From Barron's, February 22:
George Washington ran one of the country’s largest distilleries.
A whiskey barrel from the George Washington Distillery.
- Courtesy Mount Vernon
George Washington wasn’t just the father of his country. He also helped give birth to its liquor industry.
Washington’s distillery at Mount Vernon, Va., was one of America’s largest, producing more than 10,000 gallons of rye and corn whiskey in 1799. He sold it by the barrel as part of a postpresidency retirement scheme.
“Two hundred gallons of Whiskey will be ready,” Washington wrote to a nephew, “and the sooner it is taken the better, as the demand for this article (in these parts) is brisk.”
Demand for alcohol was brisk throughout the young nation, and it remains so today—even if our annual average consumption of around 2.3 gallons of absolute alcohol pales next to the 7.1 gallons quaffed in 1830.
We drink less for many reasons, among them ready access to safe drinking water. But age-old concerns about alcohol’s dangers, to both body and soul, followed drinking to the New World. Modern science has made the risks clear, most recently in a report from the Surgeon General that ties alcohol consumption to cancer.
This has taken a toll on U.S. liquor sales, which fell 1% last year to $112 billion, punishing the shares of brewers, distillers, and vintners. More people than ever express concern about drinking’s health hazards.
Yet, there are no calls for renewing prohibition. From New Year’s bubbly to beers at the ballgame and rum drinks at the beach, liquor remains central to our celebrations.
As ever in America, it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.
“By 1770, Americans consumed alcohol, mostly in the form of rum and cider, routinely with every meal,” wrote the historian W.J. Rorabaugh, author of The Alcoholic Republic. “Many people began the day with an ‘eye opener’ and closed it with a nightcap.”
During the Colonial period, most alcohol was imported. Washington was partial to Madeira wine and English porter. After the Revolution, America became a nation of small brewers and distillers; cultivating the grape proved more challenging.
Alcohol became such big business that, in 1794, the government’s attempt to tax it triggered a Whiskey Rebellion by Pennsylvania farmers.
Washington rode at the head of 13,000 federal troops to put down the rebellion, enforcing the government’s right to collect taxes. There were personal ramifications: In 1798, Washington paid a tax of $332 on 616 gallons produced at Mount Vernon....
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