By Richard Thomas Born in 1825, William Larue Weller was reportedly the grandson of German immigrants who came to Central Kentucky on a flatboat in 1794, and settled near Bardstown in 1800. Like many small farmers in Kentucky’s frontier days, Weller’s grandfather was also a small distiller. Unlike many Kentucky farming families, the Wellers were destined to build on their ...

By Richard Thomas As much as whiskey fans like to imagine every great brand as being built by a legendary Master Distiller or Blender, endlessly tinkering with grain, copper, and wood, in truth most were built by managers and salesmen. Such was the case with Dewar’s. The company was founded by John Dewar, Sr in 1846, and was built by ...

By Richard Thomas Technically, James Higdon’s The Cornbread Mafia is about pot-farming in Central Kentucky, and not about whiskey-making. Even so, the history of whiskey-making in Marion County is heavily interwoven into the story. In a different venue, I endorsed Higdon’s book as a must-read for any lover of True Crime or recent Kentucky history. From a bourbon-lover’s point of ...

By Richard Thomas Dewar’s Whisky was founded in 1846 by John Dewar, Sr., but like so many enterprises in the whiskey trade, it wasn’t the founder who turned the company into an international player in the whiskey trade. In the case of Dewar’s, that work was done by two of John Dewar, Sr.’s sons. One of these was Thomas Dewar, ...

By Richard Thomas Among the Founding Fathers, perhaps the most controversial is Alexander Hamilton. Although many of Hamilton’s ideas and policies proved ultimately beneficial to the early United States, Hamilton’s motives and intentions remain as suspect today as they were at the time. A would-be quasi-aristocrat with one whole foot out of the monarchist closet, Hamilton was an 18th Century ...