Tiny Athertonville, Kentucky Is Still in the Whiskey Business (Part Two)

 

ZAK Cooperage, formerly Seagrams Distillery, DSP-KY-20. 

In 1899, John and Peter Atherton sold their distilleries in Athertonville to the Whiskey Trust, which operated them until Prohibition. After Prohibition, the property was acquired by members of the Cummins family. The Athertons went on to do other things. John got a high school named after him.

In 1848, Richard Cummins came to Kentucky from Ireland. He was a yeast maker by training. Yeast-making was a specialty occupation that served bakers, brewers, vintners, and distillers. Although most could and did make their own yeast, hiring a specialist was often more cost-effective.

Richard Cummins transitioned from commercial yeast-making to distilling when he worked at distilleries in Kentucky and Illinois mid-century. In 1858, he opened his own Kentucky distillery at Raywick in Marion County. After the Civil War, he built a second distillery near Athertonville called Coon Hollow. Like John and Peter Atherton, Cummins ultimately sold Coon Hollow to the Trust, which folded it into Atherton’s distilleries. Unlike the Athertons, however, the Cummins family remained active in the distilling business.

Arthur Cummins, a nephew of Richard’s, worked for his uncle and learned the yeast-making and distilling trade. Arthur and his sons, Arthur J. and Charles, worked at several whiskey plants and were employed as distillers until Prohibition. 

After Prohibition, the Cummins brothers and Hunt Collins built a new distillery in Athertonville, starting with whatever was left of the previous plants. Insufficiently capitalized, they soon sold it to R. L. Buse Co., a Cincinnati whiskey broker. 

A decade later, during WWII, Arthur J. formed a partnership with a different Collins. They repurchased and repurposed the Athertonville distillery to make high-proof alcohol for the war effort. Although Collins had the larger interest and was the firm’s president, they named it Cummins-Collins because of the Cummins family’s reputation. Cummins became president when Collins died in 1945.

After WWII, the Cummins-Collins Distillery was converted back into a whiskey plant. The team that built it was a who’s-who of the industry in that era. Walter C. Wagner was the architect. Matt Corcoran & Company, Kentucky's oldest coppersmiths, designed and built the stills. The Henry Vogt Machine Company built and installed the boilers and stokers. H. G. Whittenberg was general contractor. W. E. Caldwell Company built and installed the mash cookers, fermenting tubs, and milling equipment. 

The new distillery had a capacity of 220 barrels per day. It had a cooling system that allowed it to run all summer. Its four warehouses had a total capacity of 85,000 barrels. Three warehouses were masonry, one was steel-clad. Everything was state-of-the-art.

One of their bourbons was called Old Knob Creek and inspired the later Suntory product.

Cummins-Collins soon fell to the juggernaut that was the Seagram’s Company. Although ownership changed, the distillery continued to be called Cummins-Collins. Although the whiskey it made was used in many Seagram’s products, Cummins-Collins came to be most associated with the Antique bourbon label.

In 1972, a fire heavily damaged the facility. It was quickly rebuilt, operated until 1987, then closed for good. 

In 1990, Bert and Bruce Zimlich acquired the property and repurposed it as a cooperage, making new barrels for the bourbon industry, and refurbishing used barrels. Now known as ZAK Cooperage, they offer a range of custom toasting, charring, and air seasoning options. “Our tailored processes ensure that every barrel we produce surpasses industry standards, preserving and enhancing the integrity of the spirits they hold.” Zach Zimlich is the master cooper and director of operations. Jessica Ann Zimlich handles sales and customer relations.

So, Athertonville today may be tiny, little more than a wide spot in the road (U.S. 31E), but it has been an important part of Kentucky's bourbon industry for 226 years.

Tiny Athertonville, Kentucky Is Still in the Whiskey Business (Part One)

 

Atherton High School, 3000 Dundee Road, Louisville, KY, is not in the whiskey business, but was named for a prominent distiller.

Atherton High is a public high school in Louisville, Kentucky. It serves about 1,400 students. It was named after John Atherton; a prominent Louisville businessman and politician of the late 19th and early 20th century who helped reform the city’s school system. Founded in 1924 as J. M. Atherton High School for Girls, it became co-ed in 1950.

The school’s web site includes a 307-word biography of John Atherton, mentioning some of his business and civic accomplishments. Conspicuously absent is any mention of the source of his great wealth: the making and selling of whiskey. 

Today, Athertonville, Kentucky is a tiny, unincorporated community but in the 19th century it was a bustling distillery town, surrounded by farms that supplied its distilleries with grain, fruit, seasonal labor, and customers. 

The town was named for Peter Atherton, its founder, who was John Atherton’s father. Peter Atherton came to Kentucky in 1791 with land grants from Virginia for about a thousand acres. Among his many enterprises was a distillery on the west bank of Knob Creek, near its junction with the Rolling Fork. He operated there from 1800 until 1834. It was a small distillery, one of many, doing primarily local business, typical of that era.

Peter Atherton and Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Whitehead were newlyweds when they arrived in Kentucky. Children came fast, two girls and a boy. We don’t know much about them. In 1834, with the kids long since grown and gone, Peter closed the distillery and retired. Betsy, age 55, died that same year. 

Peter, then in his early 60s, remarried. His new wife, another Elizabeth, was 28. They had two sons, Peter and John. Peter was six and John was three when their father died. Elizabeth remarried and by all accounts the boys had a happy and secure childhood.

Although Peter Atherton, the Boone family, and many others distilled on Knob Creek from a very early date, it was the younger son of Peter Atherton’s second marriage, John McDougal Atherton, who put the town named for his father on the whiskey-making map almost a century later. 

A fanciful rendering of the Atherton distilling interests.

In 1867, John opened his new Atherton Distillery. It made sweet mash whiskey, about seven barrels a day. He later bought a sour mash distillery a few miles away, which he relocated to his site but on the opposite bank of Knob Creek. Working with him was a cousin named Alexander Mayfield, so they named the second distillery A. Mayfield & Co. Their Mayfield Sour Mash Whiskey became a successful brand. 

Among Mayfield’s customers was George Garvin Brown, the founder of Brown-Forman. His original Old Forester Bourbon was a blend of whiskey from Mayfield and two other distilleries. 

Athertonville grew up around its distilleries. John Atherton steadily expanded his operation, acquiring two additional plants. At its peak, the entire enterprise produced about 50,000 barrels of whiskey a year. 

In addition to the distilleries, Atherton owned most of the town; about 75 houses that he rented, a 100-room hotel, blacksmith shops, and livery stables. His brands included Atherton, Mayfield, Clifton, Windsor, Howard, Carter, Kenwood, Brownfield, and Baker.

John Atherton was joined in the business by his son, Peter. Business was good and both men became wealthy. Their offices and homes were in Louisville, 50 miles away. They didn’t visit the distillery every day, but when they did, they took the train. Atherton’s distilleries had helped build the spur line from Athertonville to New Haven, where it connected to the main line that ran between Louisville and Nashville.

In the late 19th century, as distilleries like Atherton’s grew larger and more modern, continuous stills replaced pot stills, and railroads gave every producer an unlimited potential market. This quickly put everyone in competition with everyone else. The market became flooded with whiskey, driving down prices and, therefore, profits. 

Several attempts were made to ‘rationalize’ the industry by limiting production through consolidation, ideally by creating a monopoly or near-monopoly. 

This had already been done in other fields. John Rockefeller did it with oil. There were hundreds of small producers in the Western Pennsylvania oil fields, but Rockefeller controlled them by controlling the refineries. Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick had a monopoly with steel. Cornelius Vanderbilt controlled the railroads. James Duke did it with tobacco and Joseph Benedict Greenhut did it with whiskey. Their industry-spanning monopolies, known as trusts, are illegal now but weren’t then, although the various trusts committed plenty of illegal acts in pursuit of their goals. 

Greenhut’s Whiskey Trust began in Peoria, Illinois, which then rivaled Kentucky as a producer of distilled spirits. Its formal name was the Distillers' & Cattle Feeders' Trust. The Kentucky version was called the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company. The two trusts did not compete with each other but rather cooperated to drive everyone else out of business.

In 1899, the Athertons cashed out and sold their distilleries to the Trust, which operated them until Prohibition. John was 58 and Peter was 37 at the time of the sale. 

To say the Athertons were well-connected in Louisville would be an understatement. John was president of the Lincoln Savings Bank and Trust Company, and vice president and director of the National Bank of Kentucky. He also served on the boards of the Louisville Realty Company, Louisville Gas and Electric, and the L&N Railroad. He served briefly in the state legislature. He was chairman of the Louisville City Government Committee, which studied municipal reform. He helped reorganize the Louisville public school system and that’s how Louisville’s Atherton High School came to be named in his honor. 

The younger Mr. Atherton also served in the state legislature. He became a real estate mogul. One of his companies owned Louisville’s historic Seelbach Hotel.

Such is the stigma of whiskey-making that you can find lengthy biographies of both men that don’t mention how their original fortunes were acquired.

During Prohibition, the whiskey in Athertonville’s warehouses was sent to Louisville for consolidation. Athertonville’s distilleries were closed and dismantled but not entirely forgotten. After Prohibition, whatever was left was acquired by the Cummins family. 

We'll cover the Cummins history and the site's current status in PART TWO.

My Mitch McConnell Story

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, mid-1980s.

I agree with most of the criticism of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. I fault him especially for blocking President Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, in his role as Senate Majority Leader, an unprecedented act of hyper-partisanship. 

So, it’s surprising that I recoil from many of the ghoulish memes and commentaries pertaining to the mystery of his current health status. I won’t go so far as to say they offend me, but I recoil from the dehumanization of it. 

Because I knew the man.

Not to make too much of it. I lived in Kentucky from 1978 to 1987. I live in Chicago now, but Louisville continued to be like a second home to me until a few years ago. Kentucky is a small state and over the years I had contact with many of its politicians, most of it casual or business related. That describes my contact with Senator McConnell.

He was judge-executive of Jefferson County when I moved there. It’s a peculiar title, but it just means he was the chief executive of county government. As Louisville is the seat of Jefferson County and Kentucky’s largest city, the judge-executive job was a good platform for pursuit of higher office, although Louisville politicians did not have a good track record running statewide. 

In 1980 I changed jobs, going to work for a marketing firm whose major client was Brown-Forman. I got to know many mid-level executives there but my only contact with senior executives came from non-business endeavors.

Having worked in broadcasting since high school, I volunteered at the local public television station, WKPC, then owned by the Board of Education. When the station transitioned to community ownership, I was named to its new board of directors. This put me into contact with some local heavy hitters. John Yarmuth, who later represented Louisville in Congress, was one of them. We were the two youngsters on the board and didn’t get along. I was much friendlier with two older men who just happened to be associated with Brown-Forman: Roger Coleman, recently retired as Brown-Forman’s president, and Robinson “Robby” Brown, then chairman of Brown-Forman’s board. 

In conversation, they both talked up Mitch McConnell, especially Robby, who invited me to a fundraiser for McConnell’s first Senate campaign, to be held at Robby’s home. I initially declined. “I won’t give him any money,” I said, not because I opposed him but because I didn’t have any. “That’s okay, come anyway. It’s a party,” was Robby’s reply, so I did.

I went and had a good time at the party. Robby’s house was beautiful. I probably was introduced to McConnell, but I don’t think we talked. I avoided the inevitable ask. McConnell’s campaign was successful and Brown-Forman executives, including Brown family members like Robby, were major supporters.

So associated was Mitch McConnell with Brown-Forman that, in later years, it was joked that he was the senator from Brown-Forman and Kentucky’s other senator, Jim Bunning (1999-2011), was the senator from Jim Beam. (Bunning and Rich Reese, who ran sales at Beam and succeeded Barry Berish as president, both played major league baseball.)

There is irony in how McConnell’s first Senate campaign was won. His Democratic opponent, Dee Huddleston, the incumbent, had missed a lot of votes. McConnell’s ads featured a pack of bloodhounds trying to track Huddleston down. The ads were the work of Roger Ailes, who later started Fox News. Although Kentucky was heavily Democratic in those days, the commonwealth had voted for Reagan in 1980 and would vote for him again in 1984, with Mitch McConnell riding his coattails. 

Now it’s Mitch who is missing in action. 

Fast forward a few years. I was self-employed by then and had moved to Chicago but still did a lot of business in Louisville. McConnell, well into his senate career, was setting up the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. My client was commissioned to make a promotional video for the Center. I would write the script and perform other duties related to the production. 

Our team had several meetings with McConnell at the producer’s offices in Louisville. I don’t recall him having anyone with him. If there was someone, that person didn’t participate. 

I was one of the presenters at the meetings. When you present, you carefully watch your audience, especially the primary decision-maker, to gauge how you’re doing. Often you make changes on the fly based on those often-subtle cues.

But not with Mitch McConnell. He gave me nothing. My main takeaway was that I would hate to play cards with him, because he has no tells. Complete poker face. Otherwise, he was easy to work with, low key and respectful. When he gave feedback, he was direct and unambiguous. In that, he was a pleasure to work with. He seemed satisfied with our efforts and the project came together without a hitch.

Other than being hard to read, he was a good client.

Mitch is an unusually small man physically. Many times, small men compensate by becoming aggressive, especially toward unusually large men like me. He is also soft-spoken while I am the opposite. I had learned to compensate by, for example, sitting down immediately after presenting so as not to seem intimidating. Nothing like that materialized with McConnell. If he reacted to our size difference, like everything else he kept it to himself.

That’s the end of my Mitch McConnell story but here’s a side-story from that same McConnell Center project.

Much of our work had to do with the first class of “McConnell Scholars,” graduating high school seniors who received scholarships from the McConnell Center. As part of their award, the dozen or so kids were given a trip to Washington D.C. with McConnell, where they would, among other things, meet then-President George H. W. Bush. The event would be videotaped and edited for inclusion in our production. My job was to view the raw tapes and prepare the “paper edit,” choosing clips the video editor would pull and edit together for the program.

I had to agree to return all tapes without making copies, which I did dutifully, but I often wished I had been a little less ethical. The tapes were remarkable. As it happened, the president’s meeting with the McConnell Scholars occurred on November 4, 1992, one day after the 1992 presidential election, which Bush lost to Bill Clinton. On the tapes, Bush is clearly exhausted, completely spent, a broken man. He said little and was borderline incoherent when he did. It was a tough edit. Luckily, the kids were supposed to be the focus. They were excited to talk to the president and had a lot of energy. There was just enough of Bush in the final edit for the viewer to remember he was there.

The McConnell Center still exists at UofL, but I had no further involvement with it or with the senator. I’ve had contact with other politicians over the years. Ohio former-Senator Sherrod Brown and I were friends in high school. Sherrod, like most politicians, inevitably calls attention to himself. He works the room. McConnell doesn’t. His way of exercising power is different; deliberate, strategic, and unemotional. It has served him well. I have no more idea than anyone else does about his current status, but I wouldn’t bet against him.

Oh, What Bourbon Can Do

 

As the 21st century bourbon boom has produced many new bourbons, it also has produced many bourbon books. I’ve read a few. My favorites have been personal stories about the author’s journey of bourbon discovery, such as Heather Greene’s Whiskey Distilled: A Populist Guide to the Water of Life (Penguin, 2015) and Kate Hopkins' 99 Drams of Whiskey (St. Martins, 2009).

Fred Minnick has written nine books, and this is his fourth about bourbon. It is a memoir. Minnick is not yet 50, but memoir is a good form for this story. One advantage of a memoir is that the structure is chronological. We learn things as he learns them, like a good detective story. Nobody, of course, writes a memoir in real time. The writer always knows where the story goes and how it ends.

The memoir form also allows Minnick to drop bits and pieces of bourbon knowledge along the way. We get clear, succinct descriptions of the bourbon-making process, the three-tier system of beverage alcohol distribution, the history of Prohibition, bourbon’s steep decline in the late 1960s, the problem of advertising puffery tainting real history, and the income challenges of whiskey writing.

The title is perfect, Bottom Shelf, How a Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life (Sourcebooks, 2026).

The “one man” is Minnick. Most books that feature bourbon in a story of personal struggle involve the author consuming too much of it. That’s not the case here, but Fred’s passion for bourbon knowledge is a core part of his personal journey and ultimate salvation. 

The “forgotten brand” in question is Old Crow. I’ve gone down that rabbit hole a few times myself. I can relate to his passion for the subject and his frustration with the research. 

My story doesn’t compare to his, especially the lifesaving part, but we share the fact that bourbon got its hooks into us and never let go.

In Minnick’s case, lifesaving refers to his struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) caused by his time as an army photojournalist on the frontline in Iraq. Part of his PTSD therapy has him focus on touch, smell, or taste to cope with triggering events. The therapy involves experiencing those sensations deeply, mindfully, using them to stop time and focus the mind on that one thing. He starts with a BBQ-flavored potato chip and subsequently applies the technique to tasting wine and, later, bourbon.

Much of his therapy involves writing. As he thinks about how to record his tasting experiences he begins to connect tastes in bourbon with food tasting memories, such as “that wonderful slice of marzipan I devoured in a Saint Emilion café.” (His tasting group is called Club Marzipan.)

Minnick was no stranger to bourbon. The book begins with him smuggling Jim Beam into Iraq in a Listerine bottle. On their first date, the Louisville woman who would become his wife introduces him to Maker’s Mark. He is hooked. Although enjoying success as a wine writer, he longs to switch. “Wine had become a way to pay the bills,” he writes, “bourbon was the passion burning within.”

Like his mindful tasting technique, Minnick’s search for the real James C. Crow, namesake of Old Crow Bourbon, becomes another way to separate him from his trauma and replace a harmful obsession with one that is at least benign. “Little did I know that seeking information on Crow’s life was really a way of hiding from mine.”

Throughout the book, before things get too heavy, Minnick lightens them up. As he awaits his first therapy session, he fantasizes that he has stumbled into an outlaw clinic where unlicensed doctors harvest organs. 

As he describes his struggles, Minnick knows his story has a happy ending. His priorities today are his wife and their two sons. 

Minnick’s Bottom Shelf comes at the right time for the bourbon world. We need his personal, spiritual journey to remind us why we fell in love with bourbon in the first place.

Revisiting My Childhood Via "The Danny Thomas Show"

 

(From left to right) Rusty Hamer, Penny Parker,
Danny Thomas, Angela Cartwright, and Marjorie Lord.

Although it ran for eleven seasons (1953-1964) and ranked in the top ten in every season but one, “The Danny Thomas Show” seems less beloved today than contemporaries like “I Love Lucy,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Leave It to Beaver” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” 

In it, Danny Thomas plays Danny Williams, a popular singer and comedian who works in a New York nightclub. He lives in a Manhattan apartment with his wife and two kids. It’s meant as a roman à clef except, ironically, during the show's 11-year run Danny Thomas was primarily a television performer living and working in Los Angeles, where the show was filmed, not a nightclub entertainer working and living in New York City.

Between broadcast TV, cable, and streaming, there’s a lot of bandwidth to fill these days so just about everything is available somewhere. Every program on television back then was either broadcast live or shot on film. Shows shot and finished on film in black-and-white digitize beautifully, so it looks great.  

I was a fan of the show, meaning my parents liked it. I was two years old when it debuted in 1953, on ABC as “Make Room for Daddy.” It became “The Danny Thomas Show” for the fourth season, then moved to CBS for year five. I could usually get a laugh from my parents by calling it "Make Room for Danny."

The original Mrs. Williams, played by Jean Hagen, was unhappy and decided to leave after year three. On the show, she died during the off-season and season four began with Danny as a single parent. The show didn’t change much, and the dead wife was rarely mentioned. By the end of season four, Danny was dating. His new wife was Kathy, played by Marjorie Lord, who brought with her a six-year-old daughter, Linda, played by Angela Cartwright, to begin season five. This corresponded with the move to CBS and the ratings soared.

Unlike many family shows of that era, such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Danny Thomas Show” was mostly about the adults, although the kids often got the best jokes. 

Sitcoms in those days were 33 episodes per season. That’s a lot of work, especially for kids. Rusty Hamer played son Rusty Williams for the show’s entire 11-year run. Sherry Jackson, who played Danny’s daughter, Terry, was ready to leave after season four. As her character was by then a teenager, it was natural for her to be around less often. She made occasional appearances through season six. After that she was replaced by Penny Parker. They did a seven-show arc leading to her marriage after which the character largely disappeared.

Angela Cartwright, who played Linda, was always of special interest to me because we're about the same age. After her seven seasons there, she played Brigitta von Trapp in "The Sound of Music," then did three seasons as Penny Robinson on "Lost in Space." After that she worked in TV and film only occasionally.

Unlike most of its contemporaries, “The Danny Thomas Show” featured musical numbers in virtually every episode, and sometimes two or three. Most were by Danny, but many guest stars sang a song or two. Some performances took place in the family's apartment, where he accompanied himself on piano, joined inevitably by a mysterious, unseen orchestra. The orchestra was visible in scenes at the Copa Club (loosely based on the actual Copacabana nightclub), where his act consisted of songs and funny stories.

The heavy use of musical and comedy performances, so far outside the normal sitcom model, may be what dates the show. 

Another regular feature that probably doesn’t play as well now as it did then is the frequent use of guest stars. Some played characters but many played themselves, as Danny’s show-biz friends. They included Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnez, Dinah Shore, and many others. Sheldon Leonard, who appeared occasionally as Danny’s manager, Phil, was also the show’s producer and director. 

Recurring characters included Danny’s Uncle Tonoose from Toledo, played by Hans Conried; an Italian foreign exchange student named Gina, played by Annette Funicello; and Kathy’s father, played by William Demarest, who is better known as Uncle Charley from “My Three Sons.” 

Although available to stream, I’m catching shows as they appear on the Catchy Comedy channel and MeTV+.

Bourbon in Washington, Oh My!

 

Kash Patel's personalized
bottle of Woodford Reserve.

The Atlantic isn’t letting up on Kash Patel. Today, Sarah Fitzpatrick, the reporter responsible for the magazine's April 17th exposé, dropped a new story headlined, “Kash Patel’s Personalized Bourbon Stash.” It seems the FBI Director is using personalized 750ml bottles of Woodford Reserve as a gift for folks he wants to impress, a sort of 90° proof calling card.

This is only a story because it’s Kash Patel, a relentless self-promotor who likes to spell it “KA$H,” including on his personalized bottles. A spokesperson for Brown-Forman confirmed that “consumers who purchase Woodford Reserve occasionally have images and messages engraved on the bottle,” adding the disclaimer that, “these engravings occur after the point of purchase.”

An FBI spokesperson confirmed what Patel is doing. “The bottles in question are part of a tradition in the FBI that started well over a decade ago, long before Director Patel arrived. Senior Bureau officials have long exchanged commemorative items in formal gift settings consistent with ethics rules. Director Patel has followed all applicable ethical guidelines and pays for any personal gift himself.”

He did not say if those previous commemorative items contained whiskey.

The FBI, of course, was a product of Prohibition enforcement but, overall, the pearl clutching about this revelation is laughable. Although it’s not the way it used to be in Washington, alcohol has fueled politics since both were invented. Back when legislators remained in the capital for the entire legislative session and landlines were the only way to communicate “back home,” socializing with colleagues, lobbyists, and others from the government and its periphery was a way of life. Alcohol, mostly whiskey, was part of it. This certainly extended to gift-giving.

What was true in Washington was just as true in state capitals.

One bourbon brand still sold today was created by a politician as a gift for, as in Patel’s case, anyone he wanted to impress. His name was Charles Farnsley. He was a politician who served in the Kentucky House of Representatives (1936-1940), as mayor of Louisville (1948-1953), and in the U. S. House of Representatives (1965-66).

The Farnsleys were old Louisville money. Charles was the nephew of Alex Farnsley, an investor who backed “Pappy” Van Winkle and Arthur Stitzel in the formation of Stitzel-Weller during Prohibition. Between his stint in the state legislature and his election as mayor, Charles Farnsley was a lobbyist for local bourbon makers, including Uncle Alex’s Stitzel-Weller.

A statue of Mayor Farnsey on Main Street in Louisville

In 1936, while a member of the Kentucky House, Charles created a bourbon brand called Rebel Yell, a unabashed tribute to the Confederacy. Stitzel-Weller made it for him. Initially, he just gave bottles out as gifts, which he continued to do in his capacity as an industry lobbyist. The whiskey became so popular that Stitzel-Weller began to distribute it commercially, first locally, then throughout the South. 

Charles Farnsley was a contradiction. Although he pined for the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy, as mayor he desegregated Louisville’s libraries and public swimming pools. In Congress he enthusiastically supported the 1965 Voting Rights Act and other Great Society legislation.

Rebel Yell was briefly discontinued a couple times but has mostly been sold ever since. Over the years everything associated with the Confederacy has been removed, including half of the name. Today it’s just “Rebel,” an MGP/Luxco product. It never was a big brand and still isn’t. 

Suntory’s Booker’s Bourbon started in much the same way, as a gift that salespeople for what was then Jim Beam Brands gave to customers and other friends of the company. For many years Brown-Forman had a gift brand they called President’s Choice used for the same purpose. Virtually every liquor company has done something similar, and most have personalization options for consumers.

Bourbon Distilleries, Ranked by Capacity, 2026

 

One of six column stills at the Jack
Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg, TN.

Blogger gives me a rudimentary idea of how many people look at this blog and what, specifically, they look at.

Typically, the two most popular posts are old ones. The most recent post is usually third.

The perennial winners? "Bourbon Distilleries, Ranked by Capacity" from September of 2017 and "The Truth About Tito's and All Vodka" from October of that same year.

I don't know why the vodka post is so popular. Maybe it's because the truth about vodka isn't widely reported. I'm glad people read it, but I don't have anything to add. I did update it, at the end of the post, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

I know why the other one, about distillery capacity, is so popular. Vendome has a link to it on their website. It deserves an update. Although not a lot has changed, what has changed is big. (It will be up to Vendome if they want to change the link.)

I should mention that the data I'm reporting is not "industry data," it's mine, based on a database I've maintained for years that tracks one simple metric, capacity as determined by the size of the distillery's beer still(s). It's an imperfect metric but it has the advantage of allowing apples-to-apples comparisons.

A distillery can produce less than its beer still's capacity, and everybody does, especially now, but it can't produce more.

You can go back to that 2017 post for more about the database and how I use it.

Brown-Forman's Jack Daniel's Distillery remains #1, although I don't believe it has gotten any bigger since 2017. That's one of Brown-Forman's problems right now. Jack Daniel's is huge but it's a mature brand here in its home market, without a lot of room to grow. It has huge potential outside the U.S., so the recent change in tariffs on whiskey is welcome. 

In addition to the Lynchburg distillery, which only makes Jack Daniel's products, Brown-Forman has three other U.S. whiskey distilleries, all in Kentucky.

Sazerac's Buffalo Trace Distillery has moved up two places into second, since bringing its second 84" beer still online. 

That moves Heaven Hill's Bernheim Distillery in Louisville to #3 and Suntory's Booker Noe Distillery in Boston, Kentucky to #4. Brown-Forman's second-largest distillery, in the Louisville suburb of Shively, remains at #5.

Number six is no longer a tie, since Suntory has taken the 72" column at Clermont out of the running. Sazerac's Barton 1792 in Bardstown has sole possession of #6.

This is a good place to mention that those four companies, Brown-Forman, Sazerac, Suntory, and Heaven Hill (the Big 4) continue to dominate the American whiskey space, as they have for decades. 

The next two are unchanged in terms of rank. Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, now owned by Gallo, is #7 and Suntory's Maker's Mark in Loretto is #8. Heaven Hill's new Bardstown distillery is the new #9, moving Campari's Wild Turkey in Lawrenceburg to #10 in a tie with Middle West Spirits in Columbus, Ohio. Bardstown Bourbon Company, now owned by Lofted Spirits, is #11. Jackson Purchase, in Hickman, is #12. The other Lofted Spirits distillery, Owensboro's Green River, is #13. The Lawrenceburg, Indiana distillery sometimes known as Ross & Squibb, owned by MGP, is tied at #14 with Whiskey House of Kentucky in Bowling Green. 

There is a tie at #15 between two Diageo distilleries, George Dickel in Tullahoma, Tennessee and Bulleit in Shelbyville, Kentucky. That would have been a three-way tie except Diageo's newest distillery, in Loretto, is currently off-line.

At #16 we have Campari's Wilderness Trail Distillery in Danville. Tennessee Distilling Group, in Columbia, Tennessee, is #17.

We'll end it there. As things change, I'll let you know.

It's interesting to note that Gallo, new to the bourbon game, comes in at #7 with the highest-ranking distillery not owned by one of the Big 4. Also now looking like players are Campari and Lofted Spirits, each with two listed distilleries. Lofted is now the biggest contract distiller, supplanting MGP.

I'll conclude with a reminder that this ranking is based on capacity, not production. In this new environment, that's going to vary widely. I've removed from the list distilleries that have announced they won't distill in 2026, but how much the remainder will distill in 2026 is up-for-grabs, since it seems like everybody has more than enough already in barrels.

Telling Whiskey History in Tell City (Part 4)

 

Some of Park & Tilford's fine perfumes.

When David Schulte bought Old Overholt in the middle of Prohibition, he didn’t want the Pennsylvania distillery. That was worthless. He wanted its 35,000 barrels of aging whiskey along with the license that allowed him to sell that whiskey as medicine. Schulte paid $4.5M for Overholt and sold it to the Wathen brothers’ American Medicinal Spirits Company (AMS) for $7.7M. AMS was the biggest seller of medicinal whiskey and would go on to become the biggest component of National Distillers.

Then Schulte went after another Prohibition loophole, fragrances. As Prohibition Commissioner Roy Haynes helpfully pointed out, alcohol had “hundreds of uses and only one is outlawed.” Prohibition led, almost overnight, to a tripling of industrial alcohol production. Suddenly, Park and Tilford was a major perfume manufacturer. Millions of gallons of industrial alcohol were diverted and illegally transformed into ‘whiskey,’ ‘gin,’ and other concoctions based on flavoring neutral spirit.

Schulte's Park and Tilford was not the only company that did this, allegedly. Schulte managed to stay on the right side of the law and transitioned into legal whiskey-making after Repeal. He also remained a major perfume manufacturer. 

In 1938, Schulte opened an office in Louisville and began to buy distilleries. He acquired Louisville’s Bonnie Brothers, Krogman in Tell City, the Woodford County Distillery in Midway, Kentucky; the Hamburger Distillery in Brownsville, Pennsylvania; and the Owings Mills Distillery in Gwyn Falls, Maryland. They all operated under the Park and Tilford banner.

Park and Tilford kept Krogman going for about 20 years. People in the industry usually referred to it as Park and Tilford or Tell City, but it was always Krogman to locals. 

Several Beam family members worked at Schulte’s distilleries. Roy Beam, one of Joe Beam's seven distiller sons, was the distiller responsible for all Park and Tilford plants. He was based at Bonnie Brothers in Louisville. 

Roy hired his brother Otis to run Tell City. Roy’s son, Charles Lloyd ‘Charlie’ Beam, also worked at Krogman. Charlie would go on to work for Seagram’s, where he created the Eagle Rare bourbon brand. He finished his Seagram’s career as distiller at Four Roses in Lawrenceburg. In 2010 he was inducted (posthumously) into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame.

David Schulte died in 1949, leaving Park and Tilford in the hands of his two sons. They sold it to Schenley, then the country’s largest whiskey company, in 1954. It took a few more years for Schenley to decide Krogman was excess capacity. The property was acquired by the city government and is today part of Tell City’s sewage treatment plant. 

Krogman shut down for good in the 1960s. Tell City's other claim to fame, the Tell City Furniture Company, closed in 2012. Antique shops in Tell City and vicinity sell stoneware jugs and other Krogman collectibles, as well as vintage Tell City furniture.

Today Tell City (pop. 7,272) is the seat of Perry County (pop. 19,170). It celebrates Swiss heritage with an annual festival in August. Visitors can enjoy its scenic riverfront park and historic downtown. Nearby is the Hoosier National Forest.

(This is Part 4 and the conclusion. If you'd like to start with Part 1, go here.)

Does the Uncle Nearest Whiskey Brand Have a Future?

The Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

There are many acts still to play out in the psychodrama the Uncle Nearest case has become, but I've been thinking about the endgame.

As a business, Uncle Nearest is a basket case. The value of the company's tangible assets is a fraction of its indebtedness. Whatever an asset sale brings in will go to the bank, which leaves nothing for other debtors, company principals, or investors.

The wildcard is the company's intangible asset, the Uncle Nearest brand. Its value is between nothing and infinity. The receiver is supposed to protect and preserve the value of all assets but especially that one, which is why there is a receivership and not a bankruptcy. 

Despite the receivership, the various expressions of Uncle Nearest Whiskey are still available for sale in liquor stores throughout the nation. As big as this story has been for those of us who follow these things, it is likely most Uncle Nearest customers are unaware of the turmoil, or only vaguely aware of it. Sales are off, as they are throughout the distilled spirits industry, but they have not cratered.

Therefore, there is an expectation that however this sorts out, and regardless of who winds up owning it, the production and sale of Uncle Nearest Whiskey will continue. Getting accurate sales figures is something the receiver has struggled with. Like everything else, the company's books are a mess, but a good estimate is about 150,000 cases a year. Traditionally, a brand isn't considered 'major' unless it sells at least one million cases a year, but most producers consider a brand 'viable' if it sells at least 20,000 cases, so 150,000 is substantial and, being still a young brand, it has growth potential. 

For comparison purposes, Jack Daniel's sells about 9M cases annually. Smirnoff vodka sells about 24M.

But at 150,000 cases, Uncle Nearest's business is too valuable to not keep going, right?

Maybe not.

Brands do die and disappear. Some are remembered; most aren't. Sunny Brook was one of the biggest bourbon brands pre-Prohibition. It's no longer sold and only serious history geeks have ever heard of it.

Does the Uncle Nearest brand have what it takes to continue and thrive under different ownership and leadership? That may well depend on deposed CEO Fawn Weaver. Can you imagine her going to work for Diageo or Suntory as a brand ambassador? Can the brand continue if she's not involved? What if she's hostile to the new owners? That's a definite possibility since she has already made statements about the brand being "stolen" from her.

Those are questions any potential buyer of the Uncle Nearest trademark will have to answer.

Consider Diageo's Bulleit Frontier Whiskey. It survived the controversy surrounding father and daughter brand ambassadors Tom and Hollis Bulleit with barely a ripple. Maybe that's because Diageo immediately cut all ties to the family. 'Bulleit' is now just a name on the bottle. The Bulleit family no longer has a role. It's not a perfect comparison because both Bulleits were already Diageo employees. They had no ownership stake.

All this got me thinking about Uncle Nearest himself, Nathan 'Nearest' Green, the formerly enslaved man who "taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey."

A lot of the Uncle Nearest story is puffery. There's nothing wrong with that. Most brand stories are replete with puffery. Believe it or not, "puffery" is a legal term. It refers to "exaggerated or hyperbolic statements that are so clearly promotional and subjective that no ordinary person would take them as literal facts."

I like the Uncle Nearest story and hope the brand survives, but Nathan Green is significant only because Jack Daniel is significant. It is likely every American whiskey company with mid-19th century roots has an Uncle Nearest somewhere in its story. "Uncle" and "aunt" were permissible ways to respectfully refer to a Black man or woman, if you were white, at a time when referring to a Black man as "mister" could get you killed. 

In part, Nearest Green is important precisely because we know about him, so he stands in for the thousands of anonymous Black workers, enslaved or emancipated, who ran stills and made whiskey for white owners. 

We have few records that name the enslaved men and women who worked in distilleries. It's likely that when slavery was legal in all the English colonies, most distilleries used that labor force. The first major commercial distilled spirits industry in Colonial America was New England rum, made from molasses, a byproduct of sugar refining. It was shipped from Great Britain's Caribbean colonies to its colonies in New England. Virtually all of the labor in the Caribbean sugar colonies was enslaved. It's likely that carried over to the New England distilleries. Massachusetts didn't abolish slavery until 1783. 

Enslaved men and women who had special skills were often rented out by their owners. A skilled distiller would have been much in demand and would fetch a high price. As much as we romanticize it today, distilling in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries was hard, hot, and dangerous. That's exactly the kind of work enslaved people did, the hard, hot, and dangerous kind.

This reality has long been a problem for whiskey marketers, many of whom use history (real or imagined) in their brand stories. Early Times Bourbon had a famous sign that hung in bars and liquor stores depicting a frontier distillery. They produced thousands of them, which you can find on eBay. It showed several workers doing various tasks. Every face was black. In later years, they produced the same design with white faces. In the final iteration the distillery scene was the same except with no people of any color. No workers were shown.

"But what about Uncle Nearest inventing the Lincoln County Process of charcoal filtering?" Sorry but, no. He didn't. That's part of the puffery. Charcoal filtering using maple wood charcoal was common practice in Tennessee and elsewhere before Nathan Green and Jack Daniel were even born.

"But doesn't it count for something that he was involved in starting a whiskey that became the most popular whiskey in the world?" Okay, sure, but Jack Daniel's didn't become the brand it is today because of Nathan Green, Jack Daniel, or Lem Motlow. It became hugely successful through the efforts of the company that bought it from the Motlow family in 1956, Brown-Forman.

At the time of that sale, Jack Daniel's was successful and growing, but it wasn't #1. That came much, much later.

What is unique is that the Green and Daniel/Motlow families had an ongoing relationship, into the present day, and although Green's story wasn't widely known outside of the Lynchburg community until 2016, it was always known there.

Most Uncle Nearest customers, like most whiskey consumers, don't know a lot about the brands they buy or the companies that produce them, and what they know or think they know may not be accurate. Most don't know, for example, that although there is a still at the Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville, no whiskey is made there. It's a real still that could make whiskey, but they never finished installing it. 

Most of the whiskey sold under the Uncle Nearest label is made at Tennessee Distilling Group (TDG), a contract distiller located about 40 miles west of Shelbyville in Columbia. TDG would love to keep making it, but they probably aren't willing or able to market and distribute it themselves, even if they obtained the rights. 

But maybe I'm wrong. Just last month, TDG bought an Irish whiskey distillery, Waterford, out of receivership.

So, if the Uncle Nearest brand survives and thrives, it won't be because of those legacies, it will be because a base of consumers have adopted the brand. If that adoption can be nurtured and expanded, then the brand has a future. If its stewards, whoever they turn out to be, succeed at that, then it has a chance. If they fail, it doesn't.

Telling Whiskey History in Tell City (Part 3)

 

Krogman made many different products post-Prohibition.

So well regarded was the Krogman name that, after Prohibition, a group of Tell City businesspeople decided to revive the distillery and its brands. Tell City had affection for the Krogman and Voelke families and felt Will and Claudina had been unfortunate victims of an even more unfortunate failed public policy. Moreover, the investors believed the Krogman name could still sell whiskey. They formed a corporation and issued stock. Ed Schultz was president; William Gerber was vice president. His son, Will Junior, was secretary and plant manager. The Krogman family was not involved. 

The distiller was John Striewe, Krogman’s pre-Prohibition distiller. The distillery was projected to consume 500 bushels of grain daily. They announced willingness to buy 2,000 bushels of apples per day in the fall for brandy. 

Because of the robbery and fire, there wasn’t much left of the plant in 1933. It took $130,000 to rebuild and get distilling going in December of 1934. Another $40,000 was spent the next year to build a new 15,000-barrel maturation warehouse. They produced 55 barrels of whiskey a day and used 520 bushels of grain to do it. The brandy business never quite materialized. In the end they put in about $300,000 (about $6.5M today).

In fall of 1935, Krogman released its first bourbons. Obviously, they were very young. Lincoln Trail was 8 months old and 100° proof, Brushy Fork was 8 months old and 93° proof, Duchess was 6 months old and 90° proof, Deer Creek was 4 months old and 93° proof, and Millstone was 4 months old and 90° proof. Those last two, Deer Creek and Millstone, were aged in half barrels (24 gallons) in heated warehouses, an experiment in rapid aging. 

Selling whiskey at such young ages was not unusual in the immediate aftermath of Prohibition. People wanted something to drink, were happy to get it, and the distillers needed income. The nuances of aging and proof in the portfolio suggest a customer base that understood the significance of each. These were inexpensive whiskeys aimed at savvy but cost-conscious consumers. They could have drunk vodka or gin, but they preferred whiskey. Properly made four-month-old bourbon was still better than vodka, in the estimation of Kroman's customers.

Krogman distilled on-and-off for about three years. After that, selling the whiskey in its warehouses as it matured kept the company nominally in business until 1941, when it was sold to a national company. The Tell City News tried to put the best possible face on the local ownership’s failure. The sale, “will probably prove to be beneficial for the city of Tell City,” it opined. “The plant has not been running for several years and very little labor has been employed.” They reported that the new owners promised to operate the plant and “employ local labor as much as possible.” 

The journal could not, however, gloss over the fact that, “from the standpoint of investors who put up money to build and start this plant in Tell City, this move will not be so good for they will lose much of their original investment but from the standpoint of the city generally, there is little doubt but that it will be a benefit.”

Mostly, the local newspaper was just happy “our little plant” would be “in the hands of a reputable concern.”

Not so fast.

Joseph Park and John Mason Tilford opened a small grocery store in New York City in 1840. They built it into a large, successful chain of stores that sold wine and liquor as well as groceries and tobacco products, especially cigars. Their sons succeeded them in the business. 

The loss of alcohol sales hit the company hard when Prohibition took effect; that left cigars as their big moneymaker. 

In 1923, Park and Tilford was sold to David A. Schulte, a competitor in the cigar trade. Cigars were still a huge business despite growing competition from cigarettes. Schulte considered Park and Tilford “the best retail merchandising name in the country.” He merged the two companies under the Park and Tilford brand and kept most of the existing organization in place. He even married the widow of the company’s treasurer. 

Park and Tilford became Schulte’s vehicle for acquisitions in medicinal alcohol and fragrances, two Prohibition loopholes he exploited. 

In 1925, Schulte bought Pennsylvania’s Old Overholt Distillery. The seller was U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who had been partners in the distillery with Henry Clay Frick. Best known as a steel industrialist, Frick happened to be Abraham Overholt’s grandson. Mellon was Frick’s banker and had owned the distillery outright since Frick’s death. He gave it one of the six medicinal whiskey licenses, but since the Treasury was responsible for Prohibition enforcement, it didn’t look good for the Secretary to own a distillery, even a legal one, so he sold it to Schulte.

Well, it looks like this is at least a four-parter. More to come.

Telling Whiskey History in Tell City (Part 2)

 

Krogman's jugs are a popular collectible in the Tell City area.

Will Krogman married Claudina Voelke, whose father owned Tell City's largest brewery. When Claudina’s parents died, the Krogmans moved into her family’s mansion on the grounds of the old brewery. Their elder daughter, Willie, was 21 but still living with them. Their Etta was just 13.

They tore down the brewery, landscaped the grounds, and renovated the house. It was heralded as “one of Tell City’s handsomest residences, on a site of commanding elevation.” 

In 1911, the year Will and Claudina moved into their renovated mansion, a Tell City man was feuding with his neighbors about some chickens. He shot and killed one of the neighbors, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to life in prison. His victim’s family claimed the murderer was drunk on Krogman’s Whiskey when he committed the crime. They sued Krogman for $10,000. 

After several tries, in an atmosphere of growing hostility to alcohol, the family found a jury willing to award them $7,000 (about $140,000 today). That award was set aside by a subsequent trial, where Krogman prevailed. The victim's family appealed that decision to the Appellate Court of Indiana, which also ruled in Krogman’s favor. The ordeal dragged on for seven years.

Then things got worse for Will Krogman. On the heels of the lawsuit’s resolution, Indiana Prohibition shuttered his distillery, two years before national Prohibition. Most of Will’s capital was tied up in his plant and the whiskey aging in his warehouses. Was all that now worthless? 

‘Medicinal sales’ were somewhere in the future, but the feds were dunning him for unpaid excise tax now. How did they expect him to pay his taxes if he couldn’t sell his whiskey? Will was desperate. He decided his whiskey should be liberated. He knew he could sell it if he could just get his hands on it. 

To that end, he got together four pals and planned a heist. The warehouse had been hit several times already, mostly by kids stealing a gallon or two. Will and his crew worked on their plan for a year. They would make it look like the previous, legitimate robberies, then torch the warehouse to conceal the crime. 

They got away with about 800 gallons. They had buyers ready and expected to net about $20,000. Everyone would get their cut and go their separate ways. That was the plan.

But the fire didn’t take. The Fire Chief could tell it was an inside job. The first people they caught took deals and ratted out everyone else. Eighteen individuals were arrested, including Will Krogman. They were tried together in federal court in Indianapolis. 

Coincidentally, 800 gallons worked out to 18 barrels of whiskey, one for each defendant. All pled guilty. Their sentences ranged from a few months in county to a year or more in the federal lock-up in Atlanta, where Al Capone, George Remus, and other Prohibition criminals did time. Will Krogman got two years in Atlanta and was fined $2,000.

At trial, one of Will’s confederates, a fellow from Chicago, testified that Will offered to ‘sell’ him whiskey for $12 a gallon, all he had to do was go get it. That was the caper. Will diagramed everything and assured the Chicagoan he could take the whiskey out of the warehouse and the Treasury agents guarding the place would not interfere. (They didn’t.) 

As Will directed, whiskey was siphoned from barrels into jugs, which were passed through a drainpipe to other “whiskey gangsters” outside, who loaded the jugs into cars, then onto boats on the Ohio River, to be transported to Evansville, the bigger town fifty miles downstream. About 15 gallons stayed behind in Tell City, hidden at a baseball park.

In addition to Will Krogman, several other upstanding citizens were convicted, including the manager of an Evansville hotel, the secretary of that city’s parks board, and two former sheriffs. 

After the trial, Will tried to run. He left Tell City but was caught in Louisville and hauled back to Indianapolis for sentencing.

When Will was released from Atlanta he was 61. He and Claudina traveled a bit, settling for a time near Brownsville, Texas, where they grew citrus fruit. Krogman’s conviction didn’t hurt his social standing in Tell City. Local journals continued to report the couple’s coming and going in the society columns. They returned to Tell City for good in 1930. He died two years later, while visiting Etta in Illinois. Claudina died in 1937, while visiting Willie in Ohio.

Although the Krogmans themselves were gone, Krogram's Distillery continued or, rather, returned after Prohibition. Next time, in Part 3, the revival and ultimate demise of Krogman's.

Telling Whiskey History in Tell City (Part 1)

The Krogman Distillery in Tell City, Indiana, post-Prohibition.

Matt Colglazier is Chief Merchandising Officer at Big Red Liquors, a chain of retail liquor stores with 103 locations throughout Indiana. 

If you know the name "Krogman's," it's probably from a side project Colglazier did in 2019, called Krogman's Old Master. Although the website is still there, the whiskey is long gone. Here's the story.

"Born in Tell City, Indiana, this pre-prohibition brand is back and better than ever! Two 90 proof expressions of bourbon and rye, along with the most unique single barrel offering in the country. Bottling nine different MGP mashbills as non-chill filtered, cask strength, single barrels, which are individually selected, and each given a unique nickname. Collect them all, and taste every recipe from one of the world’s premier whiskey distilleries. Hand-bottled in Bloomington, Indiana. No BS, just full disclosure barrel proof, single barrel all day long!"

An original bottle of Krogman's Old Master Bourbon.

It was an all-Indiana project. The MGP distillery, now sometimes known as Ross & Squibb, is in Lawrenceburg, on the Ohio River at the Ohio border, just west of Cincinnati. Bloomington, where it was bottled, is about 100 miles due west of Lawrenceburg. Tell City is on the Ohio River too, about 100 miles south of Bloomington. The Lawrenceburg to Tell City route is the hypotenuse of the triangle.

But there is more to the Tell City and Krogman's story. Much more.

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 it Tell City, after the mythological Swiss hero, William Tell. 

They considered sites in Kentucky and Missouri but rejected both because of slavery. “None of our colony would ever forget the sacred principles of Republicanism so far as to make use of such a privilege,” as one society member put it.

The plan was to quickly develop an industrial infrastructure, “organized more for the common benefit of the poorer class of our countrymen, which consists mostly of intelligent mechanics and farmers," according to official documents. It became a manufacturing center, mostly for furniture. Although the company that made them folded in 2011, solid maple Tell City chairs remain popular. 

There were breweries and distilleries in Tell City almost from the beginning but the biggest and most important one was August Krogman's. 

Not everyone in Tell City was Swiss. Krogman was from Holstein, in what was then the German Confederation, where he learned brewing and distilling. There had always been German immigrants in the Americas, but the trickle turned into a torrent after the unrest of 1848. Krogman came in 1855, at age 34. He worked at a brewery in Iowa before moving to southern Indiana.

Throughout that part of the state, coal seams are very close to the surface and easy to mine. Many farmers in the region also mined coal. Krogman was one of them and used those profits to start his distillery.

Like many, Krogman's distillery made bourbon whiskey but also apple and peach brandy. August ran the distillery successfully until his death in 1905 at the age of 84. His son, William ‘Will’ Krogman, took over and ran it until Prohibition. 

Will started out strong. He owned Tell City’s biggest distillery, and his father-in-law was the city’s biggest brewer. 

But Prohibition was in the wind and Will's problems began even before the drought, next time, in Part 2.

How Likely Is a Brown-Forman, Pernod Ricard Merger?

 

A rolling billboard for Old Forester and other Brown-Forman
brands at the company headquarters and distillery
on Dixie Highway in Louisville (1936).

Today Bloomberg and Reuters, two generally reliable news sources, reported that Brown-Forman and Pernod Ricard are in talks about a merger of some sort. The reports are based on anonymous sources and neither company has confirmed anything, but the story is being widely reported with headlines like this one from the Lexington Herald-Leader. "Reports: Kentucky whiskey company Brown-Forman, Pernod Ricard in merger talks."

This pops up whenever there is upheaval in the distilled spirits industry. On paper, Brown-Forman looks like a great acquisition. It has one superior brand and a couple of pretty good ones, primarily in the American whiskey space. It's a well-run company, profitable, and not overloaded with debt. 

Pernod Ricard is the world's #2 distilled spirits company after Diageo, with annual gross sales of $12.3B. It owns Absolut Vodka, Jameson Irish Whiskey, Chivas Regal Scotch, Martell Cognac, Havana Club Rum, and a bunch of others. Though well-endowed with Scotch and Irish whiskey, it is light on American whiskey, although it owns a few craft producers such as Kentucky's Jefferson's and Rabbit Hole, West Virginia's Smooth Ambler, and Fort Worth's Firestone & Robertson, which produces the TX Whiskey brand.

Usually when these Brown-Forman merger rumors appear the finger is pointed at Bacardi, sometimes Diageo. 

Is Brown-Forman in play? Probably not, inasmuch as these rumors have always fizzled in the past. Although publicly traded, Brown-Forman is still controlled by the Brown family. They're generally happy with things the way they are. It would be very hard, perhaps impossible, for a determined suitor to force a sale.

I've always heard that the Brown family doesn't like the Bacardi family, which is why that tie-up always falters. I don't know how they feel about the Ricard family.

An observation: When I made the "Made and Bottled in Kentucky" documentary, I mentioned in the script that Brown-Forman was then "a three-billion dollar company." If I remember correctly, that was their gross sales for the previous year. That was 30+ years ago. Brown-Forman's gross sales for 2024 were $5.32B. Considering inflation, the company may actually be smaller today. That may tell you more about the distilled spirits business than it does about one particular company.

By contrast, Brown-Forman's principal rival in the American whiskey space, Suntory, is much bigger than Jim Beam Brands was 30 years ago, but they have grown by acquisitions more so than by growing their core business. Brown-Forman has bought some brands over the years, but I don't think they've bought a rival company since the 1950s, when they bought Jack Daniel's. 

Booze is a good business but it's not AI. There's not a lot of potential for growth. The market generally dislikes diversification so that leaves acquisition as the only path to growth, and the liquor business seems to be hard on its #2. When Diageo passed Seagram's as #1 at the end of the 20th century, Seagram's went out of business.

One peculiarity of the American whiskey business is that the four largest distillers, who together make about seventy percent of America's whiskey, are all closely held. Some of Brown-Forman's stock is publicly traded. The other three, Suntory, Sazerac, and Heaven Hill, are entirely family owned. In all three cases, the principal shareholder is a man in his 80s. 

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Late today, after this posted, Brown-Forman confirmed that it is exploring "a merger of equals" with Pernod.

Pride Goeth Before the Fall

 

Fawn Weaver and company, startled by the Harold Washington
animatronic at the DuSable Museum in Chicago, June 25, 2024.

The Uncle Nearest saga began eight years to the day before the above picture was taken.

That was when Clay Risen revealed Nathan 'Nearest' Green's story to the world, or at least to readers of the New York Times, in an article headlined "Jack Daniel’s Embraces a Hidden Ingredient: Help From a Slave."

Fawn Weaver credits that article with inspiring her to create the Uncle Nearest whiskey brand. These days, she and the brand are in a heap of trouble.

Eight years is a good age for American straight whiskey. At least to my taste, eight to twelve years is the sweet spot for whiskey aged in new, charred oak, which bourbon and whiskeys like it must be.

But I digress.

To build a premium whiskey brand from nothing to approximately 150-thousand cases a year seems like a remarkable accomplishment, especially for someone with no previous industry experience and little more than a good story. The liquid, though perfectly fine for what it is, is not extraordinary. That's not why people buy it. It's the story or, I should say, stories, Green's but also Weaver's. 

They are inextricably linked.

From the beginning, I've been impressed by Weaver. She seemed to make all the right moves and experience nothing but success. Seeing her perform in person, during her 2024 book tour, just increased my estimation, even though by then I had heard troubling rumors that all in Tennessee was not as it appeared.

But, in person, Weaver absolutely owns the room. She's dazzling. She casts a spell and makes you want to believe. She held her own last night and two weeks ago on ABC's "Shark Tank" TV show. (Both episodes were recorded last summer, before the current troubles.) 

There have been many facts and counter-facts floating around. Weaver is all over social media but the receiver and the bank she owes $100M+ to only speak through their filings with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, where Case No. 4:25-cv-38 is being adjudicated.

Let's focus on that $100M number, which is closer to $200M when you add the unsecured creditors. I have it on good authority that she raised a similar amount, about $200M, from investors. Suddenly, that 150-thousand cases per year after eight years doesn't seem so impressive, if they spent $400M to get there. For all intents and purposes, the company is broke. Like everything else, the value of its tangible assets is in dispute, but it's way south of $100M, let alone $400M.

Even more disputed is the value of its intangible assets, specifically the Uncle Nearest brand, which ranges from zero to infinity.

My previous post on this subject was a reaction to those who assume the whole thing was a scam from the beginning. If it was, it was a poor job, because that money appears to be gone and not in anybody's pocket. Judge Charles Atchley Jr., who is presiding over the case, used the "out over your skis" idiom at one point. Based on everything we know, that seems as good an explanation as any. 

Judge Atchley is expected to rule soon on Weaver's motion to end the receivership and the receiver's motion to add seven other Weaver businesses to the package.  

Weaver's latest gambit, filing bankruptcy for a company she no longer controls, which didn't last 48 hours, and also filing a defamation suit against the bank which, even though she is a Californian whose company is in Tennessee and the bank she's suing is in Kentucky, she filed in New York. It all just seems weird at this point, like she's grasping at straws. 

Self-confidence will only take you so far. 

Don't Judge Uncle Nearest Too Harshly

 

The Uncle Nearest Distillery in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

I'd like to take a moment to offer some perspective on the Uncle Nearest situation. This is especially for folks who jumped to the conclusion that it was a scam from jump.

FAT Brands is a global franchising company in the fast-casual, quick-service, casual dining, and polished casual dining segments. Some of their better-known brands are Fatburger, Johnny Rockets, Ponderosa and Bonanza. (Those last two are revivals of brands from the 60s.)

FAT is bankrupt and their debt is so big, even debtors who thought they were safe may be impacted.

According to Bloomberg, FAT has $1.4 billion in bonds supported by just $40 million in annual earnings. Like Hooters and T.G.I. Fridays before it, FAT pledged virtually all its earnings to a debt structure that became too much to bear.

It's not the same as Uncle Nearest, of course, but in both cases the scheme fell apart when the market for the company's products suddenly changed, and they didn't have enough wiggle room in their financing to adapt.

That doesn't change anything. I'm just saying many businesses are a house of cards in the sense that a sudden change beyond their control can bring it all crashing down.

America's True "Same as It Ever Was" Whiskey

 

E. H. Taylor was one of the prominent distillery
owners who lobbied on behalf of the Act.

Last month I posted “Whiskey’s Biggest Lie,” debunking the marketing practice of brands claiming ancient recipes and unchanged methods, implying that whiskey in the past surely was better. Since the industry began, distillers have claimed they did things “the old fashioned way,” whether they did or not.

The prevalence and persistence of such claims suggests there is an itch bourbon drinkers long to scratch, to taste whiskey their parents or grandparents would recognize. People scour liquor stores for dusties. They buy Prohibition-era bottles at auction. Some search for authenticity in moonshine, legal and illegal.

There are problems with all these approaches. Many dusties are glut-era bottlings. They represent what people were drinking then, but it wasn't typical. Many bourbon producers in the 1980s bottled whiskey that was much older than was customary for those brands, just to get rid of it. Those bottlings are representative of that relatively brief period but not, for example, of the periods immediately before or after it, and not of everything sold then. The biggest brands, such as Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s, didn’t do this. They had not grievously over-produced, so they didn't have to do much correction. It was contract producers and smaller brands, some on their way to oblivion, that bore the brunt. (The same thing is happening now.) 

Even a decade or more after they were produced, a lot of those bottles were still out there. If you got your hands on them, they were very good and usually cheap. But bottling better whiskey didn’t save them and most whiskey that was so treated is now gone or priced stratospherically on the secondary. A. H. Hirsch Reserve is a similar story. It was aged that long because the owner didn't have a use for it. Some of those bottles are still out there but they cost a fortune.

Earlier bottlings, including those Prohibition-era pints, are also pricey. Much of the whiskey bottled during and immediately after Prohibition was mishandled or simply in wood way too long. A lot of it, maybe most of it, disappoints. Either way, it’s not representative of what your great-grandparents drank before the drought.

Moonshine, legal or illegal, has its own set of problems.

But there is one way to taste something made today in virtually the same way it was made more than a century ago. Its main parameters haven’t changed because they are dictated by federal law.

That, of course, is bottled-in-bond whiskey. The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 was proposed and supported by distillers such as E. H. Taylor and opposed by rectifiers. Taking advantage of the law was voluntary. The business between distillers and rectifiers could continue as it always had but now distillers had a way to ensure that their customers received what Taylor called "the genuine article." 

As an incentive to participate, the Act allowed distillers to defer payment of the Federal Excise Tax until whiskey was withdrawn from the bonded premises. To get the deferred taxation benefit and the privilege of labeling their whiskey “bonded” or “bottled-in-bond,” the distiller had to follow several rules having to do with how the whiskey was produced and sold. Those rules are still in effect today.

In a way, they codified practices already followed by many distillers, some of which differ from modern practice. Today, it is common for distillers to mix whiskeys of different ages, even whiskeys produced at different distilleries. There’s nothing wrong with that, many very good whiskeys are created that way, but it was less common 129 years ago when the Act was passed.

While bottled-in-bond whiskey isn’t necessarily better, it is different. The sort of blending that is typical today is something a bond can’t do. Everything in the bottle must come from a single distillery and it must have been distilled during a six-month period, either January-June (“Spring”) or July-December (“Fall”), in a single year. 

We have “small batch” and “single barrel” whiskeys. You can think of BIB as “single batch,” the "batch" being all the whiskey produced at that distillery during a six-month period.

The rule also says, “one distiller.” I’m not sure what a distillery is supposed to do if their distiller quits in April, but that’s the rule. Presumably, whiskey distilled from January first through the separation date would be one batch, whiskey distilled thereafter until June 30th would be another batch.

About the only change is that, in the old days, the batch had to be identified on the bottle, usually on a paper strip that “sealed” the bottle in the days before shrink wrap capsules. The distillation season and bottling season had to be noted, e.g., “Fall 2020, Spring 2025.”

That labeling requirement was eliminated in the 1980s but another labeling requirement remains. For BIB spirits, the federal license number of the distillery, known as its DSP number, must be shown on the label. 

All distilled spirits products must indicate on the label the city and state where the producer is located, but it can be any place of business. Typical today is the name of the producer, which can be an assumed business name (e.g., Evan Williams Distilling Company instead of Heaven Hill), followed by one or more cities where that producer does business. 

But that's not good enough for BIB. The number of the distilling DSP must be printed on the label. You'll have to look up the number to identify the distillery, but that's easily done on the internet. If the whiskey was aged or bottled at a different DSP, those numbers have to be there as well.

That requirement allows anyone with a DSP to buy BIB whiskey in bulk and bottle it under their own brand name so long as they disclose where it was distilled, aged and bottled. This is not common, but it is done. Sourced whiskey can be bonded if it meets all the requirements.

BIB whiskey cannot be bottled and sold until it is at least four years old. It can be older, but must all be the same age. If a BIB is labeled ten years old, every drop is ten years old, no more, no less. It also must be bottled at 100° proof (50% ABV), no more, no less.

As for consumer protection, the Act’s purpose was to guarantee the authenticity of whiskey so labeled. It was the first instance of the United States federal government offering a guarantee of this sort. It was the first federal “truth in advertising” legislation.

Back in the late 20th century, several major producers told me they considered dropping BIB. It was always voluntary and as the 21st century dawned, it seemed of little interest to consumers. Because it required deviation from normal procedures, there was no point doing it if it produced no benefit. At that point, few brands still offered a BIB expression. Not surprisingly, many were brands sold only in the South, some only in Kentucky. The best-selling bond nationally was Old Grand-Dad.

But then craft distilleries came along. Every craft distillery that wanted to make whiskey faced a dilemma, what to do for four or five years until that first batch of whiskey matured. They needed revenue and they needed to build a following. Some sold very young whiskey. Others sourced mature whiskey. Others made vodka, gin, rum, amaro, or liqueurs.

For many, the goal they set for themselves was to release a house-made bond. It was a standard they were proud to meet, and many considered that their "arrival." When they were able to offer their bond as a portfolio product, not a limited release, it often became the top of their line, maybe even their flagship.

When consumers responded, this revived interest in the bond segment among major producers. Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond has been very successful for Heaven Hill. 

Brown Forman, founded in 1870, predates the Bottled in Bond Act and opposed it. Although their Old Forester Bourbon was a high quality, all whiskey product, it was blended using whiskey from three different Kentucky distilleries, none of which Brown-Forman owned. Pre-Prohibition, Brown-Forman was a non-distiller producer. Today their line includes a 100° proof expression that is not bottled-in-bond. Ironically, Old Forester 1897, which is bottled-in-bond, is one of their most popular offerings.

For a bonded bottling, barrel selection is crucial, similar to single barrel. Because blending options are so limited, there is nowhere to hide. Most producers blend to a standard, a literal in-the-bottle sample of exactly how the brand should taste. Quality control consists of trained tasters comparing that standard to each candidate batch. This is done for bonds too. It’s hard to imagine a whole season not producing enough good barrels for a bond release. A producer can always skip a season, I suppose, but I suspect they simply have to tolerate more deviation from the standard with a bond than they would with their non-bonded release.

So, people claiming an unchanged recipe for 250 years are puffing, but 129 years is a different story. Just look for the words "bonded" or "bottled-in-bond."