Old whisky, dated and explained
Old whisky bottles, dated from the record.
If your bottle has a barcode, a scanner app can probably name it. This site is for the rest: tax strip bottles, Prohibition pints, decanters, the ones with half a label left.
Watch a bottle change from 1890 to 1995
Move the years and the strip, the label lines and the lettering in the glass change with the federal rules. Drag the bottle to turn it, or read the strip up close. Every rule and its source is on Date your bottle.
The distiller, serial number and seasons on the strip are made up for the example. The made date runs ten years before the bottled date, and Prohibition pints show whisky made in 1917 or earlier.
Tool
How old is this bottle?
Answer a few questions about the strip, the glass and the label. You get a date range and the federal rule behind every piece of it.
Date your bottleQuestions
Quick answers
How old is my bottle? What does Bottled in Bond mean? Why is the medicinal whisky a pint? Answered up top, with the federal record behind each one.
Read the answersProhibition
George Remus
The bootlegger from Boardwalk Empire was real. He bought distilleries, sold their whisky as medicine, and shot his wife in a Cincinnati park in 1927.
Read the storyDistilleries
Old Overholt
A Pennsylvania farm distillery with Andrew Mellon among its owners, the man who ran the Treasury for most of Prohibition.
Read the storyProhibition
Schenley
Indicted in a 1929 bootleg ring over whisky soaked barrel shavings, then picked by the government to make medicinal rye seven months later.
Read the storyProhibition
National Distillers
Whisky moved by flashlight in 1920, a Chicago ring over Old Grand Dad, and by Repeal one company holding half of America's supply.
Read the storyScotch
Johnnie Walker
Edison joked that Prohibition buried him. Instead his label became the one every bootlegger wanted to fake.
Read the storyScotch
Haig & Haig
A field marshal on the whisky board while America was dry, fakes made with bay rum, and a famous bottle nobody could order by name.
Read the storySister site
Absinthesis
The other drink they banned. Absinthe from Roman wormwood to the 1915 French ban, the night the Doubs ran green, and where the real old spoons are sold.
Go to AbsinthesisFrom the old magazines
Whisky ads from magazines that are long gone, from before Prohibition shut the business down. See all the old ads, by decade.
The Prohibition years
From 1920 to 1933 whisky could only be sold legally in the United States as medicine, on a doctor's prescription. A few companies held the licenses to sell it as medicine, a lot of small distilleries never reopened, and some of the bottles from those years are still sitting in cabinets. The stories here start there: the brands that came out of it huge, the ones that disappeared, and the people who got rich or got caught.
Sources for these dates
- Bottled in Bond Act, Act of March 3, 1897, ch. 379, 29 Stat. 626. govinfo.gov
- National Prohibition Act, ch. 85, 41 Stat. 305 (October 28, 1919), which set the rules for medicinal whisky once Prohibition took effect in January 1920. govinfo.gov
- The Indianapolis Times, October 6, 1927, page 1, on the Remus shooting. Library of Congress. The full story, with its sources, is here.
- Twenty-first Amendment, ratification proclaimed December 5, 1933. govinfo.gov
One old bottle a month
One old bottle a month: what the strip, the glass and the label say about it, and the record that proves it. Nothing else.
One email a month. No ads in it, and you can unsubscribe from any one of them.
Who writes this
Bryen Beglinger collects old whisky. He has a journalism background, and history is his passion. He got started when one of his best friends died of an aggressive cancer and left him a small group of vintage liquor. That got him into the history of the whisky trade. Here he does the same thing with antique spirits, but mostly whisky: find the record, read it, and write down what it says. He also writes Absinthesis, about the history of absinthe.
He is a Realtor in San Diego, with 25 years selling homes there: www.sdhomesellers.com.
Photos of his own bottles go up as he shoots them, front, back, strip and base, so you can hold yours up against a real one.