Early Times

The story of Early Times dates back to 1860 when the Early Times Station, Kentucky, were making smooth sippin’ whisky so delicious that it was fabled throughout the world as “The whisky that made Kentucky whiskey famous”.

Everything was running smoothly until one day, a catastrophe struck: all alcohol was to be banned throughout the US. Prohibition – the ‘noble experiment’ – was set to begin. It looked like the curtain was closing on Early Times. Louis Guthrie was an ambitious young man who worked at the distillery, and saw a perfect opportunity to keep the whiskey safe from being destroyed. Guthrie bought the distillery and sold all his stock to one of only five breweries licensed to sell whiskey for ‘medicinal purposes’. This bold and brilliant move saved Early Times and meant it lived on to see another day.

90 years later, the same sort of ingenuity used by Guthrie surfaced again. The idea this time was to blend the original Early Times Whiskey with firey cinnamon liqueur, and the result was greeted with applause and rapture.