1916 WHISKEY/FULL

[**DONOTDELETE**]

I HAVE A FRIEND WHO WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT THIS AND WHAT IT MIGHT BE WORTH. They have full bottle of whiskey. Description as follows: United American Co. Distillery #9 Kentucky. Made 1916 Bottled 1933 100 Proof Bark and Tilford Bottled in Bond under Government Supervision. One Pint. Whiskey. This bottle is in original box. The bottle is full and seal is not broken.

[cowdery]

About all I can tell you is that the distillery was Park and Tilford, not Bark and Tilford.

I get lots of inquiries like this, about bottles full and empty. For whatever reason, there doesn't seem to be an active collectors market in rare bourbons. There are some legal limitations, having to do with selling spirits without a license, but the feds are unlikely to prosecute this type of sale (it's not what the law was intended to prevent) and there are legal ways of handling it, as evidenced by the many auctions for rare wines, brandies and even single malts, I believe.

What you have is indeed rare and probably quite fine, at 17 years old, but there doesn't seem to be much of a market for rare American whiskies, so the answer is "nobody knows." As with anything, it's worth whatever a willing buyer is willing to pay for it.

If anyone knows of an active market for rare American whiskey anywhere, I would like to hear about it.

- chuck