Liquor Ads From the 07-25-1935 New York Times July 25, 2024

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It's been a while since I've posted something to my trusty SiscoVanilla Serves and Drinks blogpage. Not working in the bar business and being swamped with work at the USPS, leaves me with little time to do some research. But I'm going to try and change that one post at a time. So to start that change, I went back to the past and dug through the proverbial crates that the New York Times archive TimesMachine provides. 

For today, I'm posting liquor ads from the July 25, 1935, edition of the New York Times. Here are some of the ads that I found:

What I found interesting is that the types of liquor advertised were very limited. It goes to show how the popular liquor types at the time were Scotch, Whiskey and Gin. There are some familiar brands here: White Horse and Dewar's Scotches, Fleischmann and Booth's gin. The one brand I'm not familiar with is The Maryland Club Special Reserve Blended Whiskey.

As of yet I haven't found much about the Maryland Club Special Reserve Blended Whiskey. What I did find was that it was produced at the Baltimore distillery Cahn, Belt & Co. from 1870 and 1919. Not surprising, production ceased with the enforcement of the National Prohibition Act aka Prohibition in 1920. At the time of the ad in 1935, it claims that the company waited two years after the repeal of Prohibition that they waited to reintroduce the Maryland Club Special Reserve back into the market. When did they stop producing the Maryland Club Special Reserve? I haven't been able to find that out yet. What I didn't know that historically, American whiskey distilling has roots in Maryland and Pennsylvania. So, it's not surprising that Philadelphia based distiller New Liberty Distillery would capitalize on those roots.  

According to the article New Liberty Distillery: Commemorating Maryland’s Rich Distilling History by Stephen Patten from the Beverage Journal dated April 20, 2016, the Maryland Club brand was so influential, that it was even part of the liquor selection available to the guests on the H.M.S. Titanic. 

For a much more in depth history of Maryland's whiskey history, I recommend you read Lydia Woolever's article AMERICA’S FIRST WHISKEY WAS BORN IN MARYLAND. CENTURIES LATER, IT STRIVES FOR A HISTORIC COMEBACK IN BALTIMORE from Baltmore Magazine dated December 2023. Also, for some information on the renaissance of Maryland whiskey, check out Maryland Rye Whiskey Has Finally Returned. But What Was It in the First Place? by Clay Risen from the New York Times dated February 14, 2019.

Well, that's all for now folks. I have some beer ads from the same July 25, 1935, edition of the New York Times for the next post. Keep your eyes peeled for it. 

Until Then May You Have Some Happy, Safe and Responsible Drinking, 

SiscoVanilla 

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