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Penn-Maryland Late this spring Seton Porter had lunch with two other Yale men, Board Chairman Charles Adams and President Charles S. Munson of U. S. Industrial Alcohol. Upshot was Penn-Maryland, Inc., equally owned by National and U. S. Industrial. It was arranged that Penn-Maryland would make not only all of National's blended whiskey but also whiskey for Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Standard Brands will make Penn-Maryland's gin, will market its own brand, Fleischmann, through Penn-Maryland, make Canada Dry gin. The quality trade National Distillers reserved for itself—unblended Old Grand Dad, Old Crow, Old Taylor, Sunny Brook, Old Over holt, Large, Mount Vernon, In the importing field National Distillers took under its wing the old house of Alex. D. Shaw & Co.
About the only distiller who found more good than bad in the code last week was Seton Porter. Freezing the total U. S. distilling capacity at the present figure would assure National Distillers of its dominant position.
Schenley. Lewis Rosenstiel wanted to get out of the whiskey business when the years of the locust began but his family would not let him. So he sat down in Cincinnati to wait. He bought up stocks of medicinal whiskey, concentrated them in a warehouse in Schenley, Pa.—a move which, because of Governor Pinchot's tax, he sorely regretted last week. Later he bought the distillery that went with the warehouse and a few other distilleries. Last summer, having acquired a distributing unit and with it three capable whiskey men all named Jacobi, he organized Schenley Distillers Corp. He sold $3,000,000 of stock to the public through the banking house of Lehman Brothers, had himself commissioned a Kentucky Admiral and began to expand in earnest. All liquormen regard the Schenley management highly. They were all born & bred to the business, and excitable, aggressive Lewis Rosenstiel knows precisely what he is up to. Schenley will cross the line with about 5,000,000 gal. which entitles it to one-fourth of the total business and the rank of No. 2 whiskey company. But Governor Pinchot's floor tax hit it hardest. Like National. Schenley has big distilleries in other states but 4,000,000 gal. of stocks tied up in Pennsylvania cannot soon be duplicated.
Bacardi. Schenley also has an importing subsidiary whose list of foreign wines & liquors is the envy of every U. S. importer. Whiskey men and the importers have completely reversed their pre-War position. Today there are only a handful of major whiskey units where before the War there were hundreds. Where there were only 20 or 30 big importers before, hundreds have now rushed into this highly-specialized field. Schenley has Charles Heidsieck's champagne, ports and sherries from Gonzalez Byass & Co., French wines from Barton & Guestier, Noilly Prat & Cie., French vermouth, Dubonnet and the strong red Brioli Chianti of Casa Vinicola Barone Ricasoli. Most important, it has Bacardi.
Like the venerable Scotch brands, which were both bootlegged and faked on a grand scale, Bacardi rum is more widely known in the U. S. today than ever it was before Prohibition. No one was more surprised than President Jacobi of Schenley Products Co. when someone called up one day last month to say that Henri Schueg, shrewd, white-thatched head of Compania