George Dangler of the A. Smith Bowman Distillery prepares to tap a barrel of Rebel Yell whiskey at Mount Vernon.
Posted on 09/27/2006 7:22:39 PM PDT by george76
His Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York today joined public officials and leaders of the Scottish and American spirits industry at Historic Mount Vernon to celebrate the official dedication of the restored George Washington's Distillery.
The Duke, who cut the ribbon at the event, was celebrating the close Scottish-U.S. ties and paying tribute to Scotland's connection to George Washington's distillery.
He noted that it was George Washington's Scottish farm manager, James Anderson, who convinced Washington in 1797 that distilling whiskey would be a lucrative business venture and a good use of the excess grain from the nearby gristmill.
He joined other public officials including Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell in raising a toast to George Washington and splashing whiskey against the distillery's exterior stone wall.
"George Washington's Distillery will give the world both a clear view of the entrepreneurial spirit of our nation's first president and a valuable insight into America's distilling heritage," said Distilled Spirits Council President Peter Cressy, whose organization has been the major donor to Mount Vernon for the $2.1 million project to excavate and reconstruct the historic distillery.
"George Washington was one of the most successful whiskey distillers of his time and symbolizes everything modern distillers stand for: responsibility, moderation and quality."
Chief Executive of the Scotch Whisky Association Gavin Hewitt, who traveled to the United States for the dedication, stated, "Scotland and the U.S.A. have long shared a passion for making whisky.
The partnership between George Washington and James Anderson, his Scottish-born farm manager, was instrumental in creating one of the most successful whisky distilleries in early America."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The long list of stuff that he invented or improved upon is amazing.
This is kind of like inviting a New Yorker to cut the ribbon at a monument to Robert E. Lee.
The chap on the left seems to have opened one of the barrels a wee bit early...
George Dangler of the A. Smith Bowman Distillery prepares to tap a barrel of Rebel Yell whiskey at Mount Vernon.
Official tester...
8-)
Thank you, Sir. I shall keep an eye out for it. I have always enjoyed Wild Turkey.
We tasted premium bourbons from Kentucky and Tennessee as well as Virginia Gentleman, including Maker’s Mark (my personal favorite), Jack Daniel’s, Woodford Reserve, I.W. Harper, Geo. A. Dickel, Jim Beam, Rebel Yell and Wild Turkey. Fifty bottles of each bourbon were auctioned off in 2003 to raise money for the restoration of the distillery.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, given the fact that we had to drive back to Washington, we weren’t able to sample the Cruzan rum from St. Croix or the small 10-gallon barrel of George Washington American Whiskey, a special batch doubly distilled at Mount Vernon two years ago by Dangler’s company.
The special batch was made according to the rye recipe used by Washington himself, in an exact replica of a 200-year-old copper still found at the Smithsonian Institution, which Treasury agents confiscated from a moonshiner in Fairfax County in 1940. Although the still is stamped with the date 1787, Pogue doubts that it came from Washington’s distillery. The replica was made by a Louisville company, as were the whiskey barrels.
If everything goes according to plan, whiskey lovers will soon find bottles of George Washington’s whiskey, just as he made it and no doubt sampled it, and I’ll be one of the first in line to buy it.
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Features/CapitalLiving/060905.html
"...not technically a moonshiner, because the federal revenooers weren’t in business when he began making whiskey at the small distillery he built at Mount Vernon in 1797 after stepping down from the presidency.
But that distillery, and a larger one he built a year later, soon made the father of our country the biggest whiskey distributor in the newly formed United States, producing 11,000 gallons of liquor in 1798, the year before his death, and producing a profit of $7,500, a huge sum in those days. "
You are making me thirsty.
Interesting! And this is the same George Washington who invoked the Militia Law in 1792 and personally led troops into western Pennsylvania to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion?
Perhaps he was just regulating competition, half-a-decade before opening his own distillery.
Yes.
Hopefully GW paid his Whiskey taxes.
Not to disparage a distant relative, but that makes one wonder about this little incident:
Very interesting...never heard this before.
The reconstructed distillery will make Mount Vernon the only historic site in the country that shows the distilling process from crop to finished product.
The distillery is located next door to the site of George Washington's gristmill, which has been reconstructed and operates as an 18th-century mill.
http://www.nationaltrust.org/Magazine/archives/arc_news_2006/091206.htm
The "Whiskey Rebellion" has never received due weight in the history of the United States. Its story has been told in the utmost detail, but its details are unimportant. As a fact, however, it is full of meaning, and this meaning has been too much overlooked. That this should be so, is not to be wondered at, for everything has conspired to make it seem, after a century has gone by, both mean and trivial. Its very name suggests ridicule and contempt, and it collapsed so utterly that people laughed at it and despised it. Its leaders, with the exception of Gallatin, were cheap and talkative persons of little worth, and the cause itself was neither noble, romantic, nor inspiriting. Nevertheless, it was a dangerous and formidable business, for it was the first direct challenge to the new government. It was the first clear utterance of the stern question asked of every people striving to live as a nation, Have you a right to live? Have you a government able to fight and to endure? Have you men ready to take up the challenge? These questions were put by rough frontier settlers, and put in the name and for the sake of distilling whiskey unvexed by law. But they were there, they had to be answered, and on the reply the existence of the government was at stake. If it failed, all was over. If the States did not respond to this first demand, that they should put down disorder and dissension within the borders of one of their number, the experiment had failed. It came, as it almost always does come, to one man to make the answer. That man took up the challenge. He did not move too soon. He waited with unerring judgment, as Lincoln waited with the Proclamation of Emancipation, until he had gathered public opinion behind him by his firmness and moderation. Then he struck, and struck so hard that the whole fabric of insurrection and riot fell helplessly to pieces, and wiseacres looked on and laughed, and thought it had been but a slight matter after all. The action of the government vindicated the right of the United States to live, because they had proved themselves able to keep order. It showed to the American people that their government was a reality of force and power. If it had gone wrong, the history of the United States would not have differed widely from that of the confederation. No mistake was made, and people regarded the whole thing as an insignificant incident, and historians treat it as an episode. There could be no greater tribute to the strong and silent man who did the work and bore the stress of waiting for nearly five years. He did his duty so well and so completely that it seems nothing now, and yet the crushing of that insurrection in the western counties of Pennsylvania was one of the turning-points in a nation's life.
--HENRY CABOT LODGE
I bet 99.9% of Washingtonians don't know they have stripes of Danish blood for their city's symbol....
Just wondering what George Washington would have thought of Bill and Hillary Clinton...
Master distillers from Maker's Mark and Jim Beam toiled to recreate Washington's primitive whiskey recipe.
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