Colonel Bourbon Blog

The Duke was known for his westerns, but he really had a seafaring soul. He once dreamed of going to the US Navy Academy at Annapolis, but his application was not accepted. He had many films about the sea: Men Without Women, The Long Voyage Home, The Sea Chase ("with a cargo full of Lana Turner"), Wake of the Red Witch, Reap the Wild Wind, In Harm's Way...

The Duke had a yacht, the Wild Goose, a former US Navy mine sweeper from World War Two, with twin 500-horsepower engines.

In this blog post, we muse about the possibility that social media algorithms are taking things too seriously, where legends and myths are flagged as false statements and as misinformation. Of course, the history of America's whiskey, particularly bourbon, is filled with balderdash. The mash bill is 51% corn, and a lot of tall tales.

"Keep a bottle of something in your desk. Mr. Draper drinks rye." That's one of the first things Peggy learns about her new boss, when the Mad Men TV series began. Throughout the show, libations play a big part in the characters' lives, driving the narratives, almost being characters themselves.

Whiskey Row is an historic district that was once the hub of the bourbon industry. Located between 101 and 133 W. Main Street in Louisville, KY, the block of Chicago-School-style buildings almost got torn down in 2011.

The story goes that Jackie Gleason introduced Frank to Jack at Toots Shor bar in New York. It was love at first taste. Old Blue Eyes never called it Jack; it was always Daniels or J.D. Technically, J.D. can be called a bourbon but the Jack Daniels company will have none of that Kentuckian talk, It is, they insist, a Tennessee whiskey. “… it’s dripped slowly – drop by drop—through ten feet of firmly-packed charcoal (made from hard sugar maple) before going into charred oak barrels for maturing.” Before discovering “Daniels,” Frank regularly drank Chivas Regal in the 1950s. And...