With no money for lobbyists, Piersant and Ledbetter began a campaign to persuade Chattanoogans to fight the law and get whiskey made in their town once again.
Their goal was simple: to reverse the law and open a distillery, and eventually move the production of Chattanooga Whiskey to its namesake city. That is, until Piersant and Ledbetter started the “Vote Whiskey” campaign, a tool to educate Chattanooga citizens about whiskey and the political process.
And it remained that way for almost 100 years. It wasn’t until 2009 that the Tennessee Legislature voted to change the distillation laws in the state, making it legal to produce whiskey and other distilled spirits in 41 counties.īut Hamilton County, of which Chattanooga is the seat, was excluded. Prohibition, strangely enough, only halted production of Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel’s whiskey for a short time due to a loophole that allowed liquor distillation in three counties in Tennessee – Lincoln, Moore and Coffee.
Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but Tennessee didn’t repeal its ban on manufacturing alcoholic drinks until 1937. Moonshining rose rapidly, as did the power of gangsters, specifically Al Capone. It was called the “noble experiment.” The experiment, of course, didn’t go over so well. In 1920, the National Prohibition Act, otherwise known as the Volstead Act, was enacted, making pretty much anything having to do with alcoholic drinks illegal. The Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union condemned liquor, declaring it was of the devil.īy 1909 Tennessee laws prohibited the sale or consumption of alcohol within a four-mile radius of schools and made it illegal to manufacture it within the state. In the early 1900s, a nationwide movement was growing against drinking, making and selling alcohol. By the late 1800s, the town had more than 30 distilleries it was the largest distilling center in the state. He took over his family’s gristmill and a few years later, he opened a small bar in Chattanooga selling whiskey. In 1866, not long after the Civil War ended, a man named Elijah Roach Betterton was released from a Union prison camp and moved back down South. They had to be, because it helped make a valid political point: Shouldn’t the stuff called Chattanooga Whiskey actually be made in Chattanooga? They were upfront about where their whiskey was made. As The Daily Beast asked in a story last year, “How do you open a distillery one year and have 5- or 15-year-old whiskey to sell the next?” The answer is, you can’t - unless you buy the whiskey you intend to sell from someone who has already aged it.īut Piersant and Ledbetter of Chattanooga Whiskey did something else. In the booming distilling business, young liquor companies often fib about where products are made - particularly if they are making spirits that require aging, such as bourbon and other whiskies. The “1816” was in honor of the year in which Chief John Ross founded the trading post, Ross’s Landing, which would eventually become Chattanooga. So the duo outsourced an aged, well-rounded bourbon from Midwest Grain Products/ Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana (MGP) – one of the largest contract distilleries in the country – and began bottling Chattanooga 1816 Reserve and 1816 Cask. But there was one small problem: It was against the law to make it in the midsize city in southeastern Tennessee. Tim Piersant and Joe Ledbetter were just the men to bring it to them. That’s how the company known as Chattanooga Whiskey started in 2011: a random question about a nonexistent product posted on Facebook, which resulted in more than 2,000 likes by the end of a month’s time.Ĭhattanooga was thirsty for some whiskey.
0 kommentar(er)
