About Thomas H. Handy Sazerac

Established in 1775 and situated in Frankfort, Kentucky, Buffalo Trace is one of the few American distilleries that continued its operations through Prohibition, after receiving a permit to bottle medicinal whiskey when the 18th Amendment came into effect in 1920. They were permitted to produce new whiskey from 1930 to 1933. As a result, George T. Stagg Distillery, as the company was named at the time, was one of only four Kentucky distilleries that were capable of producing whiskey after Prohibition ended. The distillery changed several hands through more than two centuries, and the owners included Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor Jr., who earned himself the title of the father of the modern bourbon industry.

The oldest continually operating distillery in the United States includes the rich legacies of master distillers such as E. H. Taylor Jr., Albert B. Blanton, Orville Schupp, and Elmer T. Lee as well. To this day it remains family-owned, operating on the same 130 acres of land adjacent to the Kentucky River as it has for over 200 years. Similarly, the distillery’s flagship bourbon has been made using the same process for over 2 centuries. Now part of the Sazerac family, the distillery has remained dedicated to a single craft: the making of fine bourbon whiskey, bringing together tradition and innovation in the process.