Ben Holladay Bourbon burst onto the whiskey scene in 2020, immediately receiving strong praise from the whiskey community. Hailing from Missouri—a state not typically synonymous with bourbon—its release marked the revival of a name previously dormant in the whiskey world. While the bourbon carries the Ben Holladay name, the distillery’s story reaches far beyond the “Stagecoach King” of the 1800s.
Ben Holladay, a Kentucky native, first built his empire by supplying the Mexican-American War, later acquiring the Pony Express and establishing the Overland Stage Route to deliver mail across the country. By the mid-1800s, he was the largest single employer in the United States. Meanwhile, his brother Joe ran a tavern in Weston, Missouri, proudly serving Monongahela whiskey from Pennsylvania. Spotting an opportunity to produce quality whiskey locally—without shipping it thousands of miles—Holladay acquired a former meat-packing site in 1849. The location, noted by explorers Lewis and Clark for its exceptional limestone water, was similarly praised by Ben’s brother David.
In 1856, the Holladay brothers established the Blue Springs Distillery, completing construction the following year. By September 1858, Ben transferred ownership of the spring and land to David. The grand American tycoon Ben Holladay was moving up in the world, acquiring more and more postal routes for his empire, thus the day to day operations of a Missouri distillery became of lesser concern for him. The distillery relied on nearby limestone caves to mature its whiskey, rather than the wooden rickhouses typical in Kentucky.
David ran the operation until his death in 1893, passing it to his son-in-law Thomas Barton. David’s death had sown division in the family, during his estate sale the heirs to his fortune pushed for the sale of the distillery. Barton pushed back, but ultimately the site was sold to George Shawhan on the 18th of July 1900. Shawhan identified, much like David Holladay had, the exceptional quality of the water supply at the Weston distillery location.
George Shawhan was a confederate army soldier born in 1843. After being a prisoner of war in Chicago, Shawhan returned to Kentucky and decided to continue his family’s legacy of distilling. His lineage had been distilling in Kentucky for three generations, but George chose to move out to Missouri and settle in a town called Lone Jack. He acquired a farm there and built his distillery, producing 2 barrels of whiskey per day. George expanded his empire, opening saloons in Missouri and building supply chains for the tobacco industry. In 1900 a fire burned his Lone Jack farm distillery to the ground. Luckily his warehouses were missed, leaving him 800 barrels of maturing whiskey he could sell to rebuild.
Shawhan moved his family to Weston and acquired the Holladay Brothers Distillery in 1900. He continued to bottle his existing stock from Lone Jack while also producing whiskey at the Weston site. This period of the distillery’s history is somewhat contentious: some sources suggest George sold the distillery and brand to the Singer family in 1908, though evidence for this appears unclear. Historical records indicate that the owners were forced into receivership in 1916, four years after Shawhan’s death. When Prohibition arrived, the distillery was shuttered, its barrels seized, and remaining stocks were slowly bottled over time to help settle the company’s significant debts
This remarkable 1911 Prohibition-era pint is one such bottling!
Distilled in 1911 by the Shawhan Company at the original Weston distillery location, it was bottled in bond in 1920 just at the start of prohibition.
In 1933, the site reopened under the banner of the Old Holladay Distilling Company, a firm made up almost entirely of Shawhan’s creditors. Three years later, in 1936, Isadore Singer and his brothers acquired full ownership. By 1942, they had secured the rights to the McCormick name from the now-defunct Waldron distillery. According to reports, E.R. McCormick’s wife had embraced religion during Prohibition and forbade her husband from resuming operations. Seizing the opportunity, the Singer family rebranded the Weston/Holladay distillery as McCormick, marking a new chapter in its storied history.
In 1947, the large firm United Distillers came calling, drawn primarily by the 30,000 barrels of aging whiskey stored in McCormick’s warehouses. With World War II having stifled production, these mature stocks were exceptionally valuable in the post-war market. United’s ownership, however, was short-lived; by 1950, the company had stripped the site of its inventory and sold the distillery to Cloud L. Cray of Midwest Grain Products (MGP). At the time, MGP was an industrious firm originally founded to supply alcohol for the war effort. They would not acquire the Indiana distillery we now associate with the company until 2011. The Cray family had operated the original McCormick distillery in Waldron, making this purchase a continuation of their family legacy in whiskey production.
MGP operated McCormick as a large-scale industrial distillery, focusing primarily on producing neutral spirits for bulk use. Still, the company occasionally ventured into darker territory, releasing corn whiskies under the Platte Valley label and other experimental expressions. Under the McCormick name, they became best known for their collectible decanters — a mid-century novelty craze — many of which famously featured Elvis Presley.
Through the latter half of the 20th century, the distillery kept turning, but whiskey was no longer its driving force. The Holladay name surfaced only sporadically on a limited single-barrel release called B.J. Holladay Private Keep Bourbon. The first bottlings were made in Missouri, but by 1985, bourbon production had ceased entirely, with sourced Kentucky spirit filling the gap.
In 1993, MGP sold the distillery to Ed Pechar and Mike Griesser, who had been president and executives at Schenley. Pechar and Griesser had been in business together since 1987, when they acquired Virgin Islands Rum Industries, marketing Cruzan and Diamond rums. They grew that business to be a large bulk rum supplier to the US market and parlayed the firm into the McCormick acquisition. In 2015, the site underwent a $10 million renovation, bringing the original 1856 stillhouse built by David Holladay back to life. The first Ben Holladay bourbon was released in 2022 and has since seen critical acclaim.
In the years since Holladay was relaunched, the brand has climbed to be a national icon. Initially just distributed in Missouri and Kansas, they have expanded nationwide and, as of 2025, are exporting their products as far as Australia. The big breakthrough for Holladay was collaborations with other leading whiskey voices, including a 7 year blend with vintage-focused brand bourbon lore. The brand honours its original owners, but firmly looks to the future. A real achievement for one of the oldest distilleries in the US!
Read the full article at The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Ben Holladay Bourbon
