Buy a duplicate of Mom of Bourbon on Amazon.
By Richard Thomas
Ranking: B+
Though I might not describe Mary Dowling because the literal mom of bourbon, the subtitle of this new guide from Rabbit Gap founder Kaveh Zamanian and writer Eric Goodman is actually true sufficient. The story of Mary Dowling has been fairly uncared for, a lot in order that after I started work on my newest guide Whiskey Tales, revealed earlier this yr, I made a decision to not embody Dowling’s story. That was regardless of the main target I made a decision to placed on trendy girls within the distilling business; I used to be so just lately acquainted with Dowling’s biography that I didn’t really feel I may actually separate the actual fact from the folklore but, not to mention the dreaded “advertising and marketing reality.” The work wanted to get me up to the mark was greater than a mere biographical sidebar essay merited.
An Irish-American lady and Kentuckian, Mary was born Mary Murphy and married John Dowling in 1875. Dowling was an Irish immigrant, twice her age and (ultimately) sole proprietor of the Anderson County distillery making Waterfill & Frazier Whiskey. Across the time of the flip of the twentieth Century, Dowling introduced his spouse Mary into the whiskey firm’s workplaces. He died shortly thereafter, leaving the distillery in his spouse’s palms. They proved very in a position; the distillery was burned down in 1904, however shortly rebuilt beneath her administration.
Throughout Prohibition, Dowling and a few of her sons had been tried and convicted of bootlegging, with that conviction being overturned on enchantment on account of a technicality. This run in with the regulation prompted Dowling to dismantle the Anderson County distillery, ship the tools to Mexico, and resume manufacturing in Juarez. That was the place Dowling would cross in 1930.
When even briefly describing Dowling’s story, it have to be recalled she confronted extra hurdles than being a girl industrialist within the early twentieth Century. That hurdle alone was excessive certainly, as Dowling inherited the corporate some 15 years earlier than the nineteenth Modification handed and gave girls the vote. That the business was the whiskey enterprise raised the bar even increased. A lot of the girls who could possibly be described at the moment as feminists a part of the Prohibition motion, and the whiskey business was thought of tarnished and one thing girls wanted to be protected against. I found this angle was nonetheless very a lot alive within the Fifties, factoring into the choice of the Motlow brothers to promote their firm to Brown-Forman, as their solely heirs had been daughters and so they thought Brown-Forman inventory was in all probability a greater legacy than hands-on possession and administration of a whiskey enterprise.
Her title (the whiskey Dowling herself made continued to be referred to as Waterfill & Frazier) now adorn Zamanian’s newest venture, Mary Dowling Whiskey Firm. I reviewed their winter wheat bourbon late final yr. This new guide, a piece of historic fiction and never biography, is a product of the curiosity that led Zamanian to discovered the corporate. Positive, it’s additionally advertising and marketing the whiskey, however not simply that. I can inform you from firsthand expertise: there are simpler and even cheaper methods to promote bourbon than penning a novel.
As historic fiction, I loved Mom of Bourbon enormously. Ably written, it delves into the lives of unusual, rural folks in Central Kentucky within the mid-to-late nineteenth Century, as a result of that’s precisely who all of the most important characters had been. Though missing the, say, royal glamor that drives a Hilary Mantel guide or the swashbuckling of a Bernard Cornwell novel, it’s the type of factor I recognize very a lot. Virtually half of Dowling’s life was lived earlier than she formally stepped into the whiskey enterprise, and solely the final decade was spent in bootlegging and Mexico. It takes some time to get to the so-called “great things,” the extraordinary half which is why a whiskey model is called after her. To me, your complete package deal is worth it.
That mentioned, figuring out what I do about bourbon fanatics, I must ask what number of of them have the persistence to get to the nice half or will even sympathize with Dowling as the principle character. For them I say this: give this guide as a present to your girlfriend/partner/mother. If it isn’t your cup of whiskey, it could very nicely be theirs.
