Old Forester is celebrating 150 years of bottled bourbon with a limited edition Old Forester 150th Anniversary Bourbon.
Old Forester is one of the longest continuously bottled brands in the industry, sold by the same family before, during, and after Prohibition. It’s founder, George Garvin Brown, became the first to bottle his bourbon in 1870, a time when most bourbon was sold by the barrel. Consumers could never be sure of what they were filling their bottle with from these barrels – “rectifiers” often mixed straight bourbon with grain neutral spirits or worse. So Brown sealed his bourbon in amber glass bottles and marked them with his signature, to ensure that his customers were getting the quality whiskey that he intended.
“In addition to being the first to exclusively sell whisky in sealed glass bottles, George was the first to commercially batch whisky to ensure a consistent flavor profile,” says Old Forester in a press release. “At the time, he batched from three distilleries – Mellwood, Mattingly and Atherton – before eventually acquiring the Mattingly Distillery and distilling his own whisky.”