The bottom shelf is the place frugal drunkards go to find
true love. That's the place where whiskeys can be found that keep a drinker
drunk without consuming an entire paycheck or draining a bank account. The
bottom shelf is where "notes" and "finishes" are undesired
and meaningless—it's where you go when you want nothing more than to get drunk.
And the top dog of the bottom shelf is Kessler Whiskey.
* * *
Julius Kessler was born in Budapest, Hungary on August 4,
1855. He emigrated to the United States in the early 1870's already with a firm
grasp on the English language—his first job in his new country was as a
journalist. One of Kessler's first assignments was to cover a ceremony at the
Union Pacific railroad headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska in 1873 commemorating
the four-year anniversary of the driving of the Golden Spike that opened up the
Transcontinental Railroad. Kessler learned from the railroad men about the
fortunes being made and the adventures being had in the newly opened up
territories. The cub reporter decided right then that the American West was the
place to be and quit his job as a journalist. He headed to Denver, Colorado
where he acquired a barren of 40 pack mules and loaded them up with all the
whiskey they could carry. Destination: Leadville.
Leadville, Colorado was a wild west mining town located a
hundred miles to the southwest of Denver. Its first marshal was run out of
town. Its second marshal was shot dead by one of his own deputies. It was the
place where Doc Holliday had his last shootout before retiring and going off to
die of tuberculosis. Miners swindled each other, geologists forged their
assays, gunslingers fired, everybody drank. Coaxing his mules through the
mountains, he sold his whiskey at $6 a gallon to saloon owners; a thirsty
individual could buy three shots for $2. His success as a whiskey peddler was
so great by 1893, he opened a sales office in Chicago, Illinois.
He never had a retail outlet, he acted as a distiller's
agent and wholesaler. Kessler's reputation was such that when New York
financiers formed the Distillers Securities Corporation (popularly known then
as the Whiskey Trust), they handed over all their surplus stock and made him
their president. Kessler featured several brands of whiskey of his own
blending; Cedar Brook, Old Lewis Hunter Rye, Maryland Pure Rye among them. He
ran "brain teaser" ads in magazines and even advertised on playing
cards. During his trips to Cuba to procure molasses, he developed a taste for
Cuban cigars that damn near bordered on fetish—he purchased them 10,000 at a
time. The Whiskey Trust enjoyed enormous profitability until that odious
Volstead Act was passed and Prohibition became the law of the land.
With the eighteenth amendment ratified, Kessler, along with
the rest of the liquor industry, was put out of business. He took his fortune
(along with 38,000 Cuban cigars) and moved to Vienna, Austria to enjoy his retirement.
During his rise to the top of the whiskey business, he had shaken the hands of
40,000 liquor dealers.
At age 80, two years after Prohibition was
repealed, Kessler came back to America. His Smooth as Silk whiskey had
been revived by the Seagram Company. On New Year's Eve 1935, Kessler was seen
eating pigs' knuckles, sauerkraut, chasing a taxi down the street, and dancing
until 5 AM. He went on to become a director of the Hungarian Relief Society and
occasionally took trips back west to the towns and cities of his youth. On
December 10, 1940 the man who had gone saloon to saloon throughout the wild
west selling his whiskey passed away peacefully in his New York Park Avenue
home at age 85. His ashes were interred at the Ferncliff Mausoleum in Greenburgh,
New York.
In 2000 the French wine and spirits seller Pernod Ricard
acquired the Kessler Whiskey brand and five years later it became the property
of Jim Beam. In 2014 the Smooth as Silk whiskey became part of the Beam Suntory
family where it remains today.
Thrifty drinkers of today rushing home from the bottom shelf
of their favorite liquor store might raise their glass in toast to that
Hungarian immigrant who went where even marshals feared to tread to bring the
world a whiskey that serves the most noble purpose of all—to get us good and
drunk.
