we explored the the beginnings of the topmost period of legendary American distiller Edmund Taylor. Jr;s whiskey making days. After Taylor and his sons repurchased the Old Taylor distillery from Security Trust & Safety Vault Company in 1895, they entered their golden years. The Old Taylor brand became synonymous with the Government guaranteed ‘topmost’ whiskey after the Bottled in Bond Act passed in March 1897. In 1912, Taylor’s Bottled in Bond achieved market leadership in whiskey’s premium or luxury class. Since the distillery opened, a small band of workers and their families began populating the village of Taylorton.
The flourishing of the Taylorton community was a reflection of the distillery’s increasing prosperity. The distillery’s extensive gardens bloomed, and parklands rose along the lush landscape around the Glenn’s Creek hillside. The distillery’s modern facilities continued to expand to twenty-one buildings, adding warehousing, a railway station and visitor amenities to meet increasing demand. Old Taylor thrived over the next two decades, and its whiskey became America’s most celebrated brand epitomizing exceptional quality.
The theatre of distilling
Taylorton’s centerpiece was the striking Old Taylor still house built as a medieval-styled castle from local river limestone with a façade of crenelated battlement walls and corner turrets. Taylor’s castle was a striking symbol of the grandeur and authority his whiskey commanded. As a local wag remarked about the imposing edifice, “Taylor now is the king of Kentucky whiskey.” The nearby ‘great spring’ water source was surrounded by a Roman-like peristyle colonnade enclosing the 14,000-gallon pool in the shape of a key, a visual metaphor to ‘water being the key to the whiskey’. The inner bluegrass region possessed unique geology due to the karst limestone draining into the Kentucky River basin. Rising in this Ordovician limestone stratum is the 300-foot-deep Lexington formation embedded with other limestone layers, whose hydrology is ideal for fermentation and whiskey making.
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Glenn’s Creek was prized as this ancient limestone outcrop consisting of calcite ‘birds-eye limestone’. Embedded in the Lexington limestone are matrixes of collophane (cryptocrystalline apatite) and calcite. These mineral nutrients dissolved in water and issued from abundant spring water sources promoted vigorous yeast reproduction and healthy zymological activity. Four hundred and eighty million years of the earth’s plate tectonics and sedimentary accumulation from ancient seas made the inner bluegrass region a unique geological zone for whiskey-making and livestock breeding.
The landscaped grounds surrounding the distillery were another European import. The Bavarian Decree of 1812 instituted the introduction of the biergarten at large breweries in southern Germany, allowing families to bring food for picnics, play games, participate in community sing-alongs and drink the brewery’s beer. These new, large breweries stored their lager in underground cellars; overhead, they planted linden and chestnut trees to keep the beer kegs cool, furnishing a shaded canopy for the public to mingle beneath. By the 1850s, German immigrants to North America constructed large lager breweries in the same industrial Rundbogenstil-style to attract custom to their American lager beer gardens. American breweries added amusements to entertain families with skittles, bowling alleys, concert halls, restaurants, museums, rifle galleries and fishing ponds while dispensing beer to the patrons. These were forerunners to amusements parks and family entertainment destinations such as Coney Island and Atlantic City in the latter half of the 19th century; later, Walt Disney translated his celluloid characters and movie genres into the well-known theme parks.
The façade of Rundbogenstil architecture concealed powerful steam engines with industrial-scale brewing equipment for the new era of mass-production. Britain, and Australia and other Anglo countries borrowed this architectural style for breweries and industrial buildings. Taylor borrowed the Rundbogenstil round-arch style, incorporating it into the Hermitage, O.F.C. and Carlisle distilleries. To heighten the aesthetic and amusement features at the Old Taylor distillery, he took a radically different architectural direction, erecting the ‘splendid’ Medieval-style castle masquerading as a distillery. The practical and streamlined warehouses used only natural light for fire safety, holding 40,000 barrels. Described to the visitors by the guides as ‘miles of barrels’, it formed part of the tour explanation of the exacting and unique methods used in the manufacture of Old Taylor whiskey.
Taylor had the scenic 82-acre campus landscaped to make the distillery grounds a ‘delightful’ pleasure garden for visitors to enjoy nature and promenade. A large B.B.Q. pit dugout and a burgoo house with ninety-two kettles, served Kentucky stew with cornbread to feed the visiting multitudes. He entertained male guests with bands, juleps, cigars and cockfights in his custom-built cock house. He erected ‘artistic houses’ surmounted by red-tiled roofs with roses trailing up over the supporting arches at places where natural springs egressed. Large basins made from limestone rock channelled water into storage cisterns. Vines planted by walls grew into verdant shawls, softening the bright limestone. He filled the property with enchanting gardens and displays featuring a giant sundial, a sunken English rose garden, stone bridges, gazebos, and a pergola with a reflecting pool.
Walking trails bordered by flower beds led sightseers along sealed footpaths to safely carry foot traffic where they ‘never soiled shoes.’ He employed Kentucky’s leading horticulturist to design gardens of azaleas and hydrangeas and plant thousands of trees across the much-denuded landscape to create a bucolic parkland and whiskey wonderland in the heart of the bluegrass.
Kentucky’s many modes of production and classifications of whiskey
Mida’s Criterion, Taylor wrote that less than six distilleries in Kentucky produce hand-made, sour mash, all-copper whiskey; he alleged almost all Kentucky distilleries misleadingly labelled their whiskey ‘hand-made sour mash’.
In northern Kentucky’s 6th Distilling District, there were twenty-four distilleries opposite the rectifying city of Cincinnati. One distillery, Taylor identified as a ‘daisy name’ company, as they operated under sixty-four different firms, everyone passing off as a distillery, many claiming hand-made sour mash on their labels. Taylor may have been critical of the competitive quality of standard Kentucky bourbon; he became almost apoplectic about blenders and rectifiers ‘debourbonizing’ the industry with their ersatz-style whiskeys, he called ‘artificial’, ‘imitation’, ‘synthetic’ and ‘bogus’.
The industrial age for whiskey mass-production arrived by the 1880s. In 1883, a handful of distilleries in Peoria, Illinois, mashed 35,587 bushels a day, or 17.5 million gallons (25% U.S. production), to Kentucky’s 6 million gallons, of which 4 million was straight bourbon and rye. The term ’straight’ was a Kentucky trade term to differentiate their ‘honest’ bourbon-style whiskey from the very high or all corn mashes made on single distillation plans or the new continuous American beer stills. These new column stills were responsible for the high wines and rectified spirit made voluminously by the new industrial distilleries populating America’s sprawling corn belt.
The term ‘pure’ became the vernacular property of rye whiskey as many rye whiskey recipes were made from 100% rye/malt mash, similar to the Scottish pure malts made exclusively or purely from malted barley. By the 1890s, larger mid-western distilleries surpassed Peoria’s distilleries, with the Majestic distillery in Indiana mashing 12,000 bushels a day, and in Iowa, International distillery 6,000 bushels. Taylor castigated these pseudo-whiskeys with verbal jibes, “the stomach groans under the domination of a new ruler.” Most of their production went to industrial (heating, lighting) and arts use (varnish), with the balance for blending and compounding into lower-priced whiskey brands and the burgeoning patent medicine industry. This quack industry was brought to commercial life by the 1862 Revenue Act when excise tax was sharply reduced on medical tonics containing alcohol.
The importance of the re-import trade
rd, 1897, on the last day of his administration.
No sooner had Taylor received the green tax stamps from the Government printer to adhere over the corked bottles, he secured an order of 10,000 cases of Bottled in Bond from his Chicago agent in September 1897. Bottled in Bond proved increasingly popular with the public, and his label became the bestselling Bottled in Bond brand by 1912. Total Bottled in Bond depletions skyrocketed from 535,588 proof gallons in 1898 to 10,420,375 gallons in 1913. Kentucky represented 70% of all straight bonded whiskey withdrawals. Fifty distilleries in America were registered with the Government, accredited for Bottled in Bond sales.
By 1910, Taylor enjoyed financial and personal success. The December 1909 Taft Decision defined straight whiskey in law. Decades of litigation and appeals from numerous trademark infringements by competitors and disputes amongst disgruntled shareholders receded, many adjudicated in Taylors’ benefit. Taylor retired from politics in 1904 but remained active as president at his distillery with this three sons. He relished pastoral life breeding prize Hereford cattle and was lauded by newspapers for breeding ‘ the greatest herd of purebred, prize-winning Herefords in the world’. In November 1918, Taylor paid a record $17,300 for an English stud bull.
His philanthropic donations benefited the local community, and he enjoyed the bounties of a growing, prosperous family. In 1909, E. H. Taylor, Jr. Sons, generated over $1 million in revenue and $500,000 in annual tax to the Internal Revenue Service. During the distilling season from early October to early June, the distillery mashed 125,000 bushels of grain, fattened 700 head of cattle and filled over 10,000 barrels. The whiskey was aged at least five years and shipped 1.5 million cases, depleting 18 million bottles since September 1897. His whiskey was distributed through a national network of dealers to loyal consumers who willingly paid a premium for the whiskey without peer.
The business of entertainment
Taylor actively promoted his distillery as a regional destination attracting public sightseers and garnering national print media attention. The opening of the new Highland railway line along Glenn’s Creek in December 1907 had a spur line to Taylorton, the distillery’s new railway station. Built beside the spring peristyle, it connected the distillery to Frankfort and the Nashville & Louisville national rail network. Visitors and workers paid 30 cents a round trip, leaving Frankfort Monday to Saturday at 6 A.M., returning 5 P.M. By rail, road and boat, a continuous flow of visitors and raw materials arrived daily. They left as sated revellers and finished goods. Taylor invited influential people to visit and endorse his goods, including politicians, journalists, academics, company presidents and industrialists. He organized special events for communities and businesses to meet. On weekends B.B.Q.s and picnics attracted the first whiskey tourists to experience the distillery’s facilities.
Upon arriving, guests were escorted on a tour of the distillery and presented with one-tenth of a pint mini-bottle (47ml) of Old Taylor whiskey. In a highly competitive industry where thousands of brands clambered for attention, Old Taylor whiskey bottles needed to stand out, so he introduced the yellow label in January 1910; the paper manufacturer described the paper as ‘old gold’. When Old Taylor became the best-selling Bottled in Bond whiskey by 1912, he added ‘1st Topmost, supreme’ to the label and advertisements. The largest bottling order was November 1915, when 35,000 cases of Bottled in Bond were packed and shipped.
In grand hotel bars and restaurants where they served Old Taylor whiskey from the barrel, the cask had polished brass hoops and decorative barrel heads to catch the patron’s eye, from where bartenders filled elegant Old Taylor decanters to serve the whiskey. Old Taylor bar merchandising and advertising materials elegantly reiterated the brand identity and distinctive packaging as conspicuously as the Old Taylor distillery stood out from the Kentucky landscape.
Educating the public about his exacting methods made tourism an informative and entertaining way to showcase the effort and care taken to produce the world’s finest sour mash whiskey. Taylor’s experiential ideas heralded the dawn of whiskey tourism and the era of modern whiskey marketing. The next distillery to open up to day-trippers and regular public tours was Tennessee’s Jack Daniel’s Lynchburg distillery in the mid-1950s, opening a visitors’ center, Bethel House, at the distillery entrance in 1960. In Scotland, the first tours began in 1969 at the Glenfiddich distillery situated in the Speyside hills outside Dufftown. In Ireland, tours started in 1992 at the Old Midleton distillery in Cork.
Today, it is rare to find a distillery not open to the public or with a visitor’s center selling branded merchandise and whiskey, along with commemorative bottles and special releases. Since Old Taylor, no other distillery has invested in the total theatrical experience with such imaginative panache – from the majestic castle setting to landscaped gardens turning whiskey into a public spectacle and memorable impression for day-trippers. By abiding by the Crow plan principles in the manufacture of fine whiskey and adapting equipment advances and improved innovations in the process, Edmund H. Taylor Jr. was credited for producing the world’s finest whiskey. First at the O.F.C. and later at the Old Taylor distillery.
Taylor epilogue
In his later years, Taylor lived comfortably at Thistleton, his magnificent 1890 Queen Anne mansion built in 1891 on 900 acres outside Frankfort on the Louisville Road. Infected by influenza, Edmund Taylor Jr. died of pneumonia at 93 years of age in the afternoon of January 19th, 1923. After his death, his family subdivided Thistleton estate, selling the home and the original homestead lot of 160 acres to George Collins at auction for $73,735. Over the coming decades, the house fell into disrepair. It was demolished in the 1960s for property development, becoming the Thistleton Heights neighborhood. In circa 1900, Taylor bought a farm from Alex Wright outside Frankfort in Woodford County between Frankfort and Versailles. He renamed it Hereford Farm and slowly expanded the property to 3,000 acres. He turned Hereford Farm into America’s premier Hereford stud during his last decade. Hereford Farm hosted the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and, for his efforts, was awarded Honorary Master of Hospitality in April 1917.
Months after his death, the family subdivided the farm selling the main homestead to Richard Baker; his prize Hereford herd sold to Cunningham of Pennsylvania. Today, the farm is known as the famed horse farm, Ashford Stud, part of Coolmore, the world’s largest thoroughbred breeding operation. Ashford Stud is the home to recent triple crown winners, Justify in 2018, and American Pharaoh in 2015.
Distillery coda
O.F.C. distillery Leestown by Frankfort:
Old Taylor distillery, Glenn’s CreekComing next week, Chapter 3 will investigate the first five decades of Taylor’s life. His involvement with the Oscar Pepper distillery and Johnson distillery, the new Hermitage distillery and new Old Crow distillery, until Taylor purchased the Old Swigert distillery, which became the O.F.C distillery.
*Honorable, the formal address given to Taylor as he served as the two-term Mayor of Frankfort Kentucky, later State Representative, State Senator, and an honorary Colonel, as civilian aide-de-camp to the Governor of Kentucky.
