Legal Drinking 2.0, the Chicago connection

November 21, 2:21 PMChicago Drinks ExaminerCharles Cowdery

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The 75th anniversary of legal drinking is two weeks from today, when we will celebrate the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition.

Although many places in the midwest have folklore about local moonshiners being patronized by Al Capone and his Chicago Outfit during Prohibition, the reality was a bit different. The Outfit did import spirits from Canada, Ireland and Scotland, but it was a net exporter domestically. From tiny brandy stills in the basements of Taylor Street homes to commercial-scale distilleries in Chicago Heights, the Outfit mostly made its own booze and shipped it throughout the region.

Chicago was also part of the post-Prohibition scene. Before Prohibition, there had been dozens of whiskey distilleries in Kentucky. As Prohibition was ending, many veteran distillers wanted back in, but they didn't have the necessary capital. Many looked to their former wholesale customers and several found investors in Chicago.

The most prominent example is Jim Beam. He was nearly 70 years old and his younger brother, Park, who was the actual whiskey-maker, was 66 when Prohibition ended, but Jim had a grown son and Park had two of them, so the five Beams decided to start-up again, if they could raise enough money. Enter three Chicago businessmen who had been wholesale whiskey merchants back in the day: Phillip Blum, Harry Homel and Oliver Jacobson.

A few years later, Park's eldest son, Earl, along with Homel and Jacobson, peeled off to join Jim's cousins Joe and Harry Beam over at Heaven Hill. By this time, Phillip Blum had passed and his son, Harry, became sole owner of the James B. Beam Distilling Company, with headquarters in Chicago. Blum brought in his son-in-law, Everett Kovler. In 1966, they sold out to a New Jersey company, but the headquarters stayed here. They're now in Deerfield.

The other post-Prohibition Chicago connection was Oscar Getz and Lester Abelson, two Chicago brothers-in-law who bought the Tom Moore Distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky, but always ran the company, called Barton, from here. That company is now the spirits division of Constellation Brands, but is still based downtown.