George Dickel, the Boot.

I sure have been writing about George Dickel a lot lately. If you want to see all of them, that's what the labels at the bottom of each post are for. Click on the "George Dickel" label and you'll see every post in which George Dickel is mentioned.

Today I rise to add a small point. In Friday's post, I mentioned that the earliest record of George Dickel being in business in Nashville is from 1853. What I failed to mention is that he was not in the liquor business. He was a manufacturer of boots and shoes.

Austin Nichols, the parent company of Wild Turkey before it was acquired by Pernod Ricard, was a grocery wholesaler who started to sell wine and liquor, found it to be a very good business, and eventually dropped the groceries. That makes sense, I can see that happening, but how do you go from making boots and shoes to selling liquor?

Was that always his dream?

I can hear it now: "Humble shoemaker George Dickel had big dreams. He wanted to sell alcohol, because alcohol makes people happy and makes their pain go away, if only for a little while."

Or maybe he thought the whole Germans and boots thing was just a little too on the nose.