Bourbon at its Best by Givens Ron;

Author:Givens, Ron;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1319525
Publisher: Clerisy Press
Published: 2008-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Other Heaven Hill brands include: Christian Brothers brandy, Hpnotiq liqueur, Isle of Jura Scotch whisky, Kilbeggan Irish whiskey, Tyrconnell Irish whiskey

MAKER’S MARK

Loretto, Kentucky

The makers of bourbon love their traditions. Maybe that’s because virtually all of them are from Kentucky, where the distilling of bourbon is so deeply embedded in the history of the commonwealth, and maybe that’s because the making of bourbon has been such a family affair, with the craft of distilling being passed down along the generations.

But in 1953 Bill Samuels Sr. torched such sentimental notions—literally—by taking the family recipe that had been around for 170 years and burning it in a conference room at the distillery in Loretto.

“Nothing that we need!” he proclaimed. “To craft a truly new and soft-spoken bourbon, we will have to start from scratch.”

This revolutionary act had an unintended consequence. According to Bill Samuels Jr. in his book Maker’s Mark: My Autobiography, Bill Samuels Sr. accidentally set the drapes on fire.

That was the rebirth of the Samuels distilling operation. The birth had occurred in 1780 when Robert Samuels—the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Bill Jr.—moved from Pennsylvania to Kentucky to farm and distill. His grandson Taylor Williams Samuels started the family’s first commercial distillery, T. W. Samuels and Son, on the family farm at Deatsville in 1844.

T. W. Samuels enjoyed great success, achieving national distribution for his whiskeys. His grandson Leslie Samuels was in charge of the company when the distillery and six warehouses burned down in 1909. With money from a Cincinnati investor, the distillery was rebuilt, only to be torn down after the onset of Prohibition.

In 1933 Leslie Samuels reorganized the company and rebuilt the facility as the T. W. Samuels Distillery with another Cincinnati investor, who decided to sell it in 1943. This caused his son, Bill Samuels Sr. (another T. W. Samuels), to leave the whiskey business until 1953, when he bought the old Burks Spring Distillery and went for the burn.

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