Where The Buffalo Roamed
Where The Buffalo Roamed
Daniel Boone in 1771 used a well-worn trail that buffalo created to get to and from the banks of the Kentucky River. Four years later, word had reached the frontiersmen, Hancock and Willis Lee, that this land by the river, which the buffalo favored, was very fertile and a perfect place to settle. So, the area north of Frankfurt became known as “Lees Town” seventeen years before the Commonwealth known as “Kentucky” officially became a state.
The Lee brothers had constructed a distillery by 1812 and from the humble origins of a single-story stone house built by Commodore Richard Taylor, a small, closeknit community started to grow. The Lee’s distillery was growing too. By 1870, there were fourteen buildings associated with their enterprise when they sold their operation to Colonel E.H. Taylor. Taylor gave his distillery a name, The Old Fire Copper, before eventually selling to George T. Stagg who owned and ran the business as “The George T. Stagg Distillery” through to 1929. During those turbulent years of Prohibition and World War I, (an era I thoroughly cover in my next book) many whiskey-producing operations were shut down. But such was the fortune of Stagg with his appointment of Albert B. Blanton to serve as his company’s president, his distillery continued to prosper.
Blanton was born and bred on an adjacent farm to the distillery, and at the age of sixteen in 1897, he scored an office boy’s position within the company. By 1921, when Blanton was appointed as the company’s president, he had matured into a “Kentucky Gentleman and Aristocrat”. During his tenure with the distillery company, Blanton had devoted “more than fifty-five years to producing, protecting, and promoting fine Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.” One of the more difficult periods during this time was finding a solution to the radical decline of consumption during the Prohibition years. Blanton successfully secured one of only a handful of special governmental licenses to produce “medicinal whiskey”. His efforts being the main reason why the modern-day Buffalo Trace distillery boasts of being the country’s oldest continually operating distillery in America.
George T. Stagg sold the company in 1929, and the name changed to “The Schenley Distillers”. By 1952, the distillery was renamed “Blanton’s Distillery” in Albert’s honor and a mere seven years prior to his death in 1959. And it was during this time another forceful personality was on the scene; Julian P. “Pappy” Van Winkle. Pappy quickly became famous for his mantra, “We make fine bourbon at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always fine bourbon.”
I can’t help but wonder if Pappy’s mantra was a variation of an oft quoted line that I first discovered in researching for my sequel historical fiction, “Gilded! A Novelization of the Life of John Hiram Beckley”. This quote is attributed to Mark Twain in his book, “The Gilded Age. A Tale of Today”, and it reflects the mantra of a handful of self-made business magnates, “Get rich, dishonestly if we can, honestly if we must.” It matters not, I guess, how the succeeding owners of what is now known as Buffalo Trace Distillery did it. The fact is the start-up distillery company from 1812 has survived and thrived.
In keeping with my running theme from my last blog of knucklehead racehorses, and please excuse the pun, I draw your attention to the year 1984. That is when a very clever and popular marketing promotion was initiated by the Buffalo Trace Distillery owners at the time who were looking to inject life into a depressed whiskey marketplace. With each bottle of their latest whiskey, which was named “Blanton’s” after their long-serving president, the purchaser would receive a bottle with a crafted stopper depicting a horse and jockey. There were eight different types of stoppers, each depicting various stages of a horserace. By 1993, a design change was affected by the new owners who had taken over the distillery the year prior. The Goldring family, owners of Sazerac, instructed that a more detailed depiction of horse and jockey on their Blanton’s stoppers be produced. By 1999, a letter, which would eventually spell out “Blanton’s” appeared on the rear leg of the horses, which in effect created a collector’s dream. The deal was that once a customer had collected all eight letters and depictions of a horserace, the stoppers could be sent back to the distillery, where they would be mounted on a stave and returned, ready to be placed on a mantel piece. The promotion was a success then and still is today. I have been at the Buffalo Trace Gift Shop on a day when “Blanton’s” was the feature product on display for purchase. Taken back by a scene that I’ll not soon forget, I have witnessed Buffalo Trace employees standing over unopened boxes of Blanton’s ready for the shelves but being guarded from customers ripping through the boxed bottles looking for the letter(s) that they were missing to complete their set! It seemed only the employees’ stern warnings to pull from the shelves first, kept the gift shop turning into unbridled mayhem; and there is that pun again!
Yet through the years, the different distillery owners have not always found the going as carefree as those who first followed the trace of the buffalo to the Kentucky River. In 1882 the entire distillery burnt down. Flooding has also been a persistent worry with one of the worst events occurring in just April this year when all two hundred plus acres of the campus were under water from the Kentucky River, which impacted nearly every phase of the Buffalo Trace production.
You’ve got to believe, though, that the Lee brothers would be mighty proud seeing how their fourteen buildings have now grown to over one hundred and fourteen buildings; that in 2013, the distillery received designation as being a national historic landmark; and that just recently, the company’s nine millionth barrel (since Prohibition) of bourbon was sold. I’m personally glad that the Lee’s had an innate sense to follow those buffalo trails and that the energy and ambition of so many men and women over the years have provided me the opportunity to proudly display our own stave of racing horses and jockeys. And for the record, we’ve enjoyed every drop!