Billboards carrying the headline, “Bourbon’s Older Brother.” Baltimore-based Sagamore Spirit hopes the billboards will make the case for an open discussion about America’s whiskey heritage.
The ads will invite the curious to visit Whiskey.Wiki, which traces America’s spirits history and has been populated in part with findings made by historians retained by Sagamore Spirit that strongly suggest, if not outright prove, that Maryland was where commercial whiskey sales originated.
The site invites anyone with anything to say, show or comment on to contribute. Notably, the project leaves the door wide open to other whiskey early-mover states like Pennsylvania and New York to make their case for being first.
Impact Databank says the rye category now stands at just over 1 million cases, up from just 100,000 cases in 2010. Maryland was a powerhouse of rye distilling until Prohibition and World War II factory conversion took their toll, all but eradicating all production by the 1970s. Now – more than 18 distilleries have popped up in Maryland in the last five years.