McHenry Whisky, has anyone heard of it??

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I have an unopenned bottle of McHenry Whisky, it still has the internal
revenue seal on it, along with an Iowa seal, does anyone know it this
whisky is worth anything?

[cowdery]

It is pretty easy to answer that question without knowing anything about McHenry Whiskey, because there is virtually no market for rare or antique American whiskey, hence no established values. That isn't to say you might not stumble onto the rare collector who might be interested, but they are few and far between and don't pay very well. Sorry.

We would, however, be interested in the story of how the bottle came to be in your possession, if you are interested in telling it.

--Chuck Cowdery (http://cowdery.home.netcom.com)

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I built a closet for my wife to store her canning goods and was transferring
the old jars and such to the new closet and there it was. As far as it not
being worth anything, I can easily believe that, but I have a couple of
questions. Number One: How come I can't find much about McHenry Bourbon on the internet. The only article I've found was on Yahoo about it being born in 1812 in Columbia county, and about a fire in 1910 that destroyed 1700 barrells of McHenry whisky. According to the article after the fire, John G. Mchenry never reopenned the distillery, as a matter of fact, he died several years after that.
Question Number Two. How old would this bottle of bourbon be? Would it be 90 years old? Even if it isn't worth anything, I'd still like to know more about it and I would like to know why I can't find any information about it anywhere on the net. Thank you for your time.

[kitzg]

Some of the country's true bourbon and whiskey experts read this forum. If you hang around, one of them may have an answer (Mike? Mike is an historian and expert).

Remember in order to find something historical on the web someone must have put it there. Often, obscure old information is either not placed on the web or search engines are not sophisticated enough to find the information you are looking for from the millions of web pages that exist world wide. Perhaps you found the information that I just did at http://home.epix.net/~tiger5/history.html

" The Benton Distillery was founded in 1812 by Rohr and John G. McHenry. It was located on Whiskey Hill in Benton. "Born in 1812" became the McHenry slogan. This business became one of the most important industries in Columbia County. During the late 1800's until 1910, the McHenry's whiskey was circulated nationally. The McHenry legacy ended one day in 1910 when the Board house was destroyed by fire. The Board house was home to over 17,000 barrels of whiskey. These too went up in smoke. Shortly after the fire, John G. McHenry died, and the Distillery never resumed production. "

Sometimes historians later find information on the web not to be totally accurate. I am slowly doing a research project on a similar obscure whiskey. At this time I am communicating with a curator of a museum who may be able to tell me how old a bottle is based on the codes on the bottle. I use some very sophisticated library sources that you cannot get on the web -- but still it takes time to sort through all of the info. Sorry, I don't have an extra hour to look up McHenry for you.

Good luck! And hang around. Someone may read your post and have some clues for you.

Greg

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Whilst doing a search of my own, I came across a listing in a collectors' forum that you might be interested in...
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Cheriemr@aol.com Do you have any idea where I might be able to begin to look for anyone who may have information regarding old McHenry Whiskey bottles, jugs or other memorabilia items that originated out of the Benton, PA area. I have not a clue where to begin to look. Thanks for any information you could send me.
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I also had another person who posessed an unopened bottle of McHenry email me asking if I knew anything. Unfortunately, I now (thanks to Greg) know more than I knew then.

=John=
http://w3.one.net/~jeffelle/whiskey

[kitzg]

I found the same inquiry you had found -- but no more. I wish I had time to do the academic research and may be able to bundle it with another search in a couple of weeks. Just so you know I searched a couple of academic sites of historical documents and came up empty handed.

I still owe Mike a trademark research project -- but I'm behind in what I'm paid to do!

Greg

[cowdery]

Do you have the ability take a picture of the bottle and post it to this forum? If so, we might be able to judge the age by the style of the bottle, closure and label.

It seems unlikely that the bottle you found is 90 years old. Are you assuming it was left in the closet by a previous occupant of the house? How old is the house? How long have you lived there?

If the McHenry Distillery did close in 1910 after the fire, it is possible that another distillery revived the name after Prohibition and that is the source of your bottle.

Are you in Pennsylvania or Iowa or neither?

This also makes the point that many states had active distilling industries at one time and that Pennsylvania made more than rye.

--Chuck Cowdery (http://cowdery.home.netcom.com)

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I want to thank everyone for responding. I am going to take some pictures of the bottle, and I will post them on this page. For you who asked, I'm from Iowa, and I used to live in the house where I found it. I found it about ten years ago, but never really gave it much thought, until this past weekend. I was watching the Antique Road Show, and I got to thinking maybe My bottle of McHenry was worth something.

As far as more history on my bottle, the person who owned the house before me is no longer living, but he did put a date on the bottle, as to when he bought it, or at least of when he got the bottle. On the Internal Revenue Tax Seal, there's a date of 2/5/72, hand written.

I have checked with the local Liquir store, and have talked to a man that's been selling liquir for over thirty years. Although he couldn't ever remeber seeing a bottle like mine, he said he had lots of old price sheets from the time he worked at the store, and as he had time, he would look and see if he found any information.

Question: Could a person call the IRS, give them the stamp number, and would the be able to shed any light on this?

Again, thanks for the help, and as soon as I can, I will put pictures up on my find.

McHenry

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I have never done any in depth research on McHenry but I believe that it was one of the brands that ended up with National Distillers after prohibition. The Iowa tax stamp means that it is post prohibition. You don't say what size the bottle is. If it is a metric bottle it is post 1980. If it is a quart, pint or 4/5 quart then it would be before 1980. Is it bottled in bond? If it is the tax stamp will give the date of the bottling.
Mike Veach