Tales of Whiskey-Making Along Old Knob Creek

An early Knob Creek label from the portfolio of National Distillers, which Beam acquired in 1987.

Many bourbon brands have fanciful names and fictional origin stories, but a few have real history behind them. In the case of Beam Suntory's Knob Creek, it is named after a real body of water with a lot of history. That history has only a small connection to the current Knob Creek brand, but it is real nonetheless.

There are several streams called Knob Creek in Kentucky and southern Indiana. The word 'knob' refers to the region's characteristic round-topped hills. The Knob Creek we care about flows south-to-north roughly along US Route 31E in LaRue County, Kentucky. It gets pretty close to Beam's Booker Noe Distillery but there the connection ends. This Knob Creek is most associated with the various Athertonville distilleries, concluding with Cummins-Collins, which operated under the Seagrams banner until 1987. It is also associated with Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home, which he referred to as 'the Knob Creek place.'

It is an interesting story with as many twists and turns as Knob Creek itself, but to read the rest of it you need a subscription to The Bourbon Country Reader, the always independent and idiosyncratic journal of American whiskey.

Also in this issue, we examine the disturbing behavior of the Kentucky Distillers' Association and its tendency to overreach and under-deliver. This is an ongoing saga that you may have read about here or here.

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