Over the years I have been chasing a complete run of the same brand of prohibition whiskey bottle sizes: quart, pint, 1/2 pint, 1/4 pint, and 1/10 pint. As it turns out, my quest is impossible to complete, which I will detail here in a minute. Because of this, I have done the next best thing by including two post-prohibition bottles and one brand that doesn’t match but fills in the 1/4 pint slot. Whiskey Bottle Sizes: Quart My original...
Forrest Cokely who writes for Old Liquors Magazine was kind enough to reach out for a short interview and include me in this very informative article he wrote named The Last Call – Tasting History with Pre-Prohibition Bourbon. Give it a read as I’m sure you will not be...
The biggest thing I have learned from collecting prohibition medicinal whiskeys is that the brand doesn’t matter the vast majority of the time. For example, I have a 1/2 pint Old Fitz and a 1/2 pint Waterfill and Frazier. Both were distilled by Mary M. Dowling (one of the most fascinating female distillers of all time. Read this: http://pre-prowhiskeymen.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-mary-dowling-outwitted-national.html). The juice in...
In this post I want to share one of my favorite brands: Old Sunny Brook. It isn’t particularly hard to find and doesn’t excite many collectors but I’m a big fan of the evolution of this brand and its mascot, The Inspector. In the photo above we have four bottles that represent very different eras in whiskey history. The half-pint bottle second from the left is from the pre-prohibition era and was actually distilled by The...
It has been yet another long while since I’ve posted to this blog so I thought I would focus on some of the more obscure bottles in my collection. Today I want to share a beautiful example of vintage label design. Not only does the color pop with rarely seen yellows and blues but you also get to feast your eyes on what must have been the equivalent of 1920’s soft porn. Va-va VOOM! For those of you who have followed my blog...
Hello fellow Whisky Benders! This time I’m going to let the pictures do the talking as I share photos sent in for appraisal or general information during 2014. Some are good, some bad, and some ugly. All of them interesting. Scroll down to see last year’s crop. Thanks to everybody who sent photos to me last year! Please keep them coming so we can learn more about these old dusty whiskeys and share with other enthusiasts....
Here is one of my favorite bottles in my collection. I’ve seen two others out there that are sealed and unopened and one is a permanent guest at the Getz Whiskey Museum in Bardstown, Kentucky. Scroll to the bottom of this blog post from the Alcohol Professor to see one of them (among some other great bottles). Obviously, the Old Rip Van Winkle brand has been around a long time. In fact, according to the ORVW website: The Old Rip Van...
<movie_trailer_voice> Imagine a world where Coca-Cola is bottled in Pepsi containers. Imagine a world where Pepsi is put inside RC Cola cans. Imagine a world where the new Brand Promise is no promise at all. Welcome to Soda Prohibition. </movie_trailer_voice> While there was no such thing as Soda Prohibition, unless you consider Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to super down-size sugary drinks a qualifier, there was a prohibition on...
As a relative newbie to the American whiskey scene, I am truly fascinated by the heritage of the brands, distilleries and those old pre-prohibition whiskey men (and women). I have a penchant for all things Americana and I love collecting artifacts that shaped who we are now as a nation. My original collecting sin was (and still is to a degree) vintage baseball cards for which I have deep admiration. My affection is not just for the cards but...
Being a marketing guy by trade, I really admire these old advertisements from National Distillers (circa July 1934). Create sense of urgency. Check. Weave a tale of romantic scarcity. Check. Create F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Check. The only gaff by today’s standards is the typical wail of the modern ad agency client: “There’s way too much text. Nobody’s ever going to read all that.” Thanks, Internet....