Jan. 11 - Limestone Branch's Master Distiller Steve Beam...

Fellow Drammers!

We’re thrilled to announce a special new online tasting on January with Limestone Branch Distillery, where we’ll have the honor of welcoming their Master Distiller, President and Co-Founder Steve Beam, along with their Brand Ambassador Stephen Fante. The Beam family has an incredible history tying them to this distillery and its long legacy producing their flagship Yellowstone Bourbon, which was first bottled in 1872 by Steve’s great grandfather in honor of the founding that year of the Yellowstone National Park and by 1966 it was the most popular bourbon brand in Kentucky. We get into the detailed history of the brand below, but for now suffice it to say that shortly after Steve and his brother opened Limestone Branch Distillery in 2012, they partnered with Luxco. to bring home the historic Yellowstone bourbon name to Limestone Branch Distillery. In honor of this incredible legacy, we have spent the last couple years hunting down old bottles of Yellowstone at auction, as well as collecting some rare distillery-exclusive bottlings along the way, to make this a truly exceptional and memorable tasting.

We’re going to get into the bottles we’ll be drinking below, and feel free to skip ahead to that if you like, but we can’t help but put our history nerd caps on here for a few minutes, which draws heavily from Michael Veach’s history of the brand:

• 1872 - the first Yellowstone bourbon was bottled, the same year that the Yellowstone Park was founded. It was made at the Cold Springs Distillery, we believe by J.B. Dant, Steve Beam’s great grandfather and the son of J.W. Dant. Cold Springs Distillery was built in 1854 near Gethsemane, Ky. and supplied whiskey primarily to an outfit located on Whiskey Row in Louisville called D.H. Taylor & Co. Rumor has it that one of D.H. Taylor & Co’s employees, Charles Townsend, was on a business trip out west and had the idea that consumers would react well to a bourbon named after Yellowstone National Park, which had been founded in March of 1872.

• 1876 - John T. Williams joined the Taylor operation, which was renamed Taylor & Williams.

• 1883 - Minor Case, who had previously worked at the Early Times Distillery, bought the Gethsemane Distillery. Minor case was another great-grandfather of Steve Beam. Today Limestone Branch produces a Minor Case brand of rye whiskey in honor of his great grandfather.

• 1900 - J.B. Dant bought the Taylor & Williams company.

• 1910 - Taylor & Williams buys the “M.C. Beam Distillery, also in Gethsemane, Ky and makes Yellowstone at both distilleries”. That certainly sounds like the Minor Case Distillery noted above, but we’ll have to confirm with Mr. Beam.

• 1920 - When prohibition hits, Taylor & Williams arranges for Brown Forman, one of the 6 distilleries that received a federal license to sell medicinal whiskey. Thus, Yellowstone survives prohibition.

• 1944 - The difficulties of making whiskey post-prohibition plus the production challenges of World War II prove to be too much, and in 1944 Taylor & Williams is sold to The Glenmore Distillery Co., based in Owensboro, who operated it for several decades.

• 1956 - Glenmore initiates the “Mellow Mash” campaign, which you can see on the dusty bottles we secured at auction. If we understand correctly, “Mellow Mash” was introduced as a premium version of Yellowstone.

• 1966 - By this year, Yellowstone Bourbon is the most popular brand in Kentucky.

• 1972 - For the 100 year anniversary of Yellowstone National Park, and Yellowstone Bourbon, they switch the image on the label from the waterfalls at Yellowstone to Old Faithful. This is important for dating the bottles we picked up at auction — one features Old Faithful, the other two feature the waterfall, implying they may have been bottled prior to 1972.

• 1985 - Following the broader decline of bourbon generally, the distillery is shut down.

• 1991 - Running low on whiskey stocks, Glenmore decides to sell the brand to United Distillers, (which later morphs into Diageo), and United sells the Yellowstone and Ezra Brooks brands to David Sherman Co., who arranges for Heaven Hill to contract distill for him and age the whiskey in their warehouses.

• 1993 - Yellowstone is sold to Heaven Hill as part of a broader package, and they immediately sell it back to David Sherman Co., which is renamed Luxco.

• 2010 - Paul and Steve Beam, descendants of JW Dant and the Beam family, found Limestone Branch Distillery.

• 2011 - May 26th, they break ground on the distillery.

• 2012 - February 17th, they open the distillery in a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony.

• 2015 - Limestone Branch enters into a partnership with Luxco — as part of the deal, the Yellowstone will be given to the Limestone Branch Distillery to produce. It probably helps that Paul and Steve have the original JB Dant family recipes.

• 2021 - MGP acquires and merges with Luxco.

Ok, on to what we’ll be drinking:

• Dusty Yellowstone Distillery Bottling. Estimated 1967 bottling. “4/5 Quart”. Produced by the Yellowstone Distillery. “Louisville - Owensboro KY”. 43% abv.

• Dusty Yellowstone Distillery Bottling. Estimated 1978 bottling. Old faithful image on the label. Bottled for export to Germany. 43% abv.

• Dusty Yellowstone Distillery Bottling. Date unclear, but a waterfall appears on the label, so possibly bottled prior to 1972. European bottling, 0.7 liters, references Yellowstone Gardens, and Louisville on the label, does not reference Owensboro.

• Yellowstone - 2016 Limited Edition bottling.

• Limestone Branch Malted Rye - Distillery Exclusive Experimental Collection from 2020. 47% abv.

• Yellowstone - Single Barrel Bottling, selected by our friends at Evergreen Liquors.

• Yellowstone Select Bourbon - Flagship core range offering.

That’s our lineup, we hope you can join us!