Atherton Whiskey, 1929

J.M Atherton & Co. (1867-1933). Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey bottle, distilled 1917 and bottled in 1929 for J.M. Atherton & Co. by Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Co. Incorporated. Produced by Julius Kessler, Distillery No. 87, Kentucky.

The J.M. Atherton & Co. distillery was established in 1867 by John McDougal Atherton, a native of LaRue County, Kentucky and a third-generation whiskey distiller. Throughout its operation at the turn of the century, the distillery produced many brands of whiskey including Atherton Whiskey, Atherton Old Fashioned, and Mayfield. The company headquarters joined the historic “whiskey row” on Main Street in Louisville in 1882, where this particular bottle was distilled over thirty years later.

Shortly after the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, John M. Atherton transferred the entirety of his brand and operations to the Kentucky Distilleries and Warehouse Company of the government-regulated Whiskey Trust. This bottle is particularly interesting for the dramatic changes that occurred in the bourbon industry during its aging period. Though distilled in 1917 when Chicago businessman Julius Kessler managed production for the Atherton brand, this bourbon was bottled twelve years later in the spring of 1929, when the only whiskey going into bottles was solely for medicinal purposes. The American Medicinal Spirits Company produced medicinal whiskey such as this under the Atherton brand, specifically in one-pint bottles.

Bourbon production resumed at the original Athertonville distillery in New Haven, Kentucky in 1935 under the Cummings Distillery Corporation of Athertonville, but most of the former Atherton distilleries did not survive the decade of prohibition. This bottle uniquely carries a dual identity, one of the thriving pre-prohibition era in Louisville as well as the carefully regulated period of medicinal spirits.