It's Not 'Monk' or 'Mork,' It's Old Mock

Old Mock is a whiskey produced before Prohibition and sold as medicinal whiskey during Prohibition by A. Ph. Stitzel and the Wathen family's American Medicinal Spirits Company, both of Louisville.  People know about it because Mike Miller, the owner of Delilah's in Chicago, acquired a supply some years ago and sells it for about $50 a drink at the bar.

Because of the odd name and the odd typeface used on the bottle, some people think the name is 'Old Monk.' There is, in fact, a brand of rum called 'Old Monk,' but that is something else entirely. Others think it's called 'Old Mork,' which would be funny but it's not true.

No, the name is Old Mock, but no one has ever explained its origins.

Many products, of course, are named after people, and that appears to be the case here. In Athertonville, in Kentucky's LaRue County, there were several distilleries beginning as early as 1800. Thomas Lincolon, Abe's father, reportedly worked in one of them. The final chapter in Athertonville's story was a distillery called Cummins-Collins that was last owned by Seagram's. It closed for good in 1987. In 1933, the company's officers included Arthur Cummins, of course, but the secretary and treasurer was E. J. Mock.

The Mock family has been in Kentucky since the earliest days. According to a family publication called "The Mock Family Historian," William Randolph Mock came to Kentucky in 1796 and settled near Danville on a farm of 550 acres. He established a distillery there in 1842, which was continued by the family until about 1899. It was never very big, mashing at most 50 bushels a day. Old Mock was their brand. Someone, possibly E. J. Mock of Athertonville, kept the brand alive after 1899, until it came to rest with Stitzel after 1920.

Cecil says Old Mock was merely bottled by Stitzel using whiskey obtained from a variety of sources but he didn't know what those sources were. The Mock family has located a full-size bottle apparently produced by Stitzel-Weller after Prohibition, but its run was clearly short.

Miller still has a Prohibition pint on his back bar in Chicago.

It's Time to Call Out the New Drys and Their Junk Science

The U. S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) seems to have a tickler file that tells them to release some scary anti-alcohol study right before the Independence Day holiday, so everyone who enjoys a cold one will feel at least a little bit guilty about it. Last year at about this time they were hawking junk science in opposition to liquor privatization in Pennsylvania, earning them a rebuke from a former chairman of the American Medical Association.

This year, it's this eye-grabber: "Drinking behind 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults." What editor can resist a headline like that? The CDC is so credible, no one even thinks to challenge them.

They should.

The person behind all this New Dry blather at CDC is Bob Brewer, who runs the CDC's anti-alcohol section. How ironic that a prominent New Dry is named 'Brewer.' It's like if the president of PETA was named "Beef." One example of CDC's recent excess is its 'Community Guide' to preventing excessive alcohol consumption.

As the Distilled Spirits Council puts it: "What's really shocking and disappointing is Dr. Brewer's failure to use this opportunity to emphasize evidence-based strategies including screening and intervention, which the CDC promoted earlier this year as a proven, effective approach."

Instead, CDC proposes typical New Dry solutions like higher taxes, banning advertising, and limiting hours of sale. In control states, CDC opposes privatization. In license states, they want to reduce the number and density of licensed outlets.  

CDC predicted that privatization in Washington State would lead to a 44 percent median increase in per capita alcohol sales. Washington State's data showed a per capita alcohol sales increase of less than one percent.

As for using higher taxes as a deterrent, studies including research by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism have shown that alcohol abusers are affected little by price. It is moderate, responsible consumers who are most sensitive to prices and are the ones who cut back the most when prices rise.

Not only is that supported by research, it makes sense. That's what addicts do. Tobacco addicts now pay more than $12 a pack for cigarettes in Chicago. Everyone agrees that alcohol abuse is bad, but we don't need CDC lying in the public interest.

Last week the scare headline was "What underage drinkers drink when they binge drink." The Washington Post bit on that one, as did many others. The New Dry behind it is David H. Jernigan, who directs the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

The Distilled Spirits Council called him out like this: "David Jernigan and his agenda-driven surveys continue to make a mockery of true and honest scientific inquiry. According to government research, the vast majority of underage drinkers -- 91.3% -- do not purchase their own alcohol, but rather obtain it from parents and other legal-age adults. This fundamental fact makes this survey meaningless and a complete waste of $2,242,826 in taxpayer money." If they're drinking Bud Light, it's because that's what's in Dad's beer fridge, not because they have a brand preference due to advertising (although Daddy might).

Even the Washington Post reporter finds it odd that little Johnny is drinking Jack Daniel's since "it is significantly more expensive than other lower shelf whiskeys." But instead of reaching the obvious conclusion (he didn't buy it himself), the Post's guy jumps to Jernigan's absurd conclusion: it's because Jack Daniel's spends so much on marketing.

Perhaps Jernigan fears his job is in jeopardy because binge drinking and underage drinking rates among high school students have reached all-time lows.

It seems that in America, there is always somebody who wants to revive some failed idea of the past, such as prohibition. Brewer and Jernigan are spending my money on this junk and they should knock it off.

The Tennessee Whiskey Trail Puts Everything in One Place

As Kentucky has the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, Tennessee has one now too. It's unofficial and self-funded, says Joe Barnes, one of the principals. That's unlike Kentucky's, which is owned by the Kentucky Distillers' Association (KDA).

Also unlike the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, which only promotes dues-paying members of the KDA, the Tennessee Whiskey Trail promotes everybody. This is both good and bad, because they clearly care little about quality control.

The Tennessee Whiskey Trail is basically a web site and a map. They make money selling T-shirts and advertising, but not much. Barnes calls it "a labor of love." The site describes it as "your source for location, information, vacation, distillation, gyration, and visitation to each of Tennessee’s distilleries. This site hopes to encourage locals and foreigners (I’m looking at you Kentucky) to take time to visit and enjoy this quintessentially Tennessean sipping beverage."

Unfortunately, only a few of the Tennessee Whiskey Trail distilleries make whiskey of any kind and even fewer make actual Tennessee whiskey according to Tennessee law. Most sell a 'legal moonshine' product that in many cases is just industrial vodka in a mason jar with a clever name and label. Some of them aren't even distilleries. But, all in all, it's a nice snapshot of where Tennessee is right now, especially with microdistilleries.

There are some real micros in Tennessee doing interesting things, like Prichard's, Corsair, Nelson's Greenbrier, and Collier & McKeel. Jack Daniel's and George Dickel aren't too shabby either. Then there are the tourist traps like Ole Smokey, Gatlinburg Barrel House, Popcorn Sutton's, and Full Throttle. Depending on what you're into, any of the above might be entertaining to visit.

It's unclear whether or not their one banner ad, for a Nashville company that sells Tennessee Whiskey Trail Tours, is just them or a separate entity. They appear to be one and the same. The tour company's tours only cover Jack Daniel's, George Dickel, and Prichard's. If you want to see any of the other places you're on your own, but the Trail's website provides an interactive Google Maps tool that allows you to put together an itinerary pretty easily. They also tell you which distilleries offer tours, and provide links to the distillery web sites.

If you're interested in visiting some distilleries in Tennessee, this is the place you need to go, just be aware that many of the listed 'distilleries' are a lot less than they seem. Many of them are just tourist attractions with a little bit of attraction and a lot of stuff to sell.

Another Big Fuss About a Small Distillery

About a month ago, the biggest drinks company in the world announced its plan to build a new distillery in Kentucky, capable of producing a maximum of 750,000 cases of bourbon a year. The brand it's supposed to make there, Bulleit Bourbon, already sells about 650,000 cases a year and is growing fast, so obviously they're going to make only some of it at the new place.

On Thursday, a group calling itself the Bardstown Bourbon Company (BBC) announced its intention to build a jazzy new distillery (architect's rendering above) in an industrial park overlooking the Martha Layne Collins Bluegrass Parkway. It will be capable, they say, of producing up to 450,000 cases a year. They also introduced their master distiller, Steve Nally, formerly of Wyoming Whiskey and before that, Maker's Mark, a well-known and respected figure in Kentucky whiskey circles. He intends to make a wheated bourbon at BBC, as he did in Wyoming and Loretto.

Although this new place will be much bigger than the one in Wyoming, it's about half the size of Maker's, which is in the middle of a long-delayed expansion.

To put all this into perspective, that little distillery down in Lynchburg will produce about 13 million cases this year.

While we're looking at numbers, how come it's going to cost Diageo $115M to build a 750,000-case distillery, when BBC says it can build a 450,000-case distillery for $25M? I know Diageo is a foreign company, but that's one hell of a locals discount.

It's not just those two outfits. Wild Turkey never did explain how they are going to double production in their new facility using the same size beer still as the old place.

More often than not nothing goes according to plan, but even if this new distillery starts producing next fall it won't have anything worth drinking before 2020 at the soonest.

It's great that new distilleries are going up and it's great that Kentucky and the respective cities and counties are supporting it. Kentucky and Tennessee are to whiskey what Wisconsin is to cheese, they should make the most of it. But please, someone, wake me when the whiskey is ready.

Seagram's Explains the Multiple-Chamber Charge Still

During WWII, Joseph E. Seagram and Sons, Inc. operated 14 distilleries in Kentucky, one in Indiana, and several more in Canada. They needed a lot of distillers to run all of those distilleries and were famous for the high quality of their distiller training program.

Continuing our conversation about chambered stills, Thomas McKenzie, Master Distiller at Finger Lakes Distillery in New York, and his assistant, Jerry McCall, submitted the diagram above and the description of it that follows, both taken from the Seagram's text book, Fundamentals of Distillery Practice, by Herman Willkie and Joseph A. Prochaska (1943).

After reading this and the rest of the series, I think what we have in the chambered still is a transitional technology, bridging the gap between simple alembics and continuous stills. That's why they disappeared after a short run and why they never caught on in some places, like Kentucky. My question is this: is there any way in which the continuous still is not superior to these chambered stills?

The description is as follows:


Charge Still. A charge still usually consists of three or four large chambers superimposed one above another. Heat is supplied at the base of the column, either directly in the form of steam or indirectly by means of an external tubular heater and causes the vapor to rise from chamber to chamber, whereas in a continuous column, liquid does not flow from section to section. At the beginning of the operation, the chambers are filled partially with the liquid to be distilled. After the liquid in the bottom chamber has been freed of alcohol by distillation, the chamber is emptied. The contents of each of the other sections are transferred to the next chamber below. The top section is refilled with fresh feed along with some distillate of low alcohol content which is obtained toward the end of each operational cycle when the liquid in the bottom chamber nears exhaustion.

Although there is a high consumption of steam and a pronounced thermal decomposition of beer, a charge still may be used for distilling material containing a large quantity of suspended solids.

Whiskey Shortage? Not at Wild Turkey

In the famous fable, Henny Penny, aka Chicken Little, cries "the sky is falling!" Another famous fowl, Wild Turkey Bourbon, says that's all there is to this so-called 'whiskey shortage,' at least for them.

Today, Wild Turkey released a statement from Andrew Floor, the senior marketing director, dark spirits at Campari America. He explains how both Wild Turkey and Russell’s Reserve are weathering the storm.


While demand for quality American whiskey is at an all-time high, Wild Turkey is not affected by the 'whiskey shortage' that has been widely publicized by other distillers in the industry. In fact, Wild Turkey is bucking the 'shortage' trend and is set to meet the dramatic growing demand of its products, not only domestically but overseas as well.

For many years, the Wild Turkey bourbon brand has implemented a sophisticated long-term forecasting process that guides production. More importantly, the Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, Wild Turkey Distillery has two of the ultimate forecasters in father/son distilling duo Jimmy and Eddie Russell. With 93 years of combined experience, these whiskey prognosticators know how to stack the deck in Wild Turkey’s favor to ensure enough aged whiskey is available for the public.

As a reminder, Wild Turkey’s parent company, Gruppo Campari, has invested more than $100 million in the brand since its purchase in 2009, including doubling the plant's production capabilities, constructing a new packaging facility and building multiple barrel warehouses.

We are confident consumers’ enjoyment of Wild Turkey and Russell’s Reserve won’t be interrupted any time soon.

Jim Beam made a similar announcement about a week ago. For Jack Daniel's, it goes without saying. This is the other side of the coin. The biggest brands have plenty of stock and a million ways to move inventory around to avoid even brief spot shortages. Beam has issues with Maker's Mark, of course, but not with the Jim Beam family itself. Wild Turkey, though much smaller, is the same way. The point is, they saw it coming. 

I might quibble with Floor's contention that other distillers are publicizing the shortage. The Buffalo Trace announcement may have prompted some of it, but "the sky is falling!" stuff mostly seems to come from the media itself. They find 'whiskey shortage' makes for an eye-catching headline.

So do I.

"Running on the Log," with J. W. Dant

Herein I will tie together our ongoing discussion about Maryland Rye and wooden stills with Saturday's post about Gethsemane Distillery.

One of the early distilleries at the Gethsemane site was founded by Joseph Bernard (J. B.) Dant. He was the eldest son of Joseph Washington (J. W.) Dant, who came to Kentucky with Captain Sam Pottinger and established several distilleries in Marion County.

J. B.'s main brand was Yellowstone. The family's Marion County place made J. W. Dant Bourbon, both before and after Prohibition. After 1947, both plants produced bourbon for the J. W. Dant brand.

As J. W. Dant was a major brand, it had marketing and advertising, and therefore it had an origin myth. "Myth" doesn't mean it isn't true, but all we have is the marketer's version of the story, which goes something like this.


Joseph Washington Dant was one of our pioneering bourbon production giants. Little is known of his early life other than that he was reared on a farm and received an early education. Records indicate his first occupation as that of a blacksmith. Joseph would eventually turn his love to distilling and by 1836 started his own still and commenced in whiskey (bourbon) making.

He would eventually become famous & revered for being the first bourbon production giant to utilize the log still method. This was an old-time method back from the days of the pioneers when they could not afford, nor had the money for copper stills. This method is where a hollowed out tree trunk would have copper piping run through it in which the hollowed trunk would be filled with fermented mash & then steam would be fed through the piping to start distillation.

Joseph was the only log stiller known that distilled a bourbon good enough to ensure that his name would survive for ages to come.

Joseph grew his own grains and handpicked the choicest grain for his bourbon and then made his cooperage. In the year of 1860, Joseph owned more than 196 acres of distilling land. It was believed that sometime during the 1880's, J.W. Dant retired from his business. He died on February 19, 1902, age 82, and is buried in the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Cemetery at St. Francis in Marion County.


Here is a little bit more from Gary Regan and Mardee Hardin Regan's The Book of Bourbon. 

Although pot stills were used by most of the legitimate distillers, some poorer folk were still “running it on the log.” This was a backwoods method of distillation that seems rather convoluted--but it worked. The process is partially described by Gerald Carson in The Social History of Bourbon, and although we have added the description of the lid, the still must have looked something like this:

A distiller would take a log, split it lengthwise, hollow out each half, and bind it back together. The log was then stood upright and filled from the top with fermented mash. A lid of sorts must then have been fitted onto the top of the log. It was probably similar in shape to a Hershey’s Kiss, with the 'top knot' narrowing into becoming a pipe that would carry the vapors to a vessel where they would condense. Somewhere, close to the top of the log or in the lid itself, must have been a hole fitted with the copper pipe that carried live steam into the still from a nearby kettle. The steam would, in time, heat the mash and vaporize the alcohol.

Carson does mention, however, that the log stills were used only for a primary distillation, and the spirit would then be redistilled in a pot still. The final product was called 'log and copper whiskey.' Joseph Dant, whose family would later be responsible for giving Yellowstone and J. W. Dant bourbons to the world, was using the 'log' method in 1836 to make his first Kentucky whiskey.

(The Regans appear to have merged the two Joseph Dants. J. W. was the old-time log distiller and originator of J. W. Dant Bourbon, while his son J. B. Dant was the maker of Yellowstone.)


Another, even more crude example of 'running on the log' was where the hollow log functioned as the pot and a thick blanket functioned as the lid and condenser. When the blanket became saturated it would be wrung out into a container and returned to the pot. This would be repeated until all of the alcohol was extracted. Ideally, the result would then be filtered through cheesecloth. The objective was not a high proof spirit, but simply to raise the alcohol level enough to keep the beer from going bad.