Taylor, Col. E. H.

(1830–1923), was one of the seminal forces in bourbon history. He was involved in the creation of the Bottled-in-Bond Act and was the first distillery owner to realize the power of whisky tourism. He served as the mayor of Frankfort, Kentucky, and as a Kentucky state representative. Both the “colonel” and the “Jr.,” which he also used in his name sometimes, were honorifics; Taylor never served in the military, and “E. H. Taylor Sr.” was his uncle, not his father.Born in Kentucky, Taylor would eventually go to work for his uncle in a Lexington bank. He saw the money to be made in the whisky business and, after returning from a tour of European distilleries in 1867, opened a distillery. Two years later, he bought a small distillery in Leestown and renamed it the OFC Distillery (the letters stood for either Old Fire Copper, or Old Fashioned-Copper); it is known today as Buffalo Trace. Taylor failed to make OFC profitable, and he sold the distillery to George T. Stagg’s firm in the late 1870s; he and Stagg would feud for years over the use of the Taylor name.

Taylor built a new distillery on Glenn’s Creek. The Old Taylor distillery was eye-catching, built around a Rhenish-style castle with gleaming limestone walls, turrets, and a massive gate, surrounded by extensive sunken gardens and a key-shaped cistern (water, Taylor said, was the key to good bourbon). The public could visit the distillery, a completely new idea. Old Taylor was a success.

Taylor then took on bottlers of “rectified” whisky, which he considered a threat to quality bourbon. His lobbying would lead to the Bottled-in-Bond Act, the first American food purity law. Unfortunately, Taylor proved unable to prevail against Prohibition. Old Taylor closed for the duration, and he would not live to see it reopen.

See also bottled in bond and Buffalo Trace Distillery.

Sullivan, Jack. “Col. E. H. Taylor Jr.: The Face and Signature of Kentucky Bourbon.” Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men! (blog), January 10, 2015. http://pre-prowhiskeymen.blogspot.com/2015/01/col-e-h-taylor-jr-face-and-signature-of.html (accessed March 12, 2021).

By: Lew Brysonsee it reopen.See also bottled in bond, Buffalo Trace Distillery.