About the Colonel

Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., 1830–1923

Born in Columbus, Kentucky, on February 12, 1830, Taylor became the most stubborn champion honest bourbon ever had. He organized distilling firms around Frankfort in the 1860s, built the O.F.C. Distillery in 1869, and in 1874 rebuilt the Oscar Pepper Distillery with James E. Pepper. That site is home to Woodford Reserve today. His own pride was Old Taylor, made at a distillery so grand people called it a castle.

He was mayor of Frankfort from 1871 to 1891, served in the Kentucky House and Senate, and raised Hereford cattle on the side.

The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897

Back then, plenty of so-called straight whiskey was doctored with coloring and flavorings like iodine and tobacco. Taylor led a group of distillers who joined Treasury Secretary John G. Carlisle to fight for a federal standard. Under the Act, a bonded spirit comes from one distillery and one season, ages at least four years in a government-supervised warehouse, and is bottled at 100 proof, with the distillery named on the label.

And this Colonel?

This Colonel is a character, a whiskey man built by friends who think you’ve earned a drink. He borrows the real Colonel’s name and his stubbornness about honest whiskey. The bad jokes are all his own.