When you read this newspaper ad from 1913, your first thought might be, “Well, this person hates whiskey and promotes the temperance movement.” But oddly enough, it’s a sales ad FOR whiskey not against it!
I love this ad. It reminds me of an ad campaign in the Philadelphia area for Steven Singer, the jeweler. His ads all read “I HATE STEVEN SINGER.” I remember my uncle asking me, “Why does everyone hate this guy…what’s his name? Sean something or other?” And I said, “No, Steven Singer! People hate him because his prices are so low. And supposedly men hate it that they just can’t say no to his prices.” So here I was, advertising for this guy just as he had intended. It gets your attention, and you don’t forget it. Weird choice of strategies, but the guy doesn’t want for business, so I guess it worked. The whiskey ad (and others like it) were being placed in the nineteen teens just as the temperance movement was beginning to win the day with their propaganda.
You can see written at the bottom of the ad “Cyrus Noble- mild- pure.” I suppose riding those waves of propaganda to make sales was not outside of Mr. Ernest R. Lilienthal’s campaign strategies. Lilienthal’s Crown Distilling Company owned the Cyrus Noble brand. They were the largest wholesale liquor company on the West Coast at the beginning of the 20th century, so they were no strangers to quirky advertising. Magazine ads explained that they had “proven that while there is a large proportion of the drinkers that demand high-proof goods- there is a still larger percentage who will pay for age and quality- at drinking strength. And that’s the whole story of Cyrus Noble.” There’s something brilliant about contrarian advertising. Your naysayers (in this case, the temperance warriors) become your advocates and you shift the whole conversation.
It should be noted that Cyrus Noble whiskey was not originally from California. The brand was born in Lynchburg, Ohio, where it was distilled by a man named- you guessed it!- Cyrus Noble. The Lynchburg Distillery, which had been manufacturing Cyrus Noble whiskey since 1857, was owned by the famous Freiberg & Workum liquor firm of Cincinnati. Cyrus Noble worked for Freiberg & Workum as the distillery’s superintendent/foreman. The Lynchburg Distillery, later known as the Cyrus Noble Distillery, was a relatively small, 200 bushel a day facility in the 1860s, but was enlarged in the 1870s to suit the needs of Cincinnati’s growing demand for its whiskey. The distillery initially made J.A. Bowen whiskeys, and added “Lynchburg Rye” in 1865, “Highland Pure Rye” in 1869, and Clinton Whiskey and Eagle Gin by 1883. It was Ernest R. Lilienthal, through his connections to Freiberg & Workum, who brought the brand to California in the early 1870s. Ernest’s father, Dr. Samuel Lilienthal, and uncle, Rabbi Max Lilienthal, had been close associates of Julius Freiberg in Cincinnati. E.R. Lilienthal established his own liquor company, first in San Francisco and then in San Bernadino. The brand transitioned from a straight whiskey (about 3/4 corn and 1/4 rye) to a blend of straight whiskeys by the 1880s. Lilienthal’s rectifying business, Crown Distilleries Co., continued to source his whiskeys from Freiberg & Workum’s numerous distilleries throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. He incorporated the Cyrus Noble Liquor Company in Butte, Montana in 1904 and continued to successfully sell the brand until Prohibition.
It is unclear how long Cyrus Noble remained working at the Lynchburg Distillery, but most of the information out there about him is incorrect. Cyrus was born in Clinton, Ohio and lived in the vicinity of Lynchburg, Ohio, just east of Cincinnati, until his death in 1901 at the age of 75. The newspaper described him as being one of the wealthiest men in his community. He had been a high ranking mason and a member of the Odd Fellows. He was also described as being 350-400 pounds at the time of his death.
The new iteration of the Cyrus Noble brand, launched in 2011, makes a passing mention of Mr. Noble on their website: “In 1871, a new world-class bourbon whiskey is created by Ernest Reuben Lilienthal to honor Cyrus Noble, a renowned spirits distiller.” As we’ve established, the brand was originally from Ohio and not created by E.R. Lilienthal. It might be argued, however, that Lilienthal’s marketing of Cyrus Noble in California and in other western states anchored the brand and its consumer base in the west. As we can see from
