When Bill Samuels Sr. sold the family distillery in 1943, one might think the bourbon business would be over for the Kentucky gentleman, but Samuels had no intention of getting out of the whiskey game entirely. What Samuels knew, and what the rest of America would catch up to decades later, is that whiskey needed a facelift, if not a complete reworking as a product. Back in the 40′s and 50′s, well frankly any time before the small batch bourbon revolution, whiskey was seen as a mere means to an end, not something to be enjoyed along the way. The taste was sharp, biting and downright nasty, but much to the chagrin of Samuels and other forward thinking whiskey enthusiasts, this is how the general public enjoyed their whiskey. Whiskey was for men, and not just regular men, manly men, a form of punishment to close out a day of hard work.Samuels, and probably a few others, had an idea in mind, “Why can’t whiskey taste good?” In 1953, Samuels set up shop in Loretto, KY, finally having found the perfect size distillery with which to carry out his whiskey reinvention operation. Allegedly taking a match to his family’s 170-year-old whiskey recipe (Samuels was a 6th generation whiskey distiller, after all), he set out to tinker with the age old whiskey-making process. A full 5 years later, Samuels emerged with the first bottle of what would become Maker’s Mark whiskey, with its top dipped in the now patented red wax seal. Read More »
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