We’ve all been there at the end of a long week (or sometimes day); devastated to reach for our favorite bottle and find it empty. Well if nipping to your local liquor shop to restock seems like a stretch sometimes, imagine how desperate for a drink you’d need to be to steal a $50,000 bottle or a million dollars of wine?
True-crime meets history of spirits in Behind Bars, the new book by Mike Gerrard. Available to buy from October 2024 we think this would be a fantastic gift for any fan of true crime, whiskey, or maybe any alcoholic beverage.
Mike Gerrard is an award-winning travel and drinks writer who has written more than 40 guidebooks and written for the likes of National Geographic, The Times of London, American Express, Google and Microsoft. Gerrard takes you through the history of alcohol crime, documenting the most fantastical, bizarre and expensive crimes. From ancient swindlers of Pompeii, through to illicit stills in the Scottish Highlands, rum smuggled by Caribbean pirates and some stories a bit closer to home. Whether you enjoy a dram or drama it is a fantastic collection of historic and modern stories.
Behind Bars Highlights
The Whiskey Wash asked Gerrard to share his “favorite” whiskey crime: “My favorite whiskey crime is in the Moonshine chapter, and it’s about the gang who bought a mobile home and turned it into one of the biggest moonshine operations in North Carolina. There was a couple living in the home, complete with a dog and playground equipment outside, for all the world like a normal family. But under the home they excavated a huge cellar and equipped it with stills, without anyone knowing. It ran for 18 months before being discovered, and in that time they evaded $1.6 million in tax revenue – so just imagine how much they actually made. And that was in 1972, so that $1.6M is equivalent to over $12 million today.”
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From the 1970s back to the 1870s where the equivalent in $83 million in liquor taxes was evaded right under President Ulysses S. Grant’s nose. The book covers a variety of crimes from different spirits and times and Gerrard’s research and writing takes you through history in bite size stories.
Gerrard shared an excerpt from The Whiskey Ring Scandal Chapter of Behind Bars with us here:
“Stealing a $50,000 bottle of whiskey or a million dollars’ worth of wine is chicken feed compared to the Whiskey Ring scandal of 1871 to 1876. A conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors managed to avoid paying what today would be a massive $83 million in liquor taxes. The actual amount at the time was a mere $3 million, and it occurred in and around St. Louis, Missouri. Imagine what a nationwide criminal ring could have achieved. And it’s thought that knowledge of the financial shenanigans went all the way to the office of the president, Ulysses S. Grant.”
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Read more in Behind Bars, available from October 2024 at $22.95 in your favorite bookstores.
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