Bourbon Empire (14 page)

Greenhut shut down most of the distilleries that joined his organization, often against their will. Thus he eliminated his competition by cannibalizing it, a strategy that also allowed him to control the kind of surplus output that threatened the industry’s health. All but twelve of the distilleries brought into the trust were closed, the survivors selected according to how close they were located to plummy markets or who could get the cheapest shipping rates. Most of the survivors were located in Peoria, a railroad and waterway hub with good access to water, coal, and grain markets.

Distilleries that fought the Octopus faced warfare. Stubborn holdouts were burned to the ground after their insurance companies received anonymous messages to cancel their policies (distillery fires were common, making it an easy crime to hide). In one instance, explosives were thrown onto the roof of Chicago’s H. H. Shufeldt and Company but failed to destroy it completely. George Gibson, the trust’s secretary, was later arrested when he attempted to pay an undercover Internal Revenue agent $25,000 to finish the job at the Shufeldt distillery by planting a contraption designed to shoot a torpedo through a vat of alcohol, which would explode in a fireball. Gibson was miraculously acquitted (the trust never even bothered to take him off its payroll). When another distiller attempted to publish a book detailing the trust’s methods, the trust paid him $50,000 for the manuscript, which never saw the light of day.

Straight bourbon and rye producers soon found their business with small, upscale markets threatened as cheap imitations became invasive. They responded by forming their own trusts. The Kentucky Distilleries
and Warehouse Company was a combination of fifty-nine distilleries that controlled about 135 brands. Alongside the Kentucky cartel, many regional distilling centers in places like Pennsylvania and New York organized, working together to manipulate markets by coordinating stoppages and boosting prices.

But no group of distillers, including Greenhut’s trust, was able to successfully create a monopoly for very long or control the market with the success of their counterparts in other industries. Standard Oil was able to establish its dominance because oil is a notoriously hard industry to break into, requiring staggering amounts of capital and specialized knowledge.
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Whiskey didn’t have the same intense barriers, and the Whiskey Trust, despite what control it did achieve, could never eliminate competitors the way it wanted. In fact, its success and profits actually helped attract competitors to the industry.

Many members of the Whiskey Trust also failed to see where the market was headed and the rising importance of brand names. These industrial big wheels were typically wholesalers selling their cheap spirits to marketers who used them as the base for their own brands. Over time, these brand owners would increasingly want to control the entire process, owning their own distilleries and vertically integrating all their operations under one roof. Beer brewers and other food manufacturers were already building their respective industries this way, operating in streamlined, closed systems that boosted revenues.

The U.S. government eventually pursued the trust, claiming it was restricting trade under the provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The trust also faced constant scrutiny from a public that was increasingly worried about the excesses of the Gilded Age. Newspapers, for their part, loved stories about independent distilleries standing their ground against the cartel. The
National Tribune
ran one such story that involved the Green Mountain Distillery in Kansas City, Missouri. In
prose gilded to match the age the paper editorialized, “Of all the nefarious combinations of capital which control, or try to control the necessities of existence and to crush out legitimate competition, there is none so far reaching in its scope, so grasping in its methods, so rapacious in its exhibitions of greed and so thoroughly unscrupulous and unrelenting in its purpose to throttle the independent distillers as that prince of monopolies known as the WHISKEY
TRUST.”

T
here’s a fine art to naming a liquor brand. The choice should appeal to a drinker’s sense of heritage and legacy, but most important, it should sell the booze. Today, most brands have their formulas pretty well figured out: rum is named after pirates or tropical islands (think Captain Morgan or Mount Gay); scotch brands enshrine beautiful but unpronounceable places in Scotland (Laphroaig, Bruichladdich, Auchentoshan); gin brands conjure up images of the British Empire sending adventurous men to India clad in jodhpurs and pith helmets (Bombay Sapphire, Old Raj). Vodka labels emphasize luxury so people can forget that they paid too much.

Bourbon brands are a different breed. They often celebrate individuals. Sometimes the labels honor the specific tastes of master craftsmen like Elmer T. Lee, Albert Blanton, Booker Noe, or Jimmy Russell, distillers whose namesake labels reflect taste profiles they loved. Other bourbons are named after individuals on name alone: Elijah Craig, Evan Williams, Thomas Jefferson, or Basil Hayden.

But choosing a singular iconic personality is a bold move because it can invite embarrassing and unwanted scrutiny, especially when certain facts are revealed after a brand is established. Today, bottles of Evan Williams claim that their namesake became Kentucky’s “first distiller” in 1783. This claim, which is false, is based on the writings of historian
Reuben Durrett, who declared Williams the “first” in 1892. But like Richard Collins and the Elijah Craig myth, Durrett was shooting from the hip with his facts, creating a nugget of incorrect information that would filter down through the ages as received wisdom. Truth is, Williams didn’t even arrive in America, first landing in Pennsylvania, until 1784. When he finally made his way to Kentucky, distilling was long under way by countless others. What the bottles also fail to mention is that Williams’s neighbors in Louisville thought his whiskey so bad that his distillery was declared a nuisance and he was indicted for selling without a license.

Regardless, when Heaven Hill created the brand in 1957 it ran with the incorrect information anyway. It’s a curious thing—why not just choose a more truthful story? There are plenty of frontier icons resonating with powerful myths to choose from, so why pick that one, however harmless it might seem? It begs the question of what other information on the labels we shouldn’t believe. What are the real legacies here? And what, exactly, is in those names on the bottles?

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For years, a questionable rumor floated around bourbon circles that Old Forester was named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate cavalry leader who helped found the first Ku Klux Klan. Forrest’s picture never appeared on the bottle—with deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks, and a pointy beard, he physically resembled “the very devil” that Union general William Tecumseh Sherman described him as. Born into poverty, Forrest created a fortune for himself as a slave trader. During the Civil War, his exploits as a cavalryman were so fierce that they would later inspire the blitzkrieg tactics of Nazi field marshal Erwin Rommel. At Fort Pillow, Forrest slaughtered scores of Federal African-American troops attempting to surrender. He has remained a symbol of southern resistance, held in esteem by a sliver of southerners who cite antiquated notions of cunning and daring as reasons to honor him.

Old Forester, on the other hand, is a legendary whiskey brand,
regularly touted as the town favorite of Louisville, bourbon capital of the world. Old Forester was created in 1870 by George Garvin Brown, the cofounder of the Brown-Forman Corporation, one of today’s most successful liquor companies. For bourbon, Old Forester is about as “classic” as it gets: a solid foundation of corn flavored with enough rye to make it interesting and add just enough spice to mature the corn’s honeyed sweetness. Aged between four and six years, Old Forester holds the different flavors from grain, wood, and yeast in careful balance. It’s affordable and timeless, achieving an ideal that other brands strive to match.
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For these reasons alone it is one of the last bourbons you want to see tarnished by an association to a man like Forrest.

Brown-Forman today emphatically claims that the brand is “in no way shape or form associated with Nathan Bedford Forrest,” according to one company spokesperson in a letter to me. Instead, the company claims that Old Forester is actually named after William Forrester, a physician friend of George Garvin Brown, since doctors regularly prescribed whiskey as medicine when the brand was created. Old Forester was originally spelled with two
r
’s, just like the names of both William and Nathan Bedford, and Brown-Forman claims the spelling was changed after Dr. Forrester retired, since his signature endorsement no longer would have been valid. But despite this explanation, the company admits there is reasonable doubt behind the name and that ultimately “the inspiration and origin of the Old Forrester brand name died with George Garvin Brown.”

Other explanations for the brand’s name only add to the confusion. One account claims the brand was linked to the nineteenth century’s logging industry, and indeed, at one point the label featured an oak leaf cluster. All things considered—the spelling changes, the old labels indicating different explanations—the brand’s true heritage may never be
certain. The Nathan Bedford Forrest explanation can be found in author Gerald Carson’s
The Social History of Bourbon,
a book written in 1963 by a social historian who documented most of his sources, with the exception of his claim that the Klansman was the brand’s namesake. One historian familiar with the book’s publishing history told me that Carson acquired his information directly from Brown-Forman. But since Brown-Forman so emphatically denied any connection with Nathan Bedford, this suggests that the William Forrester explanation could be a marketing cover-up to protect the brand’s reputation.

But there is another reason why Carson claimed Old Forester was named after the KKK founder, and it ultimately saves the brand’s legacy while illustrating the perils of modifying a brand’s marketing to fit a faddish moment in history. When Carson wrote his book, the Civil War’s centennial was looming, war kitsch flooded American advertising, and Rebel Yell bourbon was successfully making money from a resurgent wave of southern nationalism, tempting Brown-Forman to join in the fun. The company had never widely advertised the brand’s real origins and figured it could “generate some interest” by making up a story that Old Forester was named after the controversial Confederate war figure, another company spokesperson eventually told me. The strategy didn’t catch fire, but the story has lingered the way one would expect it might. Brown-Forman has since backtracked from the explanation that one of its most famous brands was named after a Klansman. It’s one of the few cases where a bourbon brand, surrounded by a handful of colorful creation myths, emphatically endorses the most boring one. Fortunately, it’s still a good tale.

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Created in 1870, Old Forester was the first bourbon sold exclusively in sealed bottles. This was a break from the traditional practice of selling whiskey straight from the barrel, poured into reusable containers—crocks, vases, other bottles—brought to the store by customers. It was a bold strategy—individual bottles were still handmade and expensive, often more valuable than the liquor served in them. Not until 1903 did
distilleries bottle their own liquor on a wider scale, after Michael Joseph Owens created a glassmaking machine to engineer consistently sized bottles at a rate of 240 per minute, reducing labor costs by 80 percent. Distillers in Kentucky were only bottling four hundred thousand gallons a year in 1903; by 1913, the figure had risen to nine million gallons.

Old Forester also sat at the cusp of a new era of whiskey advertising. In the years following the Civil War, markets grew less local and more regional, and a few labels, Old Forester and Old Crow included, gained national attention. Improved transportation meant individual brands could cheaply travel greater distances, increased magazine advertising meant word could spread faster, and industrial advances in distilling meant larger volumes could meet the increased demand brought by clever advertising.

Before he joined the whiskey industry, George Garvin Brown was a pharmaceutical salesman who frequently called on his friend Dr. William Forrester. The job brought him into the whiskey industry’s orbit because the spirit remained popular as a medicine. It was in this market—whiskey as medicine—that Brown saw opportunity. Doctors complained that the whiskey they bought was inconsistent, often adulterated by middlemen and of questionable quality. Brown responded by marketing Old Forester directly to physicians in sealed bottles tagged with the slogan “Nothing Better in the Market.” The bottle prevented tampering, acted as built-in advertising, and set the brand apart. The reason for the name’s later spelling change—from Old Forrester to Old Forester—to this day remains unclear. Some accounts say it was because of Forrester’s retirement, but it’s just as likely that other doctors didn’t want to prescribe something bearing a competitor’s name. Another account claims that the nation’s expanding temperance movement made Forrester squeamish about having his name on a whiskey bottle.

Over the following decades, Brown’s approach became common in the industry. Advertising focused less on price alone, and more on the person paying it. Customers, for their part, were learning to value
ineffable things like powerful backstories, thus easing the way for the rise of modern brands. In 1870, only 121 trademarks of any kind were registered under the U.S. Trademark Act, but alongside Old Forester other future icons for goods that were formerly considered generic commodities would soon emerge: Campbell’s Soup (1869), Levi Strauss’s Overalls (1873), Quaker Oats (1878), and Ivory Soap (1879).

Relative to today, few whiskey brands emerging in the decades after the Civil War were marketed by the distilleries that actually produced the liquor. Most distillers remained content to let wholesalers create brands targeted to customers. Thus for a time power was in the hands of marketers rather than makers. As brand names became more prevalent, many brokers found they had become industry heavyweights, purchasing distilleries and trading them among each other. The most powerful brokers were in large cities like New York and Chicago, although smaller versions of this model still dominated local markets, creating house brands for saloons and catering to regional sensibilities—“Alligator Bait” was a popular brand in Florida, while “Jeff Davis” was a favorite in the Deep South.

Along with his brother, Brown entered the whiskey industry as a broker and a blender. He made Old Forester by purchasing quality stocks of aged whiskey from outside suppliers and blending them to achieve a unique flavor profile (this made him an NDP). By 1902, however, his company had begun distilling and aging the brand itself.
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By that point, many distilleries had realized that marketing liquor held just as much if not more power than producing the actual liquid being marketed. Brokers continued to play a big role—and still do today—but men like Brown realized that commanding the entire process was more efficient. As his counterparts in the oil, steel, and beer industries had already learned, power was gained by vertically integrating.

“Drummer” was the whiskey industry’s term for the traveling salesmen who sold whiskey brands to bars or other distributors. These men
filtered in and out of bars praising the virtues of whatever they were hawking. Sometimes they slipped nails into the barrels of competing brands because the iron would turn the whiskey black. Another drummer trick was to offer customers a comparative taste test, pouring their own whiskey first, then giving a long speech about it. As the whiskey sat, certain undesirable flavors and compounds would evaporate, giving it an advantage when the two competitors were compared.

Drummers were expert at modifying their pitches. If their brand was unknown, it became an exclusive gem that
was hard to find because other customers had snatched it up. When aged stocks were on hand, drummers emphasized how old their whiskey was. When young whiskey was all they had, the subject of age was dropped. In this way, history repeats itself. When liquor companies “educate” customers today, it’s usually an exercise in guiding people’s tastes toward the particular whiskey they’re selling. Age became a huge selling point after the 1970s when slow sales kept bourbon surpluses in the barrel longer, even though many in the industry thought the whiskey was ruined from having absorbed excessive wood tannins. The strategy nonetheless worked, particularly in foreign markets that were unfamiliar with bourbon and reflexively associated age with quality.

But by the early decades of the twenty-first century the opposite would be true. Whiskey would be popular again and some distilleries struggled to meet demand. Reliant on sales of younger whiskies, many began to increasingly praise the hotter “bite” or grainier flavors of such spirits (one producer even promoted its faux-moonshine on the merit that it was “unpretentious,” even though the spirit came from a boutique distillery in a recently gentrified urban zone and cost nearly four times more than many well-aged competing brands). Distillers also began dodging the subject of age by claiming that their whiskies were “aged to taste,” “artfully aged,” or by using other nonspecific expressions as a way to avoid giving specific age statements. Older brands that had been created when demand was weak and companies needed to use age statements as marketing tools would drop their age statements entirely, giving themselves the option of blending younger whiskies into
their products and moving them out the door faster. An age statement on a bottle must reflect the
youngest
whiskey used in a blend, and even though many younger whiskies are preferable to their older counterparts their youth is rarely considered a marketing advantage. Nevertheless, instead of denying customers information, companies should just list the younger age, alongside an explanation of why older whiskey isn’t necessarily better, thus giving drinkers valuable information they can use to help develop their palates. In any case, if a company isn’t completely forthcoming about what’s in the bottle—divulging mash bill, age, entry proof, size of the barrel used, where the liquid was actually distilled, or any other technical detail, either on the label, Web site, or after a phone call—it might be downplaying a trait it considers undesirable. If a brand doesn’t divulge this information, be careful. In the history of whiskey marketing, it has ever been thus.