Liane's Corkey Trivia

It is often said that prohibition ended on December 5, 1933. However, this is not entirely true as recently mentioned in our April newsletter issue #51. In December of 2007, Christie’s auction house was finally able to hold its first liquor auction since the prohibition era thanks to recent changes in New York State liquor laws. Among the collectable spirits auctioned was a bottle of whisky made from George Washington’s recipe. It sold for $6,000.

In fact, George Washington was probably the biggest producer of whisky in colonial America. Many people know him as a founding father and a successful general, but before he took up the reigns of government service, he was a prosperous entrepreneur and farmer. In his early years, he sold dry goods and paid top dollar for, inferior merchandise imported from England which ultimately added fuel to his fire for independence from England.

Though George practiced moderation in his consumption of alcohol, he understood the electoral value of treating voters to drinks. He once lost a campaign for the Virginia House of Delegates because he didn’t pass out drinks to prospective voters. The following year, he made sure voters were well supplied with booze, and he won with 307 votes, that would be a return on investment of almost two votes per gallon. Liquor was even valuable in war. Later on as our General, he wrote in a letter to John Hancock that the, “Benefits arising from moderate use of liquor have been experienced in all armies and are not to be dispute.” It kept them feeling warm and upbeat and discouraged desertions.

Ironically, when he was president, one of the first challenges to our fledgling first American President was the whisky rebellion(issue #30). Surely after the events of that very first rebellion, it must have finally struck home for him the importance of alcohol to the American electorate.

Upon retiring from government, he wanted to do something less strenuous than farming. A Scotsman by the name of James Anderson convinced him that whisky production was a growth industry. George admitted in a letter to Anderson that liquor was, “…a business I am entirely unacquainted with.” A rum distiller friend of his provided the final push. His initial investment of two stills provided 80 gallons of whiskey which quickly sold. Within months, George decided to build a distillery on one of his unprofitable farms. It was supplied with five copper stills, a boiler and 50 mash tubs. In those days, the average American consumed five gallons of distilled spirits every year compared with only 1.8 gallons today, so he clearly had no shortage of customers. At its peak, his distillery produced about 11,000 gallons of corn and rye whiskey as well as fruit brandy per year. His return to entrepreneurial life was an impressive success.

In September of 2004, Master distillers from Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Virginia Gentleman, and Brown-Forman [members of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States(DISCUS)]brewed a batch of George Washington’s whiskey in a replica of an eighteenth century still made for Mt. Vernon by the Smithsonian. It might even be a replica of one of Georges’ very own stills. Bottles were auctioned off to benefit the planned Mt. Vernon Educational Center, and one of them ended up at Christie’s.

For more information on the excavation and educational programs at Mount Vernon, visit www.arhaeology.org, under the recent and past digs section, and click on distilling the past. Cheers!