Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/33511
A Distinguished Lineage Samuels comes from a long lineage of whiskey-makers who have been distill- ing since 1783, but it was T. W. Samuels Sr. who put their name on the bourbon- making map. He bought an abandoned Victorian distillery in the mid-1800s in picturesque Happy Hollow, Kentucky, and set to work on making his dream of handmade bourbon a reality. After Bill Samuels Sr. sold the T. W. Samuels brand, he continued to do what he knew best: make whiskey. But this time, he desired a forward-finish bourbon using a corn and wheat mash- bill that would become the smooth taste we know as Maker’s Mark. The godson of Jim Beam and distant relative of Jesse James, Bill Jr. became his family’s seventh-generation whiskey producer. When his father gave him the keys to Maker’s, Bill recalls, “Dad said, ‘Just don’t f*** it up.’” Hiram-Walker & Sons bought Maker’s Mark in 1981. Six years later, Allied Domecq purchased Maker’s, and in 2005, Fortune Brands acquired it. Amidst all the acquisitions, the constant was a steady Samuels, who never really followed any of his parent companys’ rules, always doing his own thing without asking permission. Rebellious Nature Samuels’s rebellious nature certainly paid off. The brand has sold out for 21 years in a row, and the distillery receives about 100,000 visitors a year. Samuels is also largely credited with bringing bourbon back from obscurity with humorous initiatives that changed spirits marketing and resulted in an August 1980 front-page story in The Wall Street Journal. Within a day of its being published, Maker’s Mark received thousands of phone calls and letters. Samuels harnessed that energy all the way to the White House, where his Maker’s Mark was a preferred drink in Ronald Reagan’s liquor cabinet. And when Reagan debated Walter Mondale for the 1984 presidential election in Louisville, the president Rob Samuels, photographed at Keeneland Race track in Lexington, KY, has taken over leadership of the Maker’s Mark brand from his father, Bill Jr. Samuels’s rebel- lious nature certainly paid off. The brand has sold out for 21 years in a row.” 112 / the tasting panel / june 201 1