McCormick’s stills haven’t run dry in 150 years

I recently discovered a great gem of Missouri’s beverage history: Missouri has the oldest distillery in the United States. During the American bicentennial in 1976, the federal government recognized McCormick Distilling Co. in Weston as the oldest distillery in the country operating at its original location and placed it on the National Register of Historic Sites. What grabbed my attention was not the 4 million-plus gallons of distilled spirits that the company currently produces per year or eveån the incredible longevity of celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2006, but how the distillery actually accomplished this amazing feat: through a loophole in the Prohibition law. Established by former Kentuckian Ben Holladay in 1856, McCormick began making whiskey for the expanding number of people moving west. Entrepreneurial Holladay knew that thirsty settlers were a natural market for whiskey, and with the large available water source, he opened his distillery in Weston, north of Kansas City, with his brother. Over the next several decades, Holladay helped to start the Pony Express, was nicknamed the “Stagecoach King” due to his Overland Stage Line and even owned steamships and railroad lines. The distillery stayed in the Holladay family until 1895, when it was sold to George Shawhan. After going through a series of owners, it has been privately held by a group of investors since 1993. In my Libation ramblings last June, I talked about how Tim Puchta’s Adam Puchta Winery in Hermann was celebrating its sesquicentennial (I don’t get to use “sesquicentennial” very often) in 2005, which made his winery the oldest family-owned winery in the United States. However, Prohibition closed the Adam Puchta Winery from 1920 until Puchta reopened it in 1990. McCormick had a truly different course of history. The company is not only celebrating a century and a half of operation, but, unlike Adam Puchta Winery, it has been continuously operating for those 150 years. Although McCormick was founded as a whiskey producer for the westward trek, much of what the company produces today is vodka. You may find labels such as Viaka, Congress, Hussar and Nova – all very moderately priced – under McCormick’s name. These are proprietary brands made in a four-column still that removes the congeners, which are the impurities that contribute to stronger flavors found in brown spirits such as whiskeys. The McCormick brand is the No. 2-selling American vodka, just behind the famed Smirnoff. There is a McCormick Country Store located in Weston where you may sample only two (these are all very high alcohol, generally 80 proof) of the numerous products produced. Although the company still offers several brands of whiskey, mostly under the Stillbrook label and produced in Kentucky, its premium-brand whiskey, in minutely small production, is named for the founder. B.J. Holladay Private Keep is this premium, straight-bourbon whiskey, which is bottled in Weston but made, as is all bourbon, in Kentucky. This is certainly the liquid muse that I am using to complete my words for April on one of the cornerstones of Missouri beverage history. On ice with a splash of water – just as Holladay intended. I visited the distillery many years ago and was impressed with the history. (The property had been open to the public for many years, but tours of the facility were discontinued in 1995.) What I did not know until I began investigating the company was that it actually produced, sold and prospered during all of the years of Prohibition. On Jan. 16, 1920, any beverage containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol became illegal. The 18th Amendment was implemented by the passing of the Volstead Act, eliminating the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcoholic liquors within the United States. Although wine-producing towns such as Hermann and Augusta were immediately thrust into poverty, there was a little-known, but very important, section of the act that made an enormous difference to the town of Weston. Sections 6 and 7 were soon known as “the loophole.” Section 6 proclaimed that no one could sell alcohol without a permit from the commissioner, though someone without a permit could prescribe purchase for medicinal purposes if he were a physician. Section 7 allowed that a physician, upon examining an individual, could write a prescription for alcohol as medicine if it “will afford relief to him from some known ailment.” (I think that most of us have some sort of ailment for which this section of the act would be valuable.) For the 13 years of Prohibition, the McCormick distillery produced whiskey for the health and welfare of a nation. We can be grateful for the wisdom of moderate minds (probably sneaking past the radical anti-alcohol thinkers) in writing in the permission for physicians to “prescribe” legal whiskey to their patients. The repeal of Prohibition actually began before it was even implemented, due to the years of effort that it takes to amend the Constitution. It was on Dec. 5, 1933, that the 21st Amendment was declared ratified by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who ran on a platform based on repeal) so that Americans once again could enjoy legal and safe alcohol. Cheers, on the rocks.