The dynamics of the liquor industry during Repeal are of constant interest to me. Those “Big Four” companies had such a huge impact on American whiskey’s future. It’s not a surprise that our Canadian neighbors were in an excellent position to benefit from the US finally coming to its senses and passing the 21st amendment. Hiram Walker was one of those 4 major distillery owners with heaps of aged whiskey stocks after Repeal. Though they were dwarfed by National Distillers, Hiram Walker was a beast!
The distillery portion of the Walker family’s many industry interests in Canada was purchased in 1926 by Gooderham and Worts. It was a big $15 million purchase that merged two companies and consolidated a lot of liquor industry power. While Hiram Walker was a purely Canadian company until 1933, they were ready and raring to supply Americans with Canadian whiskeys- Canada was moving out of their Temperance movement as we were embracing ours, so they had plenty of aged whiskey when Repeal came the states in 1933. While America had some 2- and 3-year-old whiskeys in 1933 (and 16 year-olds and older), Hiram Walker had bottled-in-bond whiskeys and all the preferred ages for whiskeys ready to sell from Canada. The new plant they built in Peoria was ready to produce 150,000 gallons of spirit per day by 1934. Hiram Walker, Gooderham & Worts would have a tough time getting started in the newly designed American liquor market, but Canadian whiskeys had a bit of an uptick in demand during Prohibition, so they already had a big foot in the door! And $1 million bucks every 9 days for the US government definitely made them very welcome here.
(Featured Image article from the National Post (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) Published July 14, 1934.)