Old Crow

History

James C. Crow, a Scottish immigrant, started distilling what would come to be Old Crow in Frankfort, Kentucky, in the 1830s. Reportedly a very skilled distiller, he made whiskey for various employers, which was sold as "Crow" or, as it aged, "Old Crow" – and the brand acquired its reputation from the latter. He died in 1856, and while W.A. Gaines and Company kept the name and continued to distill the bourbon according to his recipe, the original distillation formula died with its creator. The last remaining stock of Old Crow (of which there seemed to have been quite a bit) acquired near-legendary status, and offering drinks of it reportedly secured a re-election for Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn, senator for Kentucky. A dispute over ownership of the name "Old Crow" was decided in 1915 in favor of the Gaines company. Old Crow's logo, a crow perched atop grains of barley, is rumored to stem as a symbol bridging the North and South during the Civil War. A Pennsylvania brigade training at State College, Pennsylvania thought Old Crow was the only good thing to ever come out of the south. Fearing never being able to drink Old Crow again, the soldiers wrote Lincoln proclaiming "We must not let the fine gentleman Old Crow escape. Remember Mr. President, the crow with the sharpest talons holds on to barley forever." After the War the logo was changed from a picture of James Crow to the current crow holding onto barley.

Although the whiskey had been, at one time, the top selling bourbon in the United States, it underwent a swift decline in the second half of the twentieth century. A production error in the amount of "setback" (the portion of spent mash added to a new batch in the sour mash process) negatively affected the taste of the whiskey, and the distiller's inability or unwillingness to correct it led to many drinkers moving on to other brands. Parent company National Distillers would be sold to Jim Beam in 1987; the Old Crow recipe and distillery were not kept and the product after this would be a three-year-old bourbon based on the Jim Beam mashbill.

Famous drinkers

Besides Blackburn, many American politicians have declared their love for Old Crow. It has been said that it was the drink of choice for American general and later 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant. An apocryphal story about Grant's drinking has the general's critics going to President Abraham Lincoln, charging the military man with being a drunk. Lincoln is supposed to have replied, "By the way, gentlemen, can either of you tell me where General Grant procures his whiskey? Because, if I can find out, I will send every general in the field a barrel of it!"

Confederate General Jubal Early was also a fan of Old Crow.

Another famous politician who preferred Old Crow was Henry Clay, of Kentucky, who was even featured in Old Crow advertisements.

World War II "triple ace" Bud Anderson named his P-51 Mustang Old Crow, after the whiskey.

In popular culture

Old Crow is said to have been the favorite bourbon of American writer Mark Twain. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson liked it. Twain reportedly visited the distillery in the 1880s, and Old Crow advertised this heavily; John C. Gerber sees in this commercial exploitation a sign of Twain's continuing popularity. As for Thompson, the frequent occurrences of the drink in his writing, semi-autobiographical as well as fictional have led to similar associations. The manufacturer actively pursued such publicity: in 1955, they took out an ad in College English, the journal of the National Council of Teachers of English, offering $250 for every literary reference to their product.

In the 1903 book The Log Of A Cowboy by Andy Adams, the cook goes to Abilene for supplies and also brings back a box of cigars and "several bottles of Old Crow".

Mentions in popular music have included the following: