth century. These are mere incidents in its progress. The company was acquired by the Jim Beam Brands Company in the 1980s. The Whiskey Ring agents claimed to have a higher purpose in their treachery; they told distillers that the dollars they collected were going into a special fund to help re-elect Grant. Both spirits are made with a mash bill of at least 51% corn and aged in new charred oak barrels. Most of these were of the plainest design, though handsome in their simplicity. Suddenly though, from out of the woodwork, Betty Ford, Ringo Starr, and Liz Taylor came clean, publicly said goodbye to John Barleycorn, and a new interest in sobriety was born. At one point Wiley is rumored to have taken a bottle of bad whiskey to President Teddy Roosevelt who examined the product and declared that if people could no longer get a decent glass of whiskey, it was time that something was done about it. Furthermore, the solids left behind from the distillation process were usable as cattle feed, thus, for farmers, producing whiskey made darned good business sense. They had no points to pay on the closing, no smooth broker taking a percentage, and no rent to pay until the Revolutionary War ended (The Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783). To accomplish this, Hamilton persuaded Congress to introduce tariffs on imported goods, tax spirits, and charter the Bank of the United States, which would hold the governments revenues and stimulate economic growth by investing in American businesses. And Grant was returned to office in 1872. The company had $100,000 in capital and bought 100 acres of Louisville land where they built a huge distillery. This is the all-important filtration system, in which whiskey is dripped, through a minimum of 10 feet of sugar-maple charcoal before it is put in barrels for aging. In those days, rum was known by many different names: Rumbullion, rumbustion, rumbowling, kill-devil, rhumbooze, and Barbados water were all common terms for the distillate of sugar cane or molasses. Heres a list of prominent whiskey men whose products hit the shelves between 1800 and 1860 (The current-day whiskeys with which these families became connected are noted. The rum business in the United States was doomed, but its demise created plenty of room for the up and coming whiskey industry. However, much whiskey was being sold in bulk to rectifiers and bottlers of the time, and the problem of unscrupulous wholesalers (and retailers) adulterating good whiskey just had to be tackled. Whiskeygate--the Tale of the Infamous Whiskey Ring. According to Oscar Getz in Whiskey, An American Pictorial History, by 1860, on a per-capita basis, Americans were drinking over 28 percent more spirits than they had consumed just a decade earlier. Whatever brought settlers to Kentucky and however they arrived, the hardy souls who arrived after the corn patch and cabin rights deal was over bought or bartered small parcels of the large tracts of land held by speculators. They were out to prevent accidents and to help those with a drinking problem take care of themselves. Nobody stopped making bourbon, rye, or Tennessee whiskey simply because sales werent as good as expected; they dealt with the situation as best they could. According to most reports, Sylph was a woman said to have had an extra-marital affair with Grant, and she was a woman who had pestered him ever since. Whiskey was rationed during the war, and some brands were discontinued. According to William L. Downard, author of the Dictionary of the History of the American Brewing and Distilling Industries, Peorias whiskey business was an offshoot of the citys active grain mills--surpluses were used to make whiskey. . Pardons were offered to anyone who agreed to comply with the law henceforth. In 1935, a group of investors opened the Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown. Imports included Dewar's Scotch, Jameson Irish Whiskey and Canadian Club Whiskey. Only time in wood gives it color, and only time in charred wood results in the crimson-hued tint that is peculiar to bourbon. It was partially due to these efforts that Prohibition would be repealed some 13 years later. By 1945, Americans were consuming about three times as much rum as they had in 1941. This page is part of a series Liquor in the 20th Century. proof), but by 1865 they had risen to a whopping $2 per gallon, the exact same amount that would be levied after Repeal, almost 70 years later. Exploring unchartered lands, they learned to survive by hook and crook. The story is documented in A Memorial History of Louisville, 1896, and includes the comment that the New Englanders went back to their rum leaving the Kentuckians to their whiskey. Felix graf von Luckner, a visitor to America during Prohibition, painted a marvelous scene of the effects of the experiment in his book, Seeteuful erebert America, 1928: Prohibition has created a new, universally respected, a well-beloved, and a very profitable occupation, that of the bootlegger who takes care of the importation of the forbidden liquor. For more information, please visit http://www.gazregan.com. It was probably similar in shape to a Hersheys Kiss, with the top knot narrowing into becoming a pipe that would carry the vapors to a vessel where they would condense. It goes just as fast and just as far as public sentiment of the church will permit. Interestingly, the Redemption Website contradicts this information by listing that only 600 bottles were produced. Some of them filtered the whiskey they purchased in bulk in order to rectify it, taking out some impurities and rendering the whiskey somewhat smoother. Well, he certainly didnt want to use his own name on them--they were, after all, fairly incriminating--and it seems that Babcock and McDonald used Sylphs name as a kind of inside joke when exchanging correspondence. Overall, the Civil Wars effect on the whiskey business, by no means negligible, was to whittle down the number of whiskey distilleries and distillers--a fact that probably didnt upset temperance advocate--and onetime tavern keeper--Abraham Lincoln. The English were going through a bit of turmoil on their home turf at this same time. According to Roseann Reinemuth Hogan in her book, Kentucky Ancestry, a churchman of the time referred to heaven as a Kentucky sort of a place. Well, any old place with decent topsoil would have sufficed for the farmer-distillers of Virginia at the time. Even aspirin, which was discovered in 1849, wasnt used medicinally until the end of the century. Sometime during the mid-1980s, people who were wont to throw $20 on the bar and stay there until it was gone, were no longer able to spend it on four or five Screwdrivers or seven or eight beers. During the Whiskey Rebellion, some Pennsylvania farmers fled to Kentucky, adding to the number of distillers in the new state. In fact, although pot stills were used by most of the legitimate distillers, some poorer folk were still running it on the log. This was a backwoods method of distillation that seems rather convoluted--but it worked. Just as their counterparts in Scotland had done, the American producers of blended whiskeys argued that their products were purer than straight whiskeys since they contained fewer impurities. They have Texas Pecan (my fave, even straight up over rocks), Coffee, Pumpkin Spiced, Honeysuckle . Luckily for the distillers, the FACA was controlled by Joseph Choate, a man who had been against Prohibition from the outset and who said that he intended to use as little external control as possible. FACA became the Federal Alcohol Administration in 1935, and the following year it issued updated classifications on all liquors. Multiply the amount Americans drink today by three and you'll have an idea of what much of the nineteenth century was like." What exactly was going on in the 1800s?
what proof was whiskey in the 1800s
what proof was whiskey in the 1800s