Old Overholt Straight 6½ Year Old Rye Whiskey, circa 1936, 121 US Proof, 4/5 Quart

Old Overholt, a venerable American whiskey brand, can trace its origins back to 1810 when Abraham Overholt took over the family’s distilling operations at their farm in West Overton. Initially a family business, the company was restructured as A. Overholt & Co by Abraham’s sons, Jacob and Henry. The Old Overholt brand was not introduced until 1888, despite the family’s historical ties to West Overton, which is now a museum.

Most of the Overholt whiskey produced during this period was made at the more modern and larger Broad Ford facility, built in 1859. However, both the West Overton and Broad Ford distilleries were forced to shut down during Prohibition. Broad Ford was able to survive the dry period due to its ownership by Andrew Mellon, who granted the distillery a license to bottle “medicinal” whiskey, thanks to his position as Secretary of the Treasury under President Warren G. Harding.

After Mellon’s death in 1919, ownership of the company passed to his grandson, Henry Clay Frick, who eventually sold it to New York grocers Park & Tilford in 1925. The brand was then sold to National Distillers in 1932, who continued to produce Old Overholt until 1987. The whiskey was initially bottled using Broad Ford and the neighboring Large distillery’s whiskeys until the 1950s, and then at an unknown Pennsylvania plant until National Distillers’ acquisition of the Wathen family’s American Medicinal Spirits Co.

Today, Old Overholt is still produced by National Distillers at their distilleries in Kentucky.

The bottle number 2571 originates from a single barrel and was distilled at Broad Ford in 1936. It was bottled at 121 US proof.