Sunday, August 25, 2013

Whatever Happened to Old Judge?


Otis Beam (right), one of the seven distiller sons of Joseph L. Beam.
Old Judge is a distillery, fairly important in its day, that seems to disappear from history almost as soon as it appears. Was it revived in some form after Prohibition? Not with that name, nor with its #1 brand. The distillery's pre-Prohibition best-seller, Old Fitzgerald, was owned by Louisville's Stitzel-Weller Distillery when Prohibition ended.

This picture, taken in 1961, may have been taken at the distillery once known as Old Judge. The man in the suit, on the right, is Otis Beam, one of the seven distiller sons of Joseph L. Beam. The distillery where this was taken was called 21 Brands. The picture comes from a neat little collection of 16 photos at the University of Louisville Library that can be found here.

21 Brands was owned by Francis T. Hunter, the gold medal winner in tennis at the 1924 Paris Olympics, who in 1933 founded 21 Brands, an importer and distributor of wine and liquor. In 1956, he bought what was then the Rocky Ford Distillery. According to the Dow Jones News Service, it had a production capacity of 40,000 barrels a year, about 2 million gallons. The purchase price was a little more than $1 million. Hunter sold it in the late 1960s to Sid Flashman, who changed the name to Double Springs. The final owner was Abe Schecter, formerly of Barton, who closed it for good in about 1978.

After consulting Sam Cecil's book as well as Trey Zoeller's, it would appear that 21 Brands was Old Judge, refurbished into a modern plant. According to Zoeller, it was also called Old Kennebec, whereas Cecil has those as two separate distilleries.

No one knows who established the original distillery on Benson Creek but it was owned by Charles Herbst, a major international wine and spirits dealer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Herbst always claimed it was established by John Fitzgerald, after whom Old Fitzgerald was named, but that turns out to be fiction. Herbst's Old Fitzgerald was, however, a very successful pre-Prohibition brand. A photo of the Old Judge Distillery, taken in 1906, was altered to serve as the Jno. E. Fitzgerald Distillery in advertising. Herbst's distillers at Old Judge were members of the Bixler family.

During Prohibition, Herbst sold the Old Fitzgerald brand but not the distillery to Pappy Van Winkle's Stitzel-Weller Distillery. What had been Old Judge was revived and modernized after Prohibition and went through a number of different owners and names, including Sam Clay and Benson Creek, before becoming Rocky Ford and then 21 Brands.

Distilleries like 21 Brands struggled to survive, even though bourbon was booming, because although they had a few small, regional brands they mostly sold bulk whiskey to non-distiller producers, a very competitive, low margin business. When sales began to trend downward at the end of the 1960s, everyone found themselves with too much inventory. Producers that had strong brands in their stables were able to continue but most commodity producers went out of business.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm having trouble following your opening paragraphs. Are you postulating that 21 Brands Distillery may have been Old Judge Distillery at some early stage?

Chuck Cowdery said...

My theory, at least (I'm not entirely convinced), is that the distillery known before Prohibition as Old Judge came back after Prohibition, updated and modernized, and was called many names, including for a time 21 Brands.

Chuck Cowdery said...

One problem in nailing this down is that there is overlap in the record between this distillery, Buffalo Springs in Stamping Ground, and Old Kennebec, which is also described as 'near Frankfort.' All three had Beams minding the still. Four of the seven brothers--Otis, Roy, Harry, and Desmond--are associated with one, two, or all three of those distilleries. I've seen Buffalo Springs but not the other two so I know that's separate and wasn't 21 Brands, although the windows in the picture look a lot like the windows in the buildings at Buffalo Springs.

EllenJ said...

Old Mr. Boston and Heublein come to mind.

By the way, there really was an Old Mr. Boston once, actually located in BOSTON, MA, not KY. I have a bottle of it from 1943 that we can taste next time you come to visit. It was distilled (in 1937) by Ben Burk at RD #4 in Boston, Massachusetts. The brand still exists, although I don't know if they bottle a bourbon anymore. But "Mr. Boston" has had more distillery relationships than Larry King has had wives. I think one of those was 21 Brands, by way of the Viking Distillery in Albany, Georgia. Barton (and therefore, Sazerac) owns the brand today, and presumably makes whatever spirits are bottled under that name.

I don't know if Heublein ever bottled a bourbon, but they certainly didn't own a bourbon distillery. Neither did Austin Nichols until 1971. Their Wild Turkey bourbon was sourced from several of those independent distilleries that no longer exist, except for the one (Ripy Bros./J.T.S. Brown in Tyrone) that they eventualy bought for themselves.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Chuck, for answering my question so quickly. Now in retrospect you were quite clear in your opening paragraphs. My brain must have been on pause. I love your posts on bourbon history, especially mysteries such as what happened to Old Judge.

Chuck Cowdery said...

I must confess, I rewrote it a little after your astute comment.

Goonboy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David said...

The area of the distillery was known as Kennebec. Kennebec Hall, the county orphanage was close to the distillery.
In WWII the Louisville & Nashville RR established a flagstop there named Kennebec, it was later renamed Sam Clay after a bourbon made at the distillery. This flagstop lasted till the L&N ended passenger service on this line in 1955.
My uncle, E. T. Morse was general manager of the 21 Brands distillery. The photo collection in the UL archives has a photo of him at his desk. Sitting on his desk is a bottle of bourbon labeled for a brand they made during the Civil War Centennial.
21 Brands also sponsored a sprint car racing team. The car's number was 21. An Ezra Brooks decanter was made of this car. E. T. was also the manager of the race team.

Anonymous said...

Chuck
Can you give me any information on the Kennebec Hall Orphanage? Where it originated, who owned it? Who ran it? anything about it??

Anonymous said...

Can you give me a run down on Woodford Reserve Distillery? Who ever owned the property?

Chuck Cowdery said...

I have no information about the Kennebec Hall Orphanage.

The Woodford Reserve site was owned by Brown-Forman from the 40s until the 60s, then again after about 1995. I don't know who owned it in between but they didn't do anything with it.

Before Brown-Forman it was owned by the Labrot family, E. H. Taylor before that, and the Pepper family before that.

mozilla said...

Chuck,
I have researched the distilleries on Benson Creek a number of times...and have come to the conclusion that the 21 Brands distillery and the Old Judge distillery were two different sites.
According to the Sanborn map....the names of the SC Herbst distillery were also knows as Old Fitz, Laval & Mayse, and Old Judge and were located on a plot that resided between Benson Rd and Benson Creek...where the train tracks were located between the road and the creek.
The site of the 21 Brands facility are located to the outside of the road and opposite the creek side with the train tracks located on the wrong side of the plant. Therefor, we have two different facilities.
Judging by the current google maps and the few pictures I have seen of the Old Judge facility....I am guessing that the 21 Brands site was slightly east or slightly west of the Old Judge facility. The Old Judge facility was along one of the those two curves in the road where the creek curved with it and the tracks lay between the road and creek.

Unknown said...

Wow! I'm so excited to read this. My dad, Curtis Durham, hauled coal to this distillery. He was friends with E. T. Morse. I remember when I was a little girl they would call my dad, sometimes in the middle of the night, to bring coal because the water was getting over the road. My mom and I would go with dad. When we got there they would send a jeep out to meet us to follow them in because you couldn't see the road for the water. Ever Christmas E. T. Morse gave my dad a turkey, decanter of Ezra Brooks and a bottle of bourbon. I've looked for information about 21 Brand distillery and I'm glad to find this. Do you know the address of the distillery? Thanks

Unknown said...

Old Judge was located just past the end of the of the L&N passing track at West Frankfort and on he north side of the tracks. There is still a private crossing there. Twenty-one Brands was located another mile or so to the west on the south side of the tracks. Jerry Sudduth

Bruce Beam Phillips said...

Using Google maps I see the old 21 Brands buildings still standing. My grandfather, Otis, was master distiller there in the 60's.

Use the address 1511 Benson Valley Rd, Frankfort, Kentucky and do a street view. The old guard shack is there and the 3 story white building behind it was part of the distillery. The windows of that building look the same as in the photo with my grandfather.

Bruce Brownell said...

I see no mention of "21 Special", a whiskey made in Kentucky, I think. 21 Brands was an offshoot of the 21 Club owned by Jack Kreindler and Charlie Berns in NYC. The Volstead act made them split their bar from their distribution, hence 21 Brands. My grandfather was a pal of Frank Hunter, and eventually became Chairman of 21 Brands until it was sold to Foremost McKesson in the 1970s. His name was Edgar Adsit.

KBM said...

I have one of the decanters featuring the race car with the number 21 on it with the Ezra Brooks 155 label on the side. I was friends with E.T. Morse and spent many hours in his basement/shop building motors and cars. He also built a quarter midget race car that I used to drive at a track in Frankfort. I used to rabbit hunt on the distillery property when it was in full production in the late sixties. I always loved the smell of the mash going through the re-drier not to mention the smell in the bottling house.

Unknown said...

https://commercial.century21.com/listing/1501-benson-valley-road-frankfort-ky-40601-REN018008896

Jamie Wagoner said...

I was gifted a bottle that I am not able to find ANY information online about it other than a mini bottle that was available in the 50s. We believe that this bottle is 1956 or older. It is a pint bottle of BirchBrook Whiskey, 21 Brands Distillery. Can anyone help with information about it?

Unknown said...

A friend and I are looking closer at whether or not Old Judge and 21 Brands were the same distillery. Looking at pictures, etc. it looks like Old Judge was on the other side of the road compared to where some of the buildings of 21 Brands still remain. I wonder if it was one of those times where the government allowed the DSP to stay with a newly built distillery (21 Brands) to make things easier and the paperwork less. We've brought up this with Mr. Zoeller and hopefully can discern the truth. To be continued...