Bourbon Month

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Bourbon Month

Unread postby bourbonv » Mon Nov 26, 2007 7:58 pm

This year DISCUS had September named "Bourbon Heritage Month". That reminded me that this was done before and all of the distilleries had special price during the month and the trade magazines had articles about bourbon and its heritage. On Saturday I was in the archive at United Distillers looking for something else and I decided to look up some of the bourbon month information.

September was named "Bourbon Month" by the Bourbon Institute in 1964. The Bourbon Institute was lobbying and promotional organization formed in the 1950's to promote bourbon worldwide. They later merged with the Distilled Spirits Institute to form DISCUS. There is more information on all of this than I found in the short time I looked on Saturday, but I did find a 1965 Beverage Media magazine from New York that had about 20 pages of bourbon articles as part of the second annual "Bourbon Month" of september 1965. The articles discussed the distilling process, bourbon history and cocktail recipes. I know that Schenley took it further than just the trade magazines and did in store promotiuon for bourbon during the month of September. It lasted through the 1960's and into the early 1970's and maybe longer than that. After about 1974 the trademagazines were not kept by Schenley, or at least they never made it into the archive at U.D.

The purpose of "Bourbon Month" was to put a focus on bourbon. When it first started bourbon was king in the United States and it was not until later in the decade that sales started to decline leading into the 1970's. It seems that it was a good idea before its time that was later forgotten by the industry.
Mike Veach
"Our people live almost exclusively on whiskey" - E H Taylor, Jr. 25 April 1873
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Unread postby angelshare » Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:42 pm

Is this why the Festival is in September?
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:51 pm

No, The people who run the festival are clueless. It is in September because that is when Bardstown tourism wanted a festival to lure in more tourist, and it worked.
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Unread postby cowdery » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:38 am

It was Beam Global, not DISCUS, that arranged for the recent declaration of September as Bourbon Heritage Month. When they first got the idea, they weren't sure what month to make it. They asked...let's just say "someone"...who told them it should be September.
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