George Washington's whiskey distillery

June 23, 2003 2:14 PM

George Washington made his own whiskey, and at its peak his distillery produced 11,000 gallons a year. America's first president was also a successful entrepreneur. Now some scholars want to reconstruct the distillery and start making whiskey again. The reconstruction might be done by 2006. If they chose to sample their handiwork, I hope they remember the 98th and 99th rules of decent behavior.
posted by homunculus (7 comments total)

Here's a earlier post about rye whiskey.
posted by homunculus at 2:18 PM on June 23, 2003

Thanks homunculus! :)
posted by plep at 2:31 PM on June 23, 2003

Having a hogshead of whiskey in your house used to be pretty normal, in the South at least. But this habit led to one of the most misunderstood calamities of the US Civil War.

One of the reasons Columbia, SC burned on the night of February 17, 1865 was, frankly, the Federal troops were finding caches of whiskey in folks' root cellars and, helping themselves as they'd become accustomed to on the March From Atlanta To The Sea, they got swacked and didn't maintain discipline. They didn't help fight (smaller) fires that were breaking out (started when Confederate Gen. Wade Hampton's troops torched cotton bales to keep them from falling into Yankee hands), and in some cases they were actually picking up burning brands and setting new fires. Next thing you know, on a windy February night, a third of the town had burned up.
posted by alumshubby at 2:33 PM on June 23, 2003

Sadly, while Washington was free to make his own hooch, the modern American has been stripped of that right, mostly for regulatory reasons: the "revenooer" can't tax what he doesn't know about and backyard stills are therefore regulated out of existence.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:36 PM on June 23, 2003

Here are his dentures.
posted by plep at 2:37 PM on June 23, 2003

I don't suppose they'll restore his hemp fields as well?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:20 PM on June 23, 2003

wake me up when they regrow his his weed feilds.
posted by delmoi at 6:57 PM on June 23, 2003