Bourbon Empire (32 page)

(Images courtesy of the Peoria Public Library.)

(Images courtesy of the Peoria Public Library.)

Colonel Edmund H. Taylor Jr. would become the “father of the modern whiskey industry” by fighting for stronger industry regulations, trademark protections, and production standards.

(Image courtesy of Buffalo Trace Distillery.)

The Old Taylor distillery was the finest of its kind during the late nineteenth century, but by 2015 it would sit in ruins, the result of industry consolidation and bourbon’s drop in popularity during the late twentieth century. The brands once made there were sold to competing companies.

(Image courtesy of the author.)

A chemist tests adulterated whiskey circa 1906 and the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

(Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Even respected brands, such as James E. Pepper Whisky, would regularly advertise through questionable practices like exaggerating whiskey’s medical benefits.

(Image courtesy of Georgetown Trading Co.)

Whiskey is poured into a sewer at the dawn of Prohibition, a prophetic symbol of the poor quality of spirits Americans would later be forced to endure as organized crime took over the whiskey trade.

Exterior shot of typical rackhouse.

(Image courtesy of the author.)

Interior shot of a typical rackhouse. Barrels of whiskey age differently depending on where they are placed in these barnlike structures—the warmer top floors produce a different flavor profile than cooler floors on lower levels.

(Image courtesy of Buffalo Trace Distillery.)

Before consolidation channeled marketing efforts toward a small number of widely known national brands, companies catered to regional markets. Both of these examples targeted southern drinkers. Also note the prominent age statement on the Jeff Davis label, named for the former president of the Confederacy and made by the famed Stitzel-Weller Distillery. Whiskey isn’t better simply because it’s older, but youth is rarely a selling point. Therefore, companies that disclosed such technical details in the name of consumer education immediately set themselves apart from the rest of the fray.

(Image courtesy of The Filson Historical Society)

(Image courtesy of Jack Sullivan)

A scion of Establishment respectability, W. Forbes Morgan helped the whiskey industry rehabilitate its image after Prohibition by serving as the head of its chief lobbying organization in the 1930s.
Time
magazine called this behind-the-scenes operator the industry’s “Front Man,” as he worked to divert the nation’s attention away from the spirits industry’s sordid past.

(Image courtesy of the author.)

The Beam family’s legacy stretches back to Kentucky’s frontier days, although its enormous success is largely attributable to modern Beams (left to right: Carl Beam, David Beam, Baker Beam, Booker Noe, and T. Jeremiah Beam in the 1960s). As the “first family of bourbon,” generations of Beams have worked in the industry, many of them for competing brands.