The New Unicorns: a $20 Handle

 

Screenshot from the Binny's website, 5/2/2025.

Traditionally in the whiskey world, a "unicorn" is a whiskey that is highly sought but rarely seen. Usually, the term is applied to high end limited releases like the Van Winkle line, Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, and other expensive expressions that seem to appear only on the secondary market, at prices many times their MSRP.

This is a different kind of unicorn, also highly sought but rarely seen, a handle (1.75 L) of excellent quality bourbon for $20 a bottle.

I call this to your attention not because I expect or want you to clean out Binny's, but because this is a good example of something we'll see more of, starting now, as everyone in the distribution chain looks to blow out excess inventory.

I've written about this particular bourbon before. Binny's is the biggest chain retailer in Illinois, with 46 locations. Clark & Sheffield is their house brand. The bottle I wrote about in August could be linked to Sazerac, but house brands can and do change suppliers. That's not important. The point is that a good, fully mature bourbon at $20 for a handle is my kind of unicorn.

This is not a unicorn you put on a shelf and admire. This is one you put on the countertop and drink.

I was browsing Binny's website to see what kind of bourbon bargains presented themselves. This one popped right out. I suggest you do the same with your favored retailers, perhaps more often than normal, because I expect we'll see more of this kind of thing. Right now, Binny's also has handles of Evan Williams and Jim Beam White Label for just $2 more than the Clark & Sheffield. They also have nice mark-downs on handles of Larceny ($36), Maker's Mark ($43), Knob Creek ($52), Bulleit ($43), and Woodford Reserve ($60). The markdowns range from 14 to 20 percent.

The price on Maker's, at 17 percent off the regular number, reminds me of a time, maybe ten years ago, when Maker's briefly stopped producing the 1.75 liter size because demand was so far ahead of supply. They figured they could serve more customers by keeping the smaller sizes supplied. How times have changed.

This is what we can expect going forward, lots more deals. Nobody wants to lower prices permanently, but the right kind of promotional pricing will help producers handle the present oversupply, that and distilling a little less. These are adjustments. Bourbon is not crashing. This is normal. The last decade was not. 

We can do our part by taking advantage of good deals when they present themselves.

The products mentioned all come from major, legacy producers. What about the many new contract producers and their customers? What about crafts?

Recently, a 7-year-old bottled-in-bond wheated bourbon priced at $24.99 for a 750 ml caught my eye. It was an unfamiliar brand, but those are impressive credentials. I did a little checking. I learned it was a one-off private label created by an independent bottler for a national retail chain. The bottler got a great deal on a barrel lot from a contract distiller and packaged up a great deal for the retailer and its customers. Although the distiller maybe took a haircut, this sort of thing is good for everyone, especially we drinkers.

But you have to keep your eyes peeled.

On the other hand, a major craft producer just announced a limited time price cut on their flagship whiskey. They needn't have bothered. Nobody crosses the street for a 10 percent discount, not in this environment. Any professional marketer knows that. The crafts are new at this. They'll learn, though some may not learn fast enough to stay in business. 

My Popes

 

The seven popes so far in my lifetime.

My first pope was Pius XII. He died a few months after I took my First Communion. Our catechisms were old and the picture on the title page was of Pius X (1903-1914), but we also saw pictures of Pius XII and they looked about the same. As six-year-olds, we weren’t taught much about his history. 

What I remember most about my second pope, John XXIII, is not his elevation so much as the events surrounding the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which John called but he died before its completion. It was presided over by my third pope, Paul VI.

Everyone in my world was excited about the modernization coming out of Vatican II and about our new Catholic president, also named John. 

Paul seemed bland compared to John, but he faithfully carried out the changes instituted by the Council. I was an altar boy. (I believe “server” is the gender-neutral term.) The prayers we had to learn were all in Latin. We faced the altar during mass, not the congregation. I remember well the transition to the mass in English, facing the congregation, and other changes. I was in high school by then, still serving occasionally, but more frequently doing readings. Instead of suits and ties we wore turtleneck sweaters and love beads.

I also sang in the choir, in the loft at the back of the church, with the pipe organ. I was kicked out, ostensibly because I got caught shooting spitballs, but mostly because I’m a terrible singer. Then we started to have guitar masses, initially playing in the loft with the choir, but eventually in front. I’m not very good at that either but was, apparently, good enough. I was, however, very good at the readings, so I was asked to do that more and more.

In the parish school we had the sisters of St. Francis from Joliet, and diocesan priests from the Diocese of Toledo. The parish had a Monsignor and three priests throughout my time there. They all taught at the school. We also had lay teachers, but all religion classes were taught by a priest or nun. 

I would characterize our education as humanistic. 

The school and parish were completely integrated. My parents were both from big cities, so they told us big city Catholic schools weren’t like that. Almost everything I did was connected to the church and school, like my Boy Scout troop, for instance. School dances were held either in the school’s gymnasium or the church basement.

What I remember most about Paul’s papacy was Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), his encyclical on contraception and reproductive ethics. I was, after all, a teenager at the time. My parents practiced the "rhythm method," the only form of birth control sanctioned by the Catholic Church. They wanted to stop at two kids but had six. After my sisters were born, I learned that Catholic birth control also involved finding a sympathetic Catholic gynecologist to prescribe a hysterectomy when a couple decided their family was complete. 

Paul had a long papacy, 15 years. By the time of his death, I had drifted away from the church. I was living in Kentucky then. I don’t recall ever entering a church while I lived there. 

Paul’s long tenure was followed by one of the shortest, John Paul I, who barely made it a month. His successor, John Paul II, my fifth pope, served for a phenomenal 26 years. I had mostly left the church by then but was never hostile to it and followed developments as they occurred. If I saw the inside of a church, it was back in my hometown for a wedding or funeral. After I moved to Chicago, I checked out the cathedral. It was close to my office. It reminded me of my church back home.

Benedict XVI was my sixth pope and Pope Frank was my seventh. New guy will be number eight. Let’s hope for another good one.

What Happens When America's Major Distillers Jump on a Trend?

 

American malts from the biggest producers.

America has always been able to make malt whiskey, we just didn't. But with the bourbon boom maturing, American distillers have branched out. 

One branch, rye whiskey, nearly dead when the bourbon boom began, has grown even faster than bourbon in the 21st century. Most bourbon brands now have a rye counterpart. Heaven Hill introduced the world to straight wheat whiskey (not to be confused with wheated bourbon) more than 20 years ago. Now Suntory has a wheat whiskey, produced at Maker's Mark under the new Star Hill Farm brand.

The latest branch is American single malt (ASM). Brown-Forman launched a Jack Daniel's ASM in 2023, at about $100. Suntory created a new brand, Clermont Steep (about $50), for its ASM rather than use Jim Beam, Maker's Mark, or one of its other American whiskey brands. Brown-Forman also has a Woodford Reserve malt (about $40), but it's not an ASM. Diageo's is an ASM, sold under the Bulleit label (about $65), but Diageo didn't make it. To the best of my knowledge, neither Heaven Hill nor Sazerac sells an American malt yet, but I know both have made them experimentally.

American single malt has been discussed for years but only became TTB-official recently. 

The future of American single malts is by no means assured. One of the leaders in the movement to make ASM legit was Oregon's Westward Whiskey, which recently filed for bankruptcy.

The fact that several majors have jumped on the bandwagon doesn't mean ASM will succeed. Back in 2013, there was a similar trend that started with craft distilleries, but which the majors jumped on quickly: white whiskey.

Craft distillers had created the white whiskey category a few years earlier, ostensibly as a way to generate revenue while their whiskey aged. If they were making a bourbon or rye mash, that's what their white whiskey was. Mixologists praised their bold, spicy character as a great cocktail ingredient and their clear appearance appealed to people for whom vodka is the quintessential cocktail base.

At the time, an informal survey of whiskey enthusiasts showed that while most found white whiskey interesting, few drank it regularly. No one reported buying a second bottle.

Although all whiskey must, by law, have minimal contact with wood to be called 'whiskey,' it can be for as little as five minutes, too brief to affect flavor or appearance. Unlike Europe and most of the rest of the world, the U.S. has no minimum age requirement for whiskey. It just says the spirit must be 'stored in oak containers' in order to be called whiskey. It doesn't say for how long.

Over the years there have been efforts to get the TTB to add an age requirement, without success.

The rap on white whiskey was that it was simply white dog, whiskey distillate straight from the still, too hot and harsh to be truly enjoyable, especially neat or on-the-rocks, the way most whiskey enthusiasts drink. This continued to be true despite the sometimes hyperbolic claims of micro-producers for whom it was bread and butter.

Then both Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam jumped in. Although both products were bottled at a mild 40% ABV, they approached the subject differently, from the micros and from each other.

Beam's product was called Jacob's Ghost, after 18th century family patriarch Jacob Beam. It was standard Jim Beam bourbon, aged one year, then heavily filtered to remove the color and harsher flavors. The result was still raw, but much milder than white dog, with significant amounts of corn body and barrel sweetness. 

Beam called its product white whiskey, Daniel's did not, because it was not whiskey.

As the press materials said repeatedly, Jack Daniel's Unaged Tennessee Rye was the first new grain bill used at Jack Daniel's since Prohibition. "While many rye products only contain the required 51 percent rye in their grain bill, Jack Daniel’s Unaged Rye consists of a grain combination of 70 percent rye, 18 percent corn and 12 percent malted barley."

Jack Daniel's Tennessee Rye was not whiskey; it was neutral spirit. Essentially, Jack Daniel's vodka. Or so the label said.

Jack Daniel's Tennessee Rye and Jacob's Ghost had similar tastes, but both were very unlike the typical craft white whiskey of the period, or any vodka.

The terms 'neutral spirit' and 'whiskey' are mutually exclusive. A product can't be both. You can't put neutral spirit into a barrel and someday harvest whiskey, although Daniel's implied that was what they were doing with the phrase, "it's just a taste of what's to come."

The whole saga of JD Tennessee Rye got weirder and weirder until they changed the classification to "Spirits distilled from grain." 

But that was its own little drama. Today, Jack Daniel's sells its mature rye whiskey and has created another new mash bill for its ASM. It sells no white whiskey. Neither does Suntory. Jacob's Ghost once again sleeps with the angels. About the only white whiskey you'll find today is corn whiskey, which always was the exception to the aging requirement.

Most of You Reading this Should Be Reading Something Else

 

The New Reader is on its way to the Post Office.

The Bourbon Country Reader is a one-of-a-kind newsletter from the same source as this blog. But it is not the same content. The Reader is news, history, and analysis of American whiskey you won't find anywhere else. It is the oldest publication devoted entirely to American whiskey.

If you enjoy the writing you find here at The Chuck Cowdery Blog, there is a good chance you will enjoy The Bourbon Country Reader too when it arrives in your mailbox about six times a year. It is modestly priced and advertising free, unlike virtually everything else in your life. Subscribe now to rediscover the pleasure of old-fashioned words on paper, savored perhaps with a well-aged bourbon or rye.

The Reader itself is a bit of bourbon history. It debuted in 1994 with something like 17 subscribers. It has grown a little bit since then. The Reader has literally tracked the Bourbon Boom from beginning to now, when it seems to be entering a new phase. This new issue is dated as March 2025, even if it did get mailed a week into April. (It says right on the front page, "Always Independent & Idiosyncratic.") This new one is issue #1 of Volume 23.

If you find yourself coming here, to the blog, for straight talk about the American whiskey industry, you probably should be reading The Bourbon Country Reader too.

Give it a try. A six-issue, approximately one-year subscription is just: 

$25 for mailing addresses in the USA. 

$32 for everybody else. (That is, addresses on earth but not in the USA. Interplanetary service is not yet available.)

The links above take you directly to PayPal, where you can subscribe securely using PayPal, Venmo, or any major credit card.

If you are unfamiliar with The Bourbon Country Reader, click here for a sample issue. 

In the current issue:

We think of small, local distilleries proliferating in the 21st century as something new but they echo, in many ways, the pre-Prohibition history of Tell City, Indiana and towns like it, at a time when drinking locally-made whiskey was normal.

In 1856, a group of German-speaking Swiss immigrants met in Cincinnati to organize the Swiss Colonization Society. They acquired 4,000 acres on the Ohio River between Louisville and Owensboro in Perry County, Indiana. They named their new town "Tell City" after the mythological Swiss hero, William Tell.

Distilleries came and went in Tell City. The biggest and most important one was there for 100 years, in one form or another, on both sides of Prohibition, despite the arrest and conviction of its owner for Prohibition-related crimes.

To get the whole story, subscribe!

Why Do Whiskey Makers Have Only Two Seasons?

 

Spring is one of whiskey's two seasons, fall is the other one.

One little-known aspect of the bottled-in-bond rules is that the whiskey must be made by one distiller at a single distillery in one season. One distiller and single distillery are pretty clear and unambiguous, but what does "one season" mean? Does it refer to astronomical seasons or meteorological seasons?

"Astronomical" is the most common method, where the seasons change on or about the 21st day of March, June, September, and December using the dates of equinoxes and solstices. According to the meteorological definition, seasons begin on the first day of those four months.

Whiskey makers use neither system. They divide the year into just two seasons. Spring runs from January first through June 30th. Fall begins July first and ends December 31st.

This system became part of American law when the Bottled in Bond Act was passed in 1897, but it wasn't arbitrary. Historically, distilleries got going after the grain harvest, typically in late summer or early fall, and kept going until the grain ran out or it got too cold. If there was grain available, they resumed distilling when the weather warmed up and, again, kept going until the grain ran out or it got too hot. 

Even after American agriculture advanced to the point where grain was available year-round, most distilleries shut down during the coldest part of the winter and, especially, the hottest part of the summer. Even today, it can be pretty miserable in a Kentucky or Tennessee distillery in August. Shutdowns are also necessary so workers can have vacations and needed maintenance can be performed.

This has become an issue with the rise of bourbon tourism, since so many people vacation in August. The distilleries still provide tours then but if you want to visit when the distillery is actually distilling something, don't go in August. Another issue is the current whiskey surplus. Distilleries typically adjust their production by lengthening or shortening their shutdowns. Again, if you're planning to visit, check the distilleries for their production schedules. Expect longer-than-usual shutdowns for the next few years.

Producers rarely will skip an entire season. Even if they're reducing production, they like to have some whiskey from every season in the warehouses. Historically, distilleries evaluate their needs twice each year but as the business has gotten bigger and more volatile those evaluations have gotten more frequent.

Back in the days of tax stamps the season and year of distillation and the season and year of bottling were imprinted on the stamp, but that requirement was eliminated in the 1980s. Bottled-in-bond spirits must adhere to the rules regarding seasons, but they don't have to disclose them on the label. Producers may disclose that information voluntarily, as Suntory has done with the Old Grand-Dad expression shown above. Putting that information on the label also tells you this is a one-off and not a permanent addition to the portfolio.

The one disclosure that remains is to identify the distillery by its Distilled Spirits Producer (DSP) license number. If it matters to you that the whiskeys you buy be 'singles,' i.e., the product of one distillery, and you'd like to know the identity of that distillery, stick to bottled-in-bond releases.

How to Win in the Brave New Whiskey World

 

As seen on the TTB website.

When approved labels appear on the website of the Treasury Department's Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), that doesn't necessarily mean those products will be released. This one, however, with the bottling date right on the label, seems like a pretty good bet.*

If it seems like only a few years ago that everybody was dropping age statements, it was. Although Wild Turkey 101 lost its 8-year age statement in the 1990s, and Evan Williams lost is 7-year statement in 2005, Knob Creek's decision in 2016 to drop its 9-year statement was one that really hurt, since its age was always a key part of its brand positioning. Reaction was such that, less than three years later, they restored it.

But an age statement like this, appearing as a new expression of an existing and very mainstream product, seems to auger something else. I mention Wild Turkey because they have 'restored' the 8-year age statement on Wild Turkey 101 for special editions, such as the current one celebrating Jimmy Russell's 70th anniversary, at special edition prices. This, I believe, is not that.

We don't know yet what the pricing will be on 7-year Grand-Dad, but if Suntory plans a high price, they are badly misreading the room. I suspect the suggested retail will be a modest upcharge over the standard BIB and will come out of the box heavily discounted. I predict this, in part, because they chose to do this with Old Grand-Dad and not Basil Hayden, which uses the same liquid but has more premium positioning.

This, I believe, is the beginning of a trend, the purpose of which is to blow out excess inventory.

I've been thinking about how regular, everyday whiskey drinkers here in the USA can take advantage of the current situation. Watching for this sort of thing is one of the ways.

First, where we are. I said "in the USA" because most of the recent noise has been about tariffs, if and when they go into effect. The more immediate and predictable situation has nothing to do with tariffs. It is the decline in sales that seems to mark the end of the bourbon boom.

Let's not overstate it. American whiskey sales declined in 2023 for the first time in more than 20 years, and 2024 was even worse. The 'boom' was a period of growth that was not sustainable. The recent talk from industry leaders touting illusory export opportunities is a good indicator that growth has slowed, and the industry has overproduced. Other factors affecting whiskey sales include ongoing post-COVID supply chain distortions, the effects of cannabis legalization and of weight loss drugs that seem to also suppress the appetite for alcohol, and what appears to be a younger generation with less interest in alcohol than previous cohorts. 

So, is there a whiskey glut? 'Glut' is an ugly word. 'Surplus' sounds better. Because of the aging cycle, producers know one thing for certain. They never get production planning exactly right. They always make either too little or too much. We just went through a long period of too little and are entering a period of too much.

But that doesn't mean the sky is falling. Don't bet against alcohol. It has survived worse, like being entirely illegal for 13 years. More specifically, American whiskey's gains over the last two decades are not disappearing. Growth may be slowing or even flattening, but double-digit sales declines like the industry saw in the 1970s and 80s are not on the horizon.

Probably.

On the positive side, the United States has gone from having about 50 active distilleries in 2005 to more than 3,000 today. Most of those 3,000 are small, but several hundred are not.

Ten years ago, eight companies distilled virtually all of America’s whiskey at thirteen distilleries. Three years later, there were ten companies operating fifteen distilleries. The additions were at the low end of the scale. Today, 16 companies operating 26 distilleries control about 94 percent of America’s whiskey production capacity. 

Again, the newest companies have come in at the low end. Meanwhile, the Big Four (BF, Suntory, HH, & Saz) have only gotten bigger and still have about 65 percent of industry capacity. They can deal with this downturn. I worry about the folks who are just getting started, whose plans did not anticipate tapping the brakes this soon.

But about tariffs, the European Union is and has been the largest American whiskey export market. When tariffs were on between 2018 and 2021, exports plunged 20 percent, from $552 million to $440 million. The EU suspended its tariffs in 2021, enabling exports to surge back even higher — to $699 million last year. 

Tomorrow? Who knows? Just as disruptive as tariffs themselves is uncertainty about tariffs.  

If exports decline that will mean more whiskey for us in the U.S., but that means we won't have help reducing the surplus. The industry needs to correct by reducing production and blowing out some inventory. I'm confident if we drinkers do our jobs and drink like I know we can, the surplus will be absorbed in no time. 

If your drinks portfolio includes other types of spirits, your scotch, tequila, and brandy budgets will probably go further buying American whiskey instead.

Yes, data shows that America's pantries are already overloaded with spirits, but I know people who have built room additions so they could buy more whiskey.

Don't think this means unicorns like Van Winkle will suddenly be plentiful and cheap. If that's your jam, though, be on the lookout for liquidations from folks like Penelope and Barrell. Just don't buy them intending to flip them for a profit on the secondary. While that probably won't go away, I expect it won't be as robust as it has been in the past. If you see something you want to drink, however, the price might be right. 

We probably won't see bargains on anything genuinely collectible or flippable, but expect good deals on drinking whiskey. Some of it will be on brands you know, like Old Grand-Dad, but some will be on brands you've never heard of because they were created for this purpose. Read the labels, especially age and proof statements. As usual, avoid products whose labels are obtuse or misleading. They are a poor bargain at any price.

All we know about this Old Grand-Dad expression comes from the TTB. Suntory hasn't said anything. But we'll keep our eyes open.

* According to custom, and TTB rules, 'spring' runs from January 1 to June 30.

Predicting Bourbon's Future, 13 Years Ago

 

The digital version.

On Christmas morning of 2011, the front page of Section BU of the New York Times featured a 2,500-word article about a phenomenon it called "the bourbon boom."  

"...today’s bourbon boom represents a triumph of salesmanship," wrote reporter Mickey Meece. "At a time when many American industries are struggling, distillers here are thriving, hiring and expanding. They are cashing in on an American renaissance in whiskey-based cocktails, as well as a growing thirst for bourbon around the world."

The lengthy article quotes Larry Kass of Heaven Hill, Mike Keyes of Brown-Forman, Fred Noe of Jim Beam, and many others, but it gives me the last word.

"...many distillers in Kentucky have been expanding. In five to 10 years, will their products be in such high demand? The industry is banking on big growth in India and China, said Charles K. Cowdery, author of Bourbon, Straight: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey. 'If those markets develop as has been anticipated, no one will have made enough,' he said. 'If they don’t, everyone will have made too much.'”

I have remembered that quote often over the years, each time some industry analyst or executive waxes earnestly about the potential for export sales. Inevitably, their optimistic predictions feature India, China, or both.

"There’s still a big world out there for us to grow the industry in,” said Greg Hughes, president of Suntory Global Spirits, maker of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, at Monday's James B. Beam Institute industry conference at the University of Kentucky, as reported in today's Lexington Herald-Leader. 

“India’s a huge opportunity market for the spirits industry," said Hughes. "... there’s a bunch of beer markets out there ... that we can source volume from. ... If we can get 5 (percent) of the Scotch market in India, we’ll have all the distilleries in Kentucky full.”

On the Leadership Panel with Hughes was Kate Latts, co-president of Heaven Hill Brands. “We’ve all increased production to catch up with demand and now we’ve caught up," said Latts. "So now we’re ready. We’re ready. And when these tariffs go away we’re ready to experience ... the unknown demand that exists across the entire world. If we could just get, as Greg said, a little bit of that Scotch and beer consumption, we’re going to be in a place where we don’t have enough. So first we need to get rid of the tariffs and then we can make that all happen.”

The point of this walk down memory lane? Massive international sales to India, China, and other undeveloped bourbon markets have been predicted and touted for at least the last 13 years. While exports have increased, the top five export markets for American whiskey today are the European Union, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada, in that order. That's about how it looked in 2011 too. Then as now, India is essentially closed to distilled spirits imports. Why? Because of tariffs, up to 200 percent, but those tariffs have nothing to do with the current government in Washington. They have been in place forever. China is even more restricted. 

Those markets can't develop if they don't open up and there is nothing to suggest that will happen anytime soon. As the Herald-Leader article's always astute reporter, Janet Patton, put it, industry leaders, "may not agree on everything but they agree on this: There is no whiskey glut. Or at least there wouldn’t be if they could sell more bourbon overseas."

So, in other words, there's a whiskey glut.

The First Commercial Whiskey Distillery in America (Maybe)

 

The colony of New Amsterdam (1664 map).

The earliest report of a commercial whiskey distillery in what is now the United States places it on Staten Island, in the colony of New Netherland, in 1640. It says they distilled using “Indian corn” and rye. 

The event is not documented beyond a single reference, but the claim is plausible. The Dutch colony’s largest town, New Amsterdam (today’s New York City), was nearly 20 years old by that time and had a population of about 4,000 people. 

Although he authorized the distillery, the colonial governor complained about the town’s dependence on businesses that sold brandy, beer, and tobacco. He claimed fully 25 percent of New Amsterdam’s commercial enterprises were so engaged.

Some liquor was imported from Europe, as New Amsterdam was primarily a port, but most was locally made. There were European immigrants all over the area by 1640, in what is now New Jersey as well as New York. The Dutch colony shared Long Island with a British colony of several thousand additional people. 

Most colonists in the surrounding countryside were farmers who grew as much grain as they could. Their surplus was traded in New Amsterdam in either solid or liquid form. Indigenous people living in the area grew grain too and traded it alongside the newcomers, but mostly they were in the more profitable fur business.

Whether or not the product of that Staten Island distillery was whiskey as we know it is not important. If it was spirit distilled from a fermented mash of grain, as reported, it was whiskey for our purposes. If they distilled Indian corn (maize), it was proto-bourbon. 

The population of New Netherland was diverse. The first settlers were French-speaking Walloons. The first enslaved Black African workers arrived two years later. A significant number of the inhabitants were Germans, Swedes, and Finns. Local Indians were also diverse, representing many different tribes. Everyone tried to get along, more or less, but there were always conflicts between and among the various communities. 

Everyone had a reason to drink.

Willem Kieft was the governor who commissioned that Staten Island distillery and complained about the proliferation of vice shops. 

Calling Kieft ‘governor,’ as all histories do, gives a misleading impression. He was primarily a businessman, a merchant, not a politician or soldier. The colony was a business of which he had a piece. He ran it for the financial gain of himself and other shareholders, directed by a headquarters thousands of miles away. 

Kieft’s skills were not political, nor was his mission. He was there to move product and make a profit. His status vis a vis the colonists was vague. He certainly was not their leader; they didn’t choose him. He was more like their landlord. His limited legitimate authority was fortified by the small army he employed.

The business that was New Netherland began as a series of trading posts seeking beaver pelts. Rodent fur was the first American product Europeans went crazy for. Rodent fur, then tobacco. Further south, coffee and sugar. 

Europeans have only recently grown fond of American whiskey.

Technically, New Netherland began in 1615 when a Dutch company set up shop where Albany, New York, is today. Its purpose was to barter with local Indians for pelts. The site was selected because Indians already went there to trade with each other. By Kieft’s time the business had diversified, but animal fur was still its most profitable part. What Europeans most often exchanged for furs was alcohol, typically rum.

After Albany, additional posts were established up and down the Hudson River, but New Netherland wasn’t a true colony until those Walloons arrived a decade later. 

Then the trouble started. 

The first crisis was a skirmish between some Mohawks and Mohicans that didn’t involve the Walloons, but scared them and sent them running back to the coast. Peter Minuit, the ‘governor’ then and a Walloon himself, made a deal with some of the local Indian leaders that allowed construction and settlement of New Amsterdam, a town for Europeans at the foot of Manhattan Island. 

Much has been made of Minuit’s ‘purchase’ of the site for $25 worth of trinkets, but what he really did was establish terms for an extensive and generally equitable trading relationship between Indians and Europeans that led to a period of peace. Both sides understood the value of the goods exchanged was in their symbolic sealing of that mutually-beneficial agreement. That was how Indians did business and Minuit was smart enough to do it the Indian way. Only in later years was their transaction portrayed as superior Europeans fleecing gullible savages. 

For the Indians, it wasn’t so much that the Europeans got Manhattan, but that they agreed to stay there. In a pattern repeated for the next two centuries, Indians welcomed trade with the newcomers but did not want them moving in next door. 

Peace was good for business, but didn’t last. When Kieft’s tenure began a decade later, everyone was fighting with everyone else. The colonial administration was trying to run an increasingly complex political entity like a private business, and it wasn’t working. The colony was ceded to Great Britain in 1664.

Although the New World and its lucrative fur trade was abandoned by the Netherlands, French and British traders quickly filled the gap. Most Dutch traders already on the ground simply signed up with the new administration. The trade was still mostly furs for alcohol.

Most colonists stayed too. Day-to-day life changed little but the ancient, now global competition between France and Great Britain meant crucial decisions affecting North Americans, immigrant and native, were now being made on the other side of the ocean.

The Evolution of Frontier Distilling

 

"Moonshine Still 1" by Daniel Eskridge

When the livelihood of most people is subsistence farming, as it is on the frontier, communities are important, but households must be self-sufficient in food production and other basic needs. Survival is often precarious. The better you are at using what you have, and what you can find around you, the better your chances.

Because the new continent was so vast, America had a frontier from the beginning of the 17th century until the end of the 19th, nearly 300 years.

On that frontier, a typical homestead grew one or more cereals, an assortment of fruits and vegetables, and kept animals for work, transportation, food, textiles, hunting, and companionship. They foraged and hunted too. 

One of the first specialists to emerge in a community of grain farmers is a miller and since frontier millers usually are paid in grain, many became distillers. A farmer might take grain to a miller-distiller and instead of taking it back as milled grain, take it back as whiskey (less the miller-distiller’s cut). Whether by farmers themselves or by miller-distillers, most of a frontier community’s surplus grain was distilled into whiskey eventually.

Another early specialist in a typical frontier community was the metalsmith. Blacksmiths made, sold, and repaired iron tools and implements. Coppersmiths made, sold, and repaired copper items, mostly cookware, including stills. An alembic still is, after all, just a pot with a tight-fitting lid, like a pressure cooker. A trickier piece of equipment is the worm, a coiled copper pipe which, submerged in cold water, is used to condense alcohol vapor back into liquid.

Blacksmiths were usually rooted in the community, but coppersmiths often became itinerant peddlers.

A still that held ten or fifteen gallons of mash was big enough for a household supply and maybe a little to trade, depending on how big your family was and how much they drank. A bigger still was usually on the wish list. 

Although copper has always been preferred, stills can be made from other materials. J. W. Dant allegedly made a still from a hollow log. If true, his log still was likely an expedient, quickly replaced with something more suitable. 

How does that even work? The log is hollowed out, as you would a canoe. That’s your fermenter and your still. When fermentation finishes, you place it over hot coals, hot enough to vaporize the alcohol but not so hot as to burn a hole through the log. Then you cover the opening with a heavy wool blanket. When the blanket becomes saturated you wring it out into another vessel. If your still holds out, you can try raising the proof with a second distillation. 

If the whole thing sounds crazy that’s because it is. Don’t try this at home.

A practical still can be made from wood and many were. Commercial-scale wooden stills were common before Prohibition but didn’t come back after repeal.

In time, some farmer-distillers and miller-distillers evolved into full-time distillers. The Beam family claims Jacob Beam made the transition in 1795. The presence of two or more stills in a household’s inventory usually indicates a commercial-scale operation.

There are no good records as to who did any of these things first, just legends and oral histories passed mostly through families. 

We know the first people into a place, as soon as they got their hands on something fermentable, they fermented it. European colonists brought beer and wine with them on their voyages to the New World and tried to make beer from the indigenous grain they called ‘Indian corn’ almost immediately. 

Corn beer didn’t catch on, so they imported barley then grew it.

Once they had fermented more of something than they could drink right away, they distilled it. 

Individuals with the necessary skills were not rare. Almost everyone raised on a farm, which was almost everyone, knew the basics of fermentation and distillation. Some city folks did too. Before refrigeration, fermentation was a kitchen skill for preserving fruits and vegetables, and for making cheese, as well as for alcoholic beverage production. 

Some people, of course, were better at it than others. 

A note about the image: Although its title is "Moonshine Still," the setup depicted is a fair representation of a distillery on the American frontier in just about any period, though probably nicer than most.

The Beginning of Bourbon

 

John Barleycorn headed for the still.

Whiskey plays an outsize role in American history, especially during the late colonial period. Not that alcohol wasn’t part of American life from the beginning. Beer, cider, and wine were as ubiquitous as bread in the diets of the 17th century Europeans who colonized North America. Alcohol production, including distilling, was a common pioneer activity as the American frontier advanced westward through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Among settlers on those frontiers, whiskey making was an adjunct to grain farming. Almost everyone who grew grain distilled some of it into whiskey, one way or another, and almost everyone grew grain. 

Wherever fruit was cultivated it was fermented into cider or wine and distilled into applejack or brandy. Fruit that was damaged or otherwise no good for the table was ideal for the still.

Honey was another source of fermentable sugar from which a distillate might be made. In the South, there was sorghum. Further south, sugarcane. Anything that could be used to make alcohol was used to make alcohol.

Alcohol-making was ubiquitous. If you never were taught that, you are entitled to wonder why. 

Neither makers nor consumers were too particular about types or styles. Liquor was liquor. Alcohol and its effects, that was the point. Alcohol that tasted good was a bonus but neither expected nor required. It all tasted about the same, bad by modern standards. Nostalgia for spirits of olden times is generally misplaced. Distillate rarely spent time in wood, and was often below proof, that is, less than 50 percent alcohol. Liquor today is better in every way.

In the frontier economy, distilled spirits were not just another consumable. They were more valuable and easier to store, package, transport, and sell than either the agricultural products from which they were made or the intermediate, fermented products (e.g., beer, cider, and wine). 

Hard cider is great, but whiskey never unintentionally turns into vinegar.

Where currency is scarce, as it typically was in pioneer communities, distilled spirits were a handy substitute. Everyone had a general idea how much a barrel of whiskey or applejack was worth. As a liquid it was easy to divide, and liquor is always in demand. Businesspeople today talk about ‘liquidity’ and ‘liquid assets.’ On the frontier, liquidity was literal. Whiskey was money.

You probably weren’t taught any of this in school. Alcohol and other intoxicants are among the subjects people prefer to gloss over, like war, slavery, and genocide. But just like war, slavery, and genocide, alcohol played a significant role in the story of European colonization of the Americas and the eventual formation and history of the United States. Leave them out and you don’t know what happened, not really. 

If portrayed at all, frontier distillers usually are pictured as drunks, clothed in rags, clutching a jug labeled “XXXX,” with two more X’s where their eyes should be, the stereotypical comic hillbilly wasted on mountain dew.

It wasn’t like that at all.

This Meme Is Both Wrong and Right (Sort of)

 

The meme is wrong but raises an interesting point.

Earlier this week, I posted the following on Facebook.

"There is a meme making the rounds that says Canada is the largest purchaser of Kentucky bourbon. That is false. The largest purchaser of Kentucky Bourbon is the United States, but among export markets Canada is only fifth, after the EU, Australia, Japan, and the UK. Export is about 20% of total sales and Canada is about 5% of the export market. So, yes, Canada is an important market and tariffs are bad, but those are the actual facts."

The meme in question is reproduced above. It's still wrong and my statement above is still correct, but in conversations about the meme and my response, I learned something interesting. Canada is, in fact, Kentucky's largest export market for distilled spirits products of all types. That means whiskey but also other things, such as vodka, gin, liqueurs, brandy and tequila.

Wait a minute! Brandy and tequila? I know Kentucky has a small grape crop and a few wineries, some of which also make brandy, but that's very small volume. Tequila! That has to be made in Mexico, so that can't be right.

Some Tequila can be shipped in bulk, bottled in the U.S., and still called Tequila. If that happens in Kentucky, as it does at several producers, then it counts as a Kentucky export. Brandy is an even bigger part of the equation. Of the five best selling California brandies, three are distilled in California from California grapes, but the distillate is shipped to Kentucky where it is aged in used bourbon barrels, then bottled. That, too, becomes a Kentucky product and a Kentucky export. 

The source for this statistic is the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA), specifically KDA's annual report on "The Economic and Fiscal Impacts of the Distilling Industry in Kentucky," Prepared for the Kentucky Distillers’ Association by Paul Coomes, Ph.D., Economic Consultant and Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Louisville, and Barry Kornstein, Economic Consultant. This is from the 2023 report. The 2024 report hasn't been released yet. 

The page you want is #68 in the printed version, #70 in the PDF. Although it mentions "liqueurs and cordials," it's also those other things. If it gets bottled in and distributed from Kentucky, it's a Kentucky product. If it's then shipped out of the country, it's a Kentucky export.

Heaven Hill and Sazerac, especially, produce full lines of value brands in virtually every distilled spirits category. If you're the LCBO (the liquor distributor for the Canadian province of Ontario) and you're buying a few pallets of bourbon and rye, why not throw in a few pallets of triple sec, coffee liqueur, or peppermint schnapps? Canada produces some of that stuff too, but Kentucky's big producers make so much of it they can compete favorably with Canada's smaller producers. 

If you look at the graph, you will see that only in exports to Canada are the two segments, whiskey and "all other spirits" roughly equal. And that makes Canada #1 for spirits exports from Kentucky. 

Although some Canadian whisky is bottled in Kentucky, I believe that is only for the U.S. market. It's not exported back to Canada. Likewise, U.S.-bottled Tequila isn't exported back to Mexico, but some of it goes to Canada. All that will, of course, change if there's a trade war. 

So, if the meme had said "the largest export market for Kentucky distilled spirits is Canada," it would be correct.

Kentucky is a small state, and because it produces so much whiskey, distilled spirits are one of its largest industries. Except for its Democratic governor and the representative from Louisville, all of its major elected officials are Republican. The legislature has a veto-proof Republican majority and Trump won Kentucky by 26 points.

Fred Rosen, Creator of the Modern Booze Superstore, Has Died

 

Fred Rosen, former CEO of Sam's Wine and Spirits, the first booze superstore.

Forty years ago, when I was contemplating a move to Chicago, a friend from my Louisville days, a Chicago native, advised me on many matters. He helped me get a lawyer, told me where to buy my suits, and because his father-in-law had been a liquor distributor in Chicago, he told me about Sam's.

Sam's was named for its founder, Sam Rosen, who started it in 1942, but it was his son, Fred, who put Sam's Wine and Spirits on the map, building it into a local institution, described by some in the industry as the first liquor superstore. Fred Rosen died on February 4 at age 88.

The original Sam's was on Halsted Street at North Avenue, then a much more marginal neighborhood than it is now. The legend, according to my Louisville friend, was that there was no glass in the windows, but the store was never robbed because it was guarded by ferocious German shepherds.

As Ashok Selvam wrote in his appreciation of Rosen on Eater, "He transformed a cut-rate liquor store into a destination where out-of-towners would visit and fill up their trunks with booze they couldn’t find anywhere else."

Fred Rosen moved the store from Halsted into a much larger space in a new shopping center further west on North Avenue, then into an even larger space in the same complex. A few branch locations followed. Binny's bought Sam's in 2009. The Marcey Street Binny's is the former Sam's.

Chicago has a long tradition of colorful booze merchants, beginning in the 19th century with Gardner Chapin and Jim Gore, whose Chapin & Gore store and saloon dominated the Chicago market until Prohibition.

In the post-WWII era, three names stand out. In addition to the Rosens at Sam's, you had Harold Binstein, founder of Binny's, and "Max the Hat" Zimmerman.

Binstein opened his first Gold Standard Liquors store in 1948, one block south of Wrigley Field. Binny's house brand is Clark & Sheffield, a reference to that first store's location. Harold died in 1995. His son, Michael, runs Binny's today. 

"Max the Hat" Zimmerman had the biggest store in downtown. It's now the Binny's on Grand Avenue. Zimmerman opened his first liquor store in Chicago in 1933, as soon as he could after Prohibition’s demise. It was in the old Cambridge Building on North Wells. He mostly sold whiskey and other spirits at first. The only wine in the store was in pints. “Sweet wines were big, stuff like Mogen David,” Zimmerman told a Chicago Tribune reporter in 1992. Known as “Max the Hat” for his trademark Stetson, Zimmerman died in 1998. 

Fred Rosen's youngest son, Brian, is the founder of InvestBev, the nation’s largest beverage alcohol private equity fund.

Hitchcock, "Blackmail," and Sliced Bread

The crucial scene in "Blackmail" (1929).

There is a new documentary out called "Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail." It is currently available on TCM and MAX. It shows how director Alfred Hitchcock in "Blackmail" (1929) and other early films was developing his signature style.

"Blackmail" was Hitchcock's first 'talkie' and, in fact, the first film by a British studio that was entirely synchronized. There had been earlier films with lip sync in maybe one scene. So-called 'talking pictures' were so new and unproven that "Blackmail" was also released in a silent version, with title cards in place of spoken dialogue.

That's not what this post is about.

After watching the documentary, I wanted to see "Blackmail" itself. It's interesting for many reasons. The murder for which the heroine is blackmailed is actually self-defense, to stop an attempted rape. With nearly Victorian modesty, the attempt takes place entirely behind a curtain. Because there is sound, we can hear the struggle. Suddenly, we see a hand reach out through the curtain in desperation. On the bedside table is a loaf of bread and a bread knife--the murder weapon!

This is where I got distracted. Was it realistic, in 1929, to show an unsliced loaf of bread, needing to be sliced at table with a knife? Or was this a cinematic contrivance, a way to introduce the murder weapon? Was sliced bread still that uncommon in 1929?

It turns out, the answer is yes. One-hundred years ago, if you wanted a sandwich, you took a loaf of bread from the bread box, got your bread knife, and cut off slices of the desired thickness. This was not something you did once in a while, with a home-baked loaf or something special from the bakery. This was every day. Bread did not come sliced. If you wanted a slice of bread, you sliced it yourself.

(Whether or not a bread knife would be sufficiently stabby for a murder is a different question.)

The first practical bread slicing machine was invented in 1928, so right about when "Blackmail" was being made. It caught on so quickly that by 1933, 80 percent of all bread was sold already sliced. It was a big deal and led to a saying you still hear today, when some new invention is dubbed "the best thing since sliced bread."

It never occurred to me, when I heard that expression from my grandparents, that they remembered when bread was not sliced.

The transformative power of technology is nothing new and does not need to involve computer chips. Some innovations can change our lives so quickly we forget how it used to be in a generation or two. I'm old, so I remember when television was brand new.

To veer back into my usual lane, another technological change that occurred during that same period was to bottle-making. Bottles have been around since antiquity but until the early 20th century, bottles were all individually hand blown and expensive. Products like whiskey were not routinely sold in bottles. If they were, the bottles were likely filled by a dealer, not by the distillery. Brown-Forman began to sell Old Forester Bourbon in bottles in 1870. The Bottled-in-Bond Act was passed in 1897, but bottling didn't become common until Michael Owens invented the first commercially successful, fully automatic bottle-making machine in 1903, in Toledo, Ohio. When alcohol was re-legalized in 1933, bottling was not only common, it was mandatory. By law, distilled spirits like whiskey could only be sold in sealed bottles.

I also remember 78 RPM records. They were already old-fashioned when I was a kid, but my mom had quite a few. One of our favorites was the original cast recording of the "Peter Pan" musical, which we also enjoyed on TV. Captain Hook, in those broadcasts, was played by the actor Cyril Richard, who was the rapist in "Blackmail."

After 20 Years, Old Commonwealth Bourbon Is Back (Sort of)

 

The original.

In 2019, three entrepreneurs purchased a historic distillery in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky and several brands associated with it. One of those brands, Old Commonwealth, was the distillery's name when Julian Van Winkle owned it and that’s the name the new owners are using. Last year, they relaunched the Old Commonwealth brand.

The distillery had other names and owners in its long history. Before Van Winkle it was most associated with the Ripy family. The most famous brand made there was Ezra Brooks Bourbon, which the Ripys never owned. Neither do the new owners of Old Commonwealth. Ezra Brooks is owned by MGP and made at their Lux Row Distillery in Bardstown.

When Van Winkle owned Old Commonwealth, the stills and related equipment were long gone. He used the offices, bottling hall and warehouses. Van Winkle bought bulk whiskey from Stitzel-Weller, his family’s former distillery, and other sources, which he bottled as Old Rip Van Winkle and other brands. Some of those were store brands, created for a customer. His biggest customer in those days was The Berghoff, a German restaurant and bar in downtown Chicago, for whom he bottled Berghoff Bourbon.

The Old Commonwealth brand was created for Joe Congiusti (Joe C), the legendary whiskey buyer at Sam’s Wine and Spirits, a huge, single-location retailer in Chicago. Joe C wasn’t just a buyer, he was a whiskey enthusiast who participated in the burgeoning whiskey community. When Congiusti moved to Binny’s in 2002, Old Commonwealth Bourbon became available there too. 

Also in 2002, Julian Van Winkle closed the Old Commonwealth Distillery and moved his operation to the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort. 

Binny’s bought Sam’s in 2009, but both Joe and Old Commonwealth were long gone by then. Joe died in 2004. Old Commonwealth Bourbon had died a few months earlier.

Old Commonwealth was a 10-year-old bourbon. It was introduced in 1999 or thereabouts and sold for about $20 a bottle. (For context, a bottle of Jim Beam cost less than $10 then.) I knew from Julian Van Winkle that it was wheated bourbon from Stitzel-Weller, the same batch he was bottling as 10-year-old Old Rip Van Winkle, which was selling for about $30 in those days. I became a regular purchaser of the Old Commonwealth version. Joe C worked out of the Binny’s Lincoln Park location, so I started to buy my Old Commonwealth there, because that store was more convenient for me than Sam’s, and I liked chatting with Joe. 

One day in fall of 2003, I was at Binny’s, talking to Joe, and picked up a bottle of Old Commonwealth to buy. “You know, Julian has discontinued that,” said Joe. “Those are the last two cases.” I bought one of them on the spot.

Later that day I went to the bar Delilah’s to interview its owner, Mike Miller, whose own Delilah’s 10-year-old bourbon was some of that same stock. I mentioned seeing Joe and told him about the Old Commonwealth situation. I later learned that as soon as we finished talking, Miller drove over to Binny’s and bought the remaining case. There may have been a bottle or two left on the shelf, but that was effectively the end of Old Commonwealth Bourbon.

The new Old Commonwealth is also a 10-year-old bourbon, but not a wheater. The new label is very similar to the original, except the new neck label says “Cask Strength” instead of “Small Batch.” The shape is a little different and the subtle 'VW' logo is gone, naturally. The new version is 131.83° proof whereas the original was 107°. Another difference is the price, $20 in 2004, $200 in 2024. 

True Crime Among the Bourbon Barons

 

After Prohibition, Old Crow advertising emphasized the brand's history.

The tale of the 1895 Brown-Gordon murders may seem like a stretch for a publication devoted to American whiskey, but the involvement of a principal in America’s most successful whiskey company makes bourbon part of the story. 

W. A. Gaines & Co., makers of Old Crow Bourbon, revolutionized how whiskey was made and distributed in the United States. They took corn whiskey, a product disdained by most sophisticated drinkers, rebranded it as bourbon, and crushed the old-style rye and malt whiskeys from back east. 

The scandalous 1895 murder of a governor’s son and bourbon baron’s sister-in-law shocked the state and scandalized the nation. It was so consequential it inspired “Careless Love,” a popular song still performed 130 years later. 

We started this story in the previous issue of The Bourbon Country Reader and conclude it in the new one, out now. (Volume 22, Number 6)

If you would like your subscription to start with part one (Volume 22, Number 5), just let me know. 

Proudly anachronistic, The Bourbon Country Reader remains paper-only, delivered as First-Class Mail by the United States Postal Service, which is not allowed to deliver bourbon but can handle this.

A six-issue, approximately one-year subscription is just: 

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Brown-Forman No Longer Makes Barrels. A Historical Perspective

 

Made in Louisville, but on their way to Tennessee.

Brown-Forman started its press release today by reminding us that the company is 155 years old. That’s one way to say they take a long view. In part, that’s their business. They are one of the four companies that produce about 70 percent of America’s whiskey, a beverage that takes years to make. 

The press release describes several changes at the company, including to executive leadership, although Lawson Whiting remains as CEO.

Leadership changes are routine. The bombshell is the announcement of a 12 percent reduction in the company’s global workforce. That’s about 650 people. About 200 of them currently work at the company’s Louisville cooperage, which will close permanently.

Brown-Forman began as a whiskey company and, ironically, a non-distiller producer of whiskey. As the industry changed and making whiskey from scratch, rather than buying it, made more sense, they became distillers.

From the beginning, where Brown-Forman really excelled was in marketing, especially branding. Old Forester was named for a prominent Louisville physician and marketed as medicine. Brown-Forman was a leader in developing western markets for whiskey at a time when most of the nation’s population lived east of Louisville. The company stayed in business during Prohibition as a medicinal whiskey supplier.

Brown-Forman is still controlled by its founding family, the Browns and their branches, but it is a public company. As you would expect for a 155-year-old firm, it has gone through many changes.

In the 1950s, the Browns teamed up with the Motlows to make Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey the leading American whiskey in America and the world, and Jack now challenges Diageo’s Johnnie Walker for supremacy among whiskeys of all kinds. When the #1 bourbon doesn’t have the word ‘bourbon’ on its label, you know you are dealing with branding geniuses.

After WWII, Brown-Forman decided to make its own barrels, and founded a cooperage not far from its Louisville headquarters. At the time, bourbon was booming. Historically, many distilleries made their own barrels, in some cases on site. When Brown-Forman started its cooperage, not far from its distillery and headquarters, several other distillers were doing the same thing, including Schenley, then the largest U.S. distilled spirits company. Its cooperage was also in Louisville.

Fast forward to the late 20th century. The American whiskey industry contracted dramatically in the 70s and 80s, and every distiller except Brown-Forman sold or closed its cooperage. Brown-Forman, and likewise Jim Beam, had most of their marbles in the American whiskey basket, so the first thing they had to do was broaden their portfolios. They did that but in the 1980s, that was no longer diversification enough, so Brown-Forman bought some other companies, all luxury goods, positioning themselves as a mini LVMH. 

Then fashions changed again. Wall Street no longer liked diversification. Investors wanted ‘pure plays,’ so Brown-Forman went back to concentrating on its distilled spirits portfolio and, most of all, its brands. The company has a massive revenue stream just from licensing the Jack Daniel’s logo. 

Brown-Forman always had a policy that its brands had to either be #1 in their market segment, or #2 with a strong shot at #1. Brands that didn’t meet those standards were sold or discontinued. The only exception was Old Forester, for sentimental reasons. 

By the 1990s there were just two cooperages supplying new barrels to the entire whiskey industry, as well as some percentage of the wine industry. The biggest, then and now, is Independent Stave (ISC), founded by the Boswell family in 1912 and still owned and run by them. The other was Bluegrass Cooperage, owned by Brown-Forman.

As the 21st century began, and with it the bourbon boom, Brown-Forman decided to stop selling barrels outside the company. It needed all it could make for its own hot whiskey brands, which in addition to Jack Daniel’s were Early Times, Woodford Reserve, and a resurgent Old Forester. Since they no longer needed to hide behind the independent-sounding Bluegrass Cooperage name, they rechristened it Brown-Forman Cooperage. 

The plant they’re closing now is in an industrial area just east of the Louisville airport. It includes some open space for letting wood season outdoors, usually for six months to a year. The property’s footprint is about the same as it was in 1945, and there is no room to expand. Over the years they crammed as much as they could into that facility, ultimately doubling its output. For probably half of the cooperage’s existence most of that output has been put onto trucks and shipped to Lynchburg, Tennessee. Even as the Kentucky-based brands grew, Jack grew more. In 2014, Brown-Forman opened a new, modern cooperage in Alabama, 80 miles from Lynchburg instead of 250.

That probably spelled the end for the Louisville facility, but when Brown-Forman decided to sell the Alabama place last year, that signaled the company probably would exit the cooperage business altogether, which it is doing now.

Back at the end of the 20th century, when ISC and Bluegrass were the only cooperages supplying whiskey-makers, Brown-Forman didn’t necessarily want to be in the cooperage business, but neither did it want to be at the mercy of a monopoly for such an essential input. So, they made and sold barrels. And the other Kentucky distillers bought them for the same reason, even though it meant doing business with a direct competitor. Now, although ISC is the largest and clearly dominant, they don’t have a monopoly. There are alternatives. No longer must Brown-Forman be one of them.

The way the cooperage business works is this. Although ISC owns some forests, most growers of oak for barrels are independent property owners. They hire independent logging crews to harvest the oak and haul it to the nearest stave mill. There are many stave mills, and they are located near the forests. Although the cooperages don’t own the forests or the logging companies, they do own the stave mills. As the name suggests, stave mills cut logs into barrel staves and head pieces, which are sent to the parent cooperages for seasoning and manufacture. Most barrels for American whiskey are charred, and the cooperage does that too. ISC is based in Missouri but has cooperages in Kentucky. As long as so much whiskey is made in Kentucky, it will only make sense to make barrels there too.

So, while it sucks for the 200 people who will lose their jobs, and it’s sad to see an 80-year-old business close its doors, Brown-Forman is just sticking to its knitting. Brown-Forman is a brand builder. They tried to make “we make our own barrels” a brand attribute, but it didn’t resonate. In truth, barrels are a commodity, much like corn and rye. Perhaps in the future they won’t even make all the whiskey themselves. For Brown-Forman, shareholder value is in the brands. Everything else is incidental.

Witness to a Long, Slow Fade

 

A Lazarus newspaper ad from a little before my time (1928).

It was fifty years ago, yet I remember the moment. 1975. I had just joined an advertising agency in Columbus, Ohio, to work on the Lazarus account. I was with some Lazarus executive, and we were walking through their print advertising department, which was a room with maybe 50 artists, hunched over paste-up tables, working on newspaper ads. 

I don’t remember the exact context, but the executive knew I was new and was giving me an overview of the business. He commented that department stores had been in decline ever since World War II. Many stores had closed. Most others had consolidated. Columbus still had Lazarus, Cincinnati still had Shillito’s, and Dayton still had Rikes, but they were all part of Federated, along with many other stores across the country, all still nominally autonomous, but slowly becoming mere brand names. I came to the job from one of the few remaining independents, Dayton’s Elder-Beerman.

The fact that this conversation took place in the store’s print ad department was a coincidence, but symbolic of the changes underway. In the 70s, Lazarus had something like 20 pages of ads in every daily paper and probably three times that many on Sunday. The store did all their print advertising in house, a department of probably 100 people, but they farmed out their radio and TV commercials to the agency where I worked and there were, like, three of us on the account. The decline of newspapers paralleled the decline of department stores, their primary advertisers. I was there at the beginning of the shift from print to broadcast.

Most cities of any size had multiple department stores in their 19th century heyday, but by the 1970s most were down to one or two. Columbus had just one, Lazarus. Their executives joked that their primary competition was their own Budget Store. In fact, what was killing them were specialty stores. One of the first big successes was The Limited, whose first store was in Columbus, one block north of Lazarus on High Street, across the street from the state capital. The Limited was revolutionary because they only carried what were known as junior sizes. They had cherry-picked one of the department store’s most profitable departments. As time went on, every department was poached in this way.

My college girlfriend was, by then, an assistant glove buyer at Halle's, a department store in Cleveland. Department stores were in my blood. My grandfather ran the maintenance department at Sterlings, another Cleveland department store. His mother-in-law, my great-grandmother, worked there as a salesclerk. Coincidentally, I think she sold gloves.

But I was 22 years old when that conversation at Lazarus took place. What I took from it was that I probably should get out of the department store advertising business as soon as possible, which I did eventually. It took me a couple of years, and I never got completely out. When I moved to Chicago in 1987, it was in part to work on a project for Montgomery-Ward, then still a moderately important national department store. I never worked on the Sears business, also based in Chicago, but had a close relationship with a studio that did most of their ad photography. I worked with chain drug stores for most of my professional career.

Although only 22, I had already made one major change in my work trajectory. Many more would follow. Looking back, I think I tended to follow this wisdom from Issac Wolfe Bernheim, a 19th century bourbon baron. “Wealth, in my humble opinion, is not a thing of luck, or the result of a deliberate and carefully fought campaign of industry, but rather the good judgment to take advantage, at the right time, of opportunities when they present themselves.”

The Business of Creativity Can Be Tough

 

In this stock image, 'business' is represented by a guy in a white shirt and tie while 'creativity' is represented by a lightbulb bursting with color, which is some pretty lazy creative.

About ten years ago, I wrote about what happened when a very creative micro-distillery owner got into a conflict with his investors. The company survived and thrived, and so did he, separately, so there is no reason to rehash that incident, but back then it got me thinking about what sometimes happens to creative people in business. 

Creativity is a characteristic that is valuable in any pursuit, in business or just daily life. But for some people, being creative is the job. I spent most of my career in the world of advertising and marketing communication, where 'creative' is a job title, the name of a department, and the term used to describe the work product itself, as in, "have you finished the creative for the new campaign yet?"

The person in charge of all that stuff is called the creative director.

In organizations of all kinds, managers sometimes think of employees as mere cogs in a machine, each essentially the same, easily interchangeable and replaceable. That's always a mistake, because every person is unique. Managers who think that way often do so because they are convinced it is they who make all the difference, not the people who work for them. But mostly it's a problem that happens when managers who come from one discipline are charged with managing people from a different one.

I was raised to be sensitive to this. Dad was an engineer for an appliance manufacturer. He complained often about the 'bean counters' who cared too much about cost and not enough about product quality. 'Bean counters' to dad were pretty much everyone in the offices except the engineers, so that was management, accounting, sales, and marketing. 

For me as a freelance creative working in marketing, I had to be wary of prospective clients who shop for creatives like they're shopping for a new phone. Hiring the right creatives is more about the ability to connect and communicate with that person than it is about how much they cost or even whether or not you like their past work. When it was apparent that a prospective client had no real idea what I do, I backed away. You have to, because it's bound to become a problem eventually. A client, or boss, who fundamentally doesn't understand what you do can't direct you productively or evaluate you fairly.

Sometimes it's just an irritant but it can become a nightmare.

Creatives, therefore, have to develop the ability to spot bad bosses in advance and avoid them, but in a long career you inevitably miss a few. That can amount to a serious career setback or, at the least, a real solid period of unpleasantness, but you have to be true to yourself and pay the price to get back on track. You learn from it and move on. But, for God's sake, learn from it. Examine what blinded you to the warning signs. From my experience it's usually money, or fame, or prestige, or power, or something that looks like an easy score. Some or all of these seduce you and you don't recognize what you later realize was obvious from the beginning.

But if you learn from the experience, then it's worth it.