Old Crow Bourbon May Have Been The Favorite Of A US President

Ulysses S. Grant was the United States' 18th president, a civil war hero, and a prolific whiskey drinker. Throughout his time in the U.S. Army and the White House, Grant was known to be fond of a glass of bourbon. And although the whiskey business has changed since the 1860s, one brand that remains was — as legend has it — Grant's favorite: Old Crow.

The story goes that one night in 1863, during Grant's successful siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the general called for a nightcap among his aides, one of whom had a bottle of Old Crow. Grant purportedly called for the Old Crow by name, and when presented to him, drank a mighty gulp of it from his goblet.

If that sounds like an advertisement to you, Old Crow did claim famous individuals as customers in its 19th century advertisements; Grant included. Modern historians, however, are less convinced of the Old Crow connection, believing instead that Grant's favorite bourbon is likely lost to time.

Whether or not Old Crow was actually Grant's favorite bourbon brand, he would not recognize what's in the bottle today. Once considered a carefully-crafted premium brand, Old Crow was bought by Jim Beam in the 1980s, and everything soon changed. Beam discontinued the renowned recipe, printed the Old Crow name on plastic bottles, and filled them with a bitter, bottom-dollar bourbon that just doesn't compare to what was lost.

Aside from the changes that Old Crow has experienced in the past century and a half, the alcohol industry has also changed immensely. During Grant's era, whiskey branding was new and regulations were essentially nonexistent. Commercially available whiskeys were just as likely to be some other high-proof spirit masquerading as whiskey. And whether or not the whiskey was genuine, it could have anything under the sun added for flavor — rattlesnake heads, tobacco, even sulfuric acid.

While well-crafted whiskies did exist in Grant's time, including the original Old Crow, most of it was swill of questionable provenance. Old Crow may have fallen from grace in the meantime, but Grant would agree that the whiskey landscape overall is much improved.