Yellowstone Brand Whisky Bourbon

Yellowstone is a whiskey brand. Yellowstone's bourbon was one of the most popular whiskeys in the USA until the 1960s. In recent decades, it lost market share and, after several ownership changes, belongs to the independent bottler Luxco. The whiskey is currently distilled at Heaven Hill in Lexington, Kentucky, but Luxco is building its own distillery for the brand with the Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon, Kentucky.

History The brand was created in 1872 shortly after the opening of Yellowstone National Park by the beverage merchants Taylor & Williams from Louisville, Kentucky. The merchants bought whiskey in large quantities from various distilleries and bottled it under their own label. In the 1880s, they had Joseph Aubrey Drake Graham distill the whiskey for them at his new Cold Springs Distillery in Nelson County, Kentucky. The whiskey was successful enough that Dant was able to take over Taylor & Williams in 1903 and became the new president of the merged companies. In 1910, Dant bought a neighboring distillery from Minor Case (M.C.) Beam of the Jim Beam family. The new company produced only Yellowstone, and Dant and the Beams ran the company together. After the end of Prohibition, Dant, together with his sons, built a distillery in Shively, a suburb of Louisville, and continued to produce Yellowstone in cooperation with the Beams. In 1944, he sold the company and brand to the whiskey producer Glenmore, also from Louisville, which had been allowed to continue producing medicinal whiskey during Prohibition and thus had good financial resources. In the 1950s and 1960s, Yellowstone was one of the most successful brands on the market. However, the whiskey sales crisis of the 1970s hit the company hard. Throughout the 1980s, production steadily declined until the company finally closed in 1991 and the brand temporarily disappeared from the market.

In 1993, Glenmore was sold with production facilities and brand rights but without the old whiskey stocks to United Distillers (now Diageo), who sold the production facilities and the Yellowstone brand to Heaven Hill. Heaven Hill immediately sold the brand on to Luxco, which, unlike Heaven Hill, had new Yellowstone whiskey produced. Luxco positioned the whiskey as an affordable budget whiskey.

Limestone Branch Distillery

The Limestone Branch Distillery was founded in 2012 by brothers Steve Beam and Paul Beam – paternal descendants of M.C. Beam, maternal descendants of J.B. Dant's brother William – with financial help from the Beam family in Lebanon. The brothers began building their own distillery amid the trend toward "craft" bourbon and small brands. Until 2014, they sold only White Dog – unaged clear whiskey; in 2014, they released their first three-year-aged whiskey. In 2014, Luxco bought into the distillery and acquired 50%. Yellowstone whiskey is to be produced there again. According to the Beams, they also have the original recipe from the family.