Ep. 120 - The True Story of the Man Behind George Dickel's Whisky

Transcript

Welcome to Whiskey Lore The Interviews

I’m your host Drew Hannush, the best selling author of Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, Experiencing Irish Whiskey and the historical epic The Lost History of Tennessee Whiskey

And today, we are all about Tennessee whiskey history - my guest is Mr. Clay Swab, author of the book Manny Shwab and the George Dickel Company: Whisky, Power and Politics During Nashville's Gilded Age, and the great-grandson of Manny Swab - George Dickel’s one time bookkeeper, turned brother-in-law, and finally part owner of George Dickel & Company and eventual became the full owner of the Cascade Hollow Distillery and George Dickel’s Cascade Brand. 

Now, this is a story I researched myself for the Lost History of Tennessee Whiskey book, but as I’ve said, I’m always interested to hear the research of other authors. After reading getting familiar with the many characters involved in the Dickel story, it was great seeing all the additional pieces of information Clay found on this story.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the story of George Dickel and Cascade Hollow Distillery, the first thing to know is George wasn’t a distiller, he was a Nashville liquor dealer and wholesaler who started his life making and repairing shoes. George took more of a civic and community leader approach, while his business partner Meier Saltzkotter sourced wines and whiskies for their Market Street shop. While George and Meier were critical to getting the business off the ground, it would be Manny Swab, brother-in-law to each of them, that would take the business into the 20th century. It was also Manny that bought into the Cascade Hollow Distillery in Tullahoma. Dickel never owned it, he only sold the whisky made there, in his Nashville shop.

With that as our backdrop, it’s time to chat with Clay. He’s going to take us back into the Swab family history, talk about the days of Civil War smuggling, tales from Nashville’s Black Bottom and Hell’s Half Acre, the distiller who really deserves credit for making George Dickel’s Cascade Whiskey a household name in the Southeast, and we’ll compare notes on how we approached researching this fascinating history.

But to get us started, I wanted to find out from Clay, how much of this era of the family story he was familiar with, before he started researching this book.

Clay Shwab (03:28.625)
Almost nothing. The family really didn't talk about it. I knew that we owned George Dickel, you know, whiskey at one point in time, and that it was a, you know, minor league compared to Jack Daniel's at the time in the 1960s or 50s. My dad would show me, we would drive around town, he would point out buildings that we either owned or still owned, like the giant Casper Knight building and

Drew Hannush (03:42.606)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (03:56.979)
Paramount, Arcade, Climax, and Silver Dollar Saloon, a whole bunch of different buildings. But the only, and he was real proud of the Climax, his dad had showed him the fake rooms upstairs where the prostitutes would hide. But my grandmother would mention some things about him. She was married to his son, Buist.

Drew Hannush (04:03.597)
Mm

Drew Hannush (04:16.229)
You

Clay Shwab (04:25.545)
And talking to her, I stayed with her every week. We were very close. And I got the feeling that once upon a time we had a hell of a lot of money. Her honeymoon, for instance, was three months at the Waldorf Astoria in Nashville, I mean, in New York. And every now and then, view as to her husband would give her $5 ,000 to get out of town.

Drew Hannush (04:25.85)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (04:44.953)
Mmm.

Clay Shwab (04:53.096)
and go to vacation so he could do whatever he wanted to do. And that was equivalent to $90 ,000 in the 1930s. There were a couple of stories that he would say that periodically, Manny's wife, Emma, would call her and say, VE is changing his will again. He wants to know if Buiss is still drinking. And of course, she would disingenuously say, not a drop.

Drew Hannush (04:53.455)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (05:00.205)
Wow.

Drew Hannush (05:21.891)
Mmm.

Clay Shwab (05:23.035)
over and over again and then I know that his dad bought him a tire business in downtown Nashville where he worked for one day and it didn't work out very well. But that's really about all I knew about it.

Drew Hannush (05:40.451)
Yeah. So what got you interested in doing the research and writing a book about it?

Clay Shwab (05:46.95)
Chuck Cowdery, about 12 years ago, my son told me that this whiskey blog had mentioned our family. And I checked it out and it was Chuck Cowdery who has been tapped by the New York Times as the Dean of American Whiskey Writers. And I listened to it and he was bemoaning the fact that whiskey distilleries throughout this country weren't celebrating and really honoring their true histories. That they were creating these promotional

Drew Hannush (06:02.628)
Mm

Clay Shwab (06:16.269)
gimmicky kind of cartoonish characters. what he pointed out was George Dickel Company as example, that they were creating this Keebler elf image for George Dickel. And he said that surely there must be a descendant of V .E. Swab out there somewhere that want to correct the record. Well, I qualified as a descendant of V .E. Swab, but didn't know squat about the record. So so I started just erratically doing doing some

research on it at that point. So that's really what got me started on it.

Drew Hannush (06:49.166)
And so

Drew Hannush (06:53.027)
Yeah. So now what is your background? mean, have you ever thought of writing books before or what, what, what industry have you been in?

Clay Shwab (07:03.46)
I've written a couple. was in the communications business with Whittle Communications, president of operations at company called Whittle Communications out of Knoxville. They own Channel One, Esquire Magazine, and a whole lot of stuff. And then I went to work for Dan Snyder, the guy that owned the Washington Redskins for Snyder Communications. But I retired from that and taught for 10 years at a small liberal arts college called Miracle College.

Drew Hannush (07:24.388)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (07:32.118)
And I've written a couple of books, just playing around really, never tried to get anything published. But this one I decided to go ahead and try to see if people would be interested beyond just our family. And it turned out they were.

Drew Hannush (07:50.137)
Well, did you feel like this was going to be more of a business book maybe than a whiskey book? Or did it feel like you were trying to tell the whiskey story because he really had both sides to him.

Clay Shwab (08:03.596)
Well, when I started the little research just on my own, after reading Chuck Cadry's listening to his podcast, the first place I went was the obituary. It turned out it was obituaries because in multiple newspapers, his obituary was the front page, multiple columns.

Drew Hannush (08:21.753)
Mm

Hehehe.

Clay Shwab (08:32.27)
And in it, they said that he was reputed to be the city's wealthiest resident and one of the wealthiest in the South. He was director and co -founder of three banks, four railroads, including the Pullman Railroad. He was a co -founder and director of Cumberland Telephone and Telegraph, which became built South. He owned one of the first car dealerships. He owned a bunch of saloons. owned the

George Dickel Company, which at the time was the largest importer in Nashville of anything. And he owned at the time the most profitable distillery in the state. So I figured, well, this guy was really well known and well beloved. He was a philanthropist as well. Still a school named Swab School in Nashville, home of the Swabese, their elementary school. But anyway, so.

Drew Hannush (09:05.061)
Mm

Drew Hannush (09:20.549)
Mm

Nice.

Clay Shwab (09:27.361)
I figured, well, gosh, this guy really had a great reputation. And then I kept digging into it. It turns out, nope. He had a very dark side to his reputation as well. He was known as a, about on one side of the fence is a, debauchery of more young men in Tennessee than any other man because of a cascade and George Diggle company. And he was known as the owner of Tennessee politics for 40 years and, constantly being

accused of bribery. And so that told me that there was a story here. And so I started researching it more in earnest.

Drew Hannush (10:04.996)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (10:12.203)
It's interesting that when I started really trying to dig into Tennessee whiskey history as a whole, I started reading books on Jack Daniel and other people that I could, whatever I could find. And there really wasn't a lot as I was reading the books on Jack Daniel, was funny because they were talking about Manny Schwab in that same vein that you're talking about that, that he was kind of underhanded and he was doing things that,

He shouldn't have been doing. And it was almost like going into the research. I wanted to vindicate him in many ways, because usually when somebody who's a competitor is making those kinds of claims against you, you, you sense they're doing it more for marketing purposes than they're, you know, or to, the case of writing a book that they're kind of doing it to make their subject look a lot better than, than the other side. you.

Clay Shwab (10:49.268)
Ha

Clay Shwab (11:08.137)
course.

Drew Hannush (11:09.231)
Did you, did you kind of feel like as you started reading that stuff that you needed to, maybe have a little bit of vindication for him from, those kinds of, claims about it.

Clay Shwab (11:21.203)
Well, that was the reason I actually finished the book. You know, I was writing it and it was taking forever. And I got to the point where I went out to the Mount Olive Cemetery where he's married with George Dickel and the family plot. And I promised him I would finish it and people needed to know about him. I mean, I read books on the history of Nashville, history of Tennessee.

history of business in Nashville, like fortunes, fiddles, and fried chicken by Bill Carey. And they mentioned everything in there. And these old millionaires from the early 1900s, most of them were his pallbearers. And I'm just scratching my head, why in the world is this guy not known? And so that's when I went and talked to Ridley Wills.

And many times Ridley is a he's written 30 books on Nashville. And he said, well, Clay, you've got to tell this story. And I went to the editor of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Francis Turnbell, explained to her what I was finding that she said this is going to fill a real gap in Tennessee history. And so that that that convinced me that there was something here that people might be interested in other than.

near the SWAB family.

Drew Hannush (12:51.715)
Yeah. Well, the first real find for me in terms of trying to learn the George Dickle history, cause going to the distillery was no help as we talked about before the record. Yeah. The, the, the story they had was very much based off of the marketing that really kicked up around the 1960s when the distillery came back. And, it's, well, and this is a, point that I always like to bring up is that, you know, they were able to do that.

Clay Shwab (13:00.677)
No.

Drew Hannush (13:20.357)
Because if you think about it, Cascade whiskey basically stopped being made in Tennessee in 1909. And if you were a drinker of Cascade in 1909, the chances of you still probably, you know, looking over your store shelf in 1965 for a bottle of, you know, your memory of that whiskey is, is pretty much faded, I would imagine.

Clay Shwab (13:44.28)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (13:50.459)
Well, sure. mean, but but we did the family. Our family did continue distilling into 1917 and moved the two sons, Hugh and and his brother, moved to Louisville and continued with the original formula distilling it at Stiesel under Pappy Van Winkle was the president. And by the way.

Drew Hannush (14:07.032)
Mm -hmm.

Drew Hannush (14:12.164)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (14:18.394)
There's a quote associated with him with Pappy from the 1960s where he said, the great cascade whiskey, it's like, has not been seen since prohibition. That's a pretty big, pretty good tap on the shoulder from a person that was pretty knowledgeable about whiskey. But like you said, when we sold it in 1937, they did not continue using the original formula, changed the name to where they did.

Drew Hannush (14:28.61)
Mmm.

Drew Hannush (14:35.318)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (14:48.398)
continued with the name Cascade for a decade. But then they changed it to George Dickel and it was really not very good quality whiskey.

Drew Hannush (14:56.613)
Yeah. Well, one of the finds that I ran into was, and I didn't talk about it in my book, but it's, that in 1934 or five, guess it was, they considered actually coming back close to Tennessee and building a distillery in Christian County, which is where MB Roland is in Western Kentucky now, right? Right near Clarksville. which was, which was fascinating to me, but then I couldn't find anything on why they.

you know, decided not to do that, but they sold it soon after. I guess at that, I was going say, I guess at that point they, they were just tired and ready to move on from it.

Clay Shwab (15:31.674)
with a... Go ahead.

Clay Shwab (15:41.914)
Well, another story my grandmother told me was that in 1937, the family met at her home, a giant home in Nashville, to discuss what to do with the business. And they were all very wealthy at the time, and they said, it's just not socially prominent to own alcohol, so let's sell it. Dumbasses.

Drew Hannush (16:00.089)
Hmm. Well, that makes sense though. mean, what's funny is going back and doing this reading and you know, it was funny how whiskey came back, alcohol came back after prohibition. but yet there was this real fight against, you know, utilizing terms like saloon or anything that would give you a sense of the old days. So it was a.

It was an odd time because there were a lot of pockets in Kentucky and Tennessee that were very anti alcohol. and so they, they would have probably heard a lot of that stuff going on while they were considering what they were going to do is their next steps. So

Clay Shwab (16:38.284)
Yep.

Clay Shwab (16:48.735)
Yeah, I mean, Daniels is even in a dry county, guess to this day. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (16:53.017)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and even when Dickel came in, coffee County was a dry County at that time. And then to fight, change that too. So really, really interesting history there. So, I think the story starts out in a very interesting way. And this is one of things you really dug into that I was not necessarily able to find very easily, which is the origins of.

Clay Shwab (16:59.967)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (17:22.307)
the Schwab family in, in the United States. And so you actually traced, Manny's father all the way back to France.

Clay Shwab (17:27.381)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (17:34.326)
Yes, to Alsatia. And he considered himself French. But George Dickel started with Abraham Schwab. Abraham came to this country when he was 22 years old in 1841. he, according to the Temple Beth -El in Knoxville, he was a devout Jew. And like most Jews, he moved around quite a bit at the time.

Drew Hannush (17:44.345)
Mm

Drew Hannush (18:02.849)
Mm

Clay Shwab (18:03.637)
He, in 1842, he was in Youngstown, Ohio, where he started Swab and Company and importing, importing champagnes, whiskies, brandies and liqueurs from France. It had to be from his, you know, associations back there. In Youngstown, he also started the the first Jewish congregation. And then he moved to Nashville where he started one of the first

Drew Hannush (18:22.372)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (18:33.205)
He was president of Mogad, first president of Mogad and David Society there, also established Swab and Company. Then in 1850, he went to Louisville, did the same thing, started a Jewish congregation, became president of it and started Swab and Company, importers of French, you know, liquors. In 53, 54, he went back to Nashville, did the same thing. And then in 57, he went to Knoxville.

Drew Hannush (18:52.719)
Mm.

Clay Shwab (19:01.592)
And if you look at the blending of Swabbing Company and the seven family members that really started George Dickel, George Dickel started off importing French whiskeys and liqueurs, cetera, with Sal Scotter, who was a family member and who had been working with Abraham since the

since day one and living with him. So the Jewish thing was interesting. It's hard to really figure the impact of that on him, on his life, but he was obviously a very devout Jew.

Drew Hannush (19:33.444)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (19:47.203)
Yeah. Well, one of the things that, it's interesting to note is the dropping of the C in their name and that, in the name Schwab and part of me wonders, you know, what the impetus for that would be because, my last name Hanish H a N N U S H was actually originally spelled H a N N U S C H and the C was dropped because it was world war one and they wanted to un -Germanize our name.

Clay Shwab (20:09.917)
Billy.

Drew Hannush (20:16.939)
And so by dropping the sea, went from Hanish to Hanish. And so you wonder if there was some kind of strategic reason that they might've dropped that sea.

Clay Shwab (20:16.956)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (20:23.037)
it.

Clay Shwab (20:27.795)
Well, it's a really, really good question because in 1848 in Nashville, Abraham spelled his name S H W A B in the city directory. From that point on, it was always S C H W A B until 1870 when he was in Youngstown. He dropped the C again. It was S H W A B until he died. And the same year Victor, Manny,

Drew Hannush (20:41.028)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (20:57.095)
dropped the sea as well. I thought originally that they were trying to disassociate from being Jewish, but that's not possible with Abraham. H is silent in French. And it was always hammered in my head growing up that our name is not pronounced Schwab, it's pronounced Swab, like a cotton swab. And I thought that my family, I mean, my immediate family had done that, but now I've...

Drew Hannush (21:07.725)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (21:19.881)
Clay Shwab (21:26.867)
positive it goes all the way back then. It was probably just him trying to make it phonetically closer to the way he pronounced it in France.

Drew Hannush (21:37.155)
Well, and it could also be that he was trying to Americanize his name in a way, because that was also sort of the feel of dropping the C from the name is this is new. We're in a new country. Let's be something different. So potentially it's that too. It's really hard to look at history sometimes and try to get yourself back into that time period. Did you find as you were going through those old newspapers that

Clay Shwab (21:41.446)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (21:51.015)
That's a good point.

Drew Hannush (22:03.712)
you had a, you were trying potentially to kind of put yourself in the shoes and think from their time period. or was that just kind of, a difficult thing to do.

Clay Shwab (22:14.991)
No, it wasn't difficult at all because the journalists of the time used shutter adjectives. mean, Hemingway didn't kill the adjective in journalism until the 1920s. And if you read the I just got captivated. I read hundreds of articles literally that mentioned Banny and 225 of them are cited in the book. But the time came to life in.

Drew Hannush (22:28.996)
Ha

Clay Shwab (22:44.161)
It became integral to the book that I wanted people to understand what it was like back then, especially during the how vicious the issue of prohibition was and how divisive that every bit as divisive as what we're going through today. And yes, there are descriptions of fires, there are descriptions of everyday events.

Drew Hannush (22:58.552)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (23:13.358)
like a horse buggy accident that Emma had. It was so descriptive and just the stories would come to life and I got really excited about the time itself. mean 1850 to 1924 is the period of time and it was a fascinating era.

Drew Hannush (23:25.496)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (23:35.043)
Yeah. You learn a lot about your ancestors definitely by going in and reading those things. And sometimes it's, I mean, I felt like when I started to write, I wanted to write while I was still in that frame of mind, because it felt like it needed to be, taken that way. But, another story that, that is really interesting to me.

Clay Shwab (23:50.263)
Yes, yes.

Drew Hannush (24:01.001)
You had followed Meyer's salt scotter. He's a very interesting guy because to me he is kind of that first partner for George Dickel. And it feels almost like Meyer kind of pushed George in that direction. Cause George was a cobbler at the time. And, but there's this gap in the infrared because of the civil war.

The business directories between 63 and 64 were not completed. so we, we see George go from being a, cobbler to all of a sudden owning a liquor store. and then Meyer coming on and then being integral to that, that store. how, what,

Were there any hints that you were finding along the way as to how that transition happened?

Clay Shwab (24:57.77)
Yes, and it's a fascinating piece of that story, I think. Myer was very close with Abraham and he would travel to France and make purchases and all and coming back. But then after Abraham's oldest son was killed in the Civil War, they began smuggling in earnest, and I mean in earnest, through the Union.

lines in Nashville. Nashville was occupied throughout the war and it became such a problem that Grant issued his order number 11 ordering all Jews out of the territory of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. They had one day to leave the territory and could only take with them what they carried. Lincoln found out about it and rescinded it.

But what they were complaining about was John Fitch was a provost judge during the occupation in Nashville and he wrote a book about it. one of the chapters was a nest of smugglers and it highlighted swab and salt scotter. Abraham had had stores in Nashville and Knoxville at the time. And according to John Fitch, they were running

Drew Hannush (26:18.049)
Mm

Clay Shwab (26:24.457)
through their union lines with false bottom wagons. They had a small fleet of them and they were making the equivalent of $55 ,000 per run to Atlanta, to Louisville and to Knoxville and multiple runs every week earning over $50 ,000 going and coming back in today's money. So they accumulated a monstrous amount of wealth.

And Meyer got arrested. Finally, they caught him, sent him to Alton Prison in Pennsylvania for an indefinite amount of time. He came back eight days later after paying a bond. Of course, he had tons of money and he laughingly stated that they tried as they might. They could not. They never found his money and Fitch Fitch estimated that his money was worth about $400 ,000. But anyway, so.

Drew Hannush (27:21.572)
Wow.

Clay Shwab (27:23.4)
So you have George Dickel 48 years old after 20 almost 30 years being a cobbler You know immediately after the war with Sal Scotter is a liquor dealer and and obviously, so I think it was also a laundry for

for the swab fortune that they had accumulated. because the ads that immediately came out looked just like the ads of Swab and Company. And it was imported French wines, liqueurs, local whiskey as well, but brandies. And the ads talked about Saul Schotter being in Europe for the summer, three months at a time.

Drew Hannush (28:03.621)
Mmm.

Clay Shwab (28:20.556)
you're making the purchases and obviously that came from Abraham's contacts.

Drew Hannush (28:25.049)
Yeah. Well, the German community in Nashville seemed like it was pretty tight because I found instances of George Dickel being friends with Adolf Nelson, who was the brother of Charles Nelson, who of course was a huge distiller in Tennessee in the 1870s and on.

Clay Shwab (28:38.053)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (28:47.565)
But what I found interesting too, was that as I was looking for, because there was a story about Myers, smuggling days where his wife had left him and you found so much information on that, that I was not able to find. I had seen that that he had married, Manny's sister, Cecilia. and then I saw that he married her again and I couldn't figure out why did he marry her twice? and you found the secret.

to the reason why that happened. Yeah.

Clay Shwab (29:18.694)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, she was the first Jewish bride in Knoxville and her brother, the Confederate soldier that was killed was the first Jewish Jew buried in Knoxville. They didn't even have a Jewish cemetery at the time. And but she was 15 and he was 31 when they married. And as you know from the book,

She was not real happy with it. And I figured figured out why. If you read his passport, I mean, I hate the fame of the guy, but he was five, three, had a Roman nose, bald forehead, black eyes and a short chin. He was also brilliant, but he was very, very close with Abraham. And and he brought her back from Pittsburgh, where she had gotten caught in a house of prostitution because she ran away from him.

Drew Hannush (30:04.033)
Mm.

Clay Shwab (30:18.478)
But a year later, he married her again. And then the same thing happened in Nashville. So then she disappeared. But Meier was a family member and very close with the rest of the family.

Drew Hannush (30:27.577)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (30:37.187)
Well, this was what was surprising because I got ahold of the, the call for divorce, basically the documents where he's, outlining the details behind what's happened with her. What's interesting about that document is I got to the back page and it was actually witnessed by Adolf Nelson. So apparently Adolf Nelson, the brother of Charles Nelson and Meyer Saltscoter, were close enough that, Adolf came in and vouched for him.

Clay Shwab (30:48.077)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (31:06.309)
and his character.

Clay Shwab (31:08.961)
I didn't realize that about Nelson. That's fascinating. But they're all German immigrants.

Drew Hannush (31:12.823)
Yeah, it's against.

Yes, absolutely shows how tight that community really was. So.

Clay Shwab (31:20.118)
Yeah. And I think that that's why they basically drug George Dickel along. Was hey, look, we can make a fortune here. Let's just do this. George went very smart about it at first. He got arrested for.

Drew Hannush (31:30.575)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (31:36.293)
Rectifying without a license. Yeah. I find it funny and ironic that George, who really was never a distiller, ends up getting in trouble for rectifying without a license. So apparently, of course we don't know what rectifying means necessarily because it has so many different connotations to it. could just be.

Clay Shwab (31:59.425)
Mm

Drew Hannush (32:00.513)
running it through charcoal filter. could be just blending it. could be running it through a, still to purify it even further. but the fact that, that George is one of these guys that, know, in the 1960s were being told was this stubborn distiller who made sure that every drop was done slowly and mellowed by moonlight. His real history is much less impressive in the distilling world.

Clay Shwab (32:22.614)
good grief. Yeah, right.

Yes, and I think it's interesting when they in the paper where it outlined the it was a federal crime of rectifying without a license. But the next in the next line, it said that US versus 73 barrels of whiskey. I hope the whiskey won that. But.

Drew Hannush (32:38.746)
Mm -hmm.

Drew Hannush (32:50.905)
Yeah, absolutely. yeah. So there's interesting ties between Manny and George in terms of their relationships. How much do we know about the Banzer family and how they, how this connection between George marrying one sister and Manny marrying the other came about?

Clay Shwab (32:53.46)
So guess he lost his whiskey as well.

Clay Shwab (33:16.608)
Well, it's important to also realize that George was much older. He was old enough to be Manny's father. And the two sisters were about 10 years apart. But the Banzers were, he was a confectioner, you know, made candy and candies. And that's about all I know about that, other than that, you know, the swab, swabs and dickles lived together for 30 years.

Drew Hannush (33:25.753)
Hmm.

Drew Hannush (33:33.412)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (33:46.312)
giant home and some property out on Dickerson Pike in Nashville. so I mean, they couldn't have been closer. know, Meyer, you know, marrying into the family as well. They all were one big family. And seven of them worked at George Dickle and he was about the only employees they had.

Drew Hannush (33:51.075)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (34:01.188)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (34:06.981)
Well, Manny was in a good spot because he was, he was the younger, younger man. And I guess, he was doing other things around the, the, business rather than, and this is the wholesaling business. while Meyer and, and George were kind of, I guess, running things from a management standpoint, he spent a lot of time before he actually kind of rose up through there. So what?

What was he specifically doing for the company?

Clay Shwab (34:38.238)
where he was 18 years old in 1867 and he was the bookkeeper for George Dickel. He was obviously brilliant with money and he was in 73, he was in a city directory as salesman, but sometime between 73 and 80, he became a partner. know, he's, I don't know why the others didn't do it, but he started buying up real estate. He,

Drew Hannush (34:47.951)
Mm

Clay Shwab (35:06.973)
And, know, in 80 80 ended up buying two thirds of the Cascade Hollow Distillery and adding through adding 300 more acres to it. So he was just a entrepreneur for sure, but he was a marketing genius. And that that I just saw that over and over again, all the way into his death.

Drew Hannush (35:13.005)
Mm -hmm

Drew Hannush (35:31.961)
Yeah, it's interesting to note that he was buying up a saloon that didn't have a great reputation yet. It was really, I think important for them to have a saloon that carried their whiskey to be able to, you know, sell in town as well as sell. mean, cause they had grand ambitions from what I had read. They wanted to basically be the supplier to the West.

Clay Shwab (35:59.344)
Yes, it did. And George Diggle Company became the largest importer of anything in Nashville. They had to create a customed house just because of them and where there hadn't been a custom house in Nashville before. yes, they obviously had, or he did at least, had very large ambitions and a huge vision for the company.

Drew Hannush (36:30.745)
Well, the, did you find, cause I stumbled into this somewhere and I don't remember where I saw it, but it seemed like there was a point at the very beginning when he bought the climax saloon that he kind of was disavowing that he had anything to do with the actual saloon and that they were, just owners of the building. Did you see that?

Clay Shwab (36:52.044)
No, he intentionally wanted to disassociate because of the constant scrutiny of him bribing the chief of police, senators, congressmen, et cetera. And he didn't want to be responsible for the alcohol sales because they were constantly trying to

Drew Hannush (37:18.103)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (37:21.238)
raid the places. And so, you know, I think that's that was primarily why he disassociated from the management of it. But that was that was a hell of a saloon.

Drew Hannush (37:33.187)
Yeah. Well, there was a time when they actually, he, he went down to Florida. think it was, or somewhere that he was trying to escape, or they accused him of trying to escape, having to testify about. Yeah.

Clay Shwab (37:49.306)
That was repeatedly that repeatedly happened. It happened in the 1890s and it happened again in 1911. That's when it was a huge issue. Because he had somehow convinced six Republicans to vote a bill that would have repealed the repeal of alcohol would have made it legal again. And

Drew Hannush (37:54.455)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (38:01.231)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (38:13.54)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (38:16.825)
34 members of the legislature, the Republicans moved to Decatur, Alabama for the summer to deny a quorum so they couldn't vote on the bill. And they were complaining that they did an investigation, obviously, but they couldn't investigate Manny, who was the one that was doing it because he was in Florida fishing. And so he would go fishing every time he got too hot.

Drew Hannush (38:26.798)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (38:39.845)
Hahaha

Drew Hannush (38:45.261)
Yeah. Well, that's, it's good to have money and be able to, to pull something like that off. Did you find yourself getting into, cause you tell that story of the, legislators going to Alabama and I found a lot, in the drive up to prohibition in Tennessee that, or just after that, that there was a lot of that going on that they would cross over into Kentucky to avoid a quorum.

it's just the politics of that day were crazy.

Clay Shwab (39:16.736)
yeah, well, I mean, to the point where, you know, a Senator got shot dead on the street in Union Avenue and it was over the issue. I mean, they hated each other because of anti -prohibition sentiment. yeah, was, Nashville was, Tennessee was like the Wild West there from the gay nineties through the tumultuous years leading up to prohibition.

Drew Hannush (39:21.957)
Ha ha ha.

Drew Hannush (39:39.865)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (39:44.228)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (39:45.311)
the area known as men's quarter was peppered with saloons and dance halls and sporting houses. I mean, part of it was called Hell's half acre. Part of it was called Black Bottom. And, you know, it was a dangerous place to be. the politics ran it basically. was, you know, which side of the fence you were on really

Drew Hannush (40:01.945)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (40:14.75)
was a very divisive, very divisive issue.

Drew Hannush (40:18.851)
Yeah, this was probably something that helped you in talking with Ridley Wills about the history of Nashville because I didn't realize and had not found in my research about the fact that they had legalized prostitution in the city of Nashville.

Clay Shwab (40:35.845)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it had a profound impact of what Nashville was like after the war. My grandmother would say that everybody knew what was going on down there, that all the husbands were there. So the wives never got near there because they know who they'd see. And I think that part of that had to be with the fact that prostitution had been legal 20 years before.

Drew Hannush (40:45.294)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (40:56.847)
You

Clay Shwab (41:04.213)
And it was a very successful experiment. the venereal disease percentage of the Union soldiers was 70 % before legalization and 10 % afterwards. So it worked. But I think that that sort of relaxed the attitude towards it.

Drew Hannush (41:04.323)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (41:19.779)
Wow. Yeah.

Drew Hannush (41:29.591)
About what time did they stop with that? Did they shut it down?

Clay Shwab (41:33.173)
as soon as the Union soldiers left, right at the end of the war. was the, I forgot the general's name who was in charge of it, but he kept having up to 1200 prostitutes rounded up and sent them on a boat up to Louisville. Two weeks later, they were all back and that kept happening. So finally he just threw up his hands and said, well, this is to make it legal and have

Drew Hannush (41:36.447)
Clay Shwab (42:03.093)
doctors look at these women every single week and they have to have a license hanging up. And it worked really well, but when the war ended, it ended.

Drew Hannush (42:09.252)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (42:14.521)
Well, the other thing that's fascinating about that time is that back then market street, which is now second Avenue was basically just a row of wholesalers that were all selling whiskey. Did you, did you walk down there and kind of try to get a feel and a sense of, of, what that street would have been like back at that time?

Clay Shwab (42:38.034)
It's several times so I've spent some time in front of and behind the climax Which is a hotel now and the silver dollar saloon is intact and in pictures of it are Fascinating is in the 10 cent lunch in a 25 cent room But anyway, yeah what that whole area was like is fascinating

Drew Hannush (42:47.77)
Mm

Clay Shwab (43:07.108)
in the dance halls, sporting houses, saloons all over the thing. Very interesting.

Drew Hannush (43:15.257)
Well, and the thing that they had to deal with back then and George Dickel had to deal with twice was a fire. And that was another thing that kind of showed, you know, what that area was like, but also, you know, how much inventory they were carrying there at the Dickel warehouse.

Clay Shwab (43:36.53)
Well, the Schwab family and the Dickel family were hammered by three fires. There was one in 1860, right next to Swabbing Company that was in the Nashville papers. There was a grocery store immediately next door to Swabbing Company. And the paper said that the grocery at the time was occupied by three drunken Irishmen, but how the fire originated is not known.

Drew Hannush (43:49.551)
Mm -hmm.

Drew Hannush (44:05.933)
Mwahahahaha

Clay Shwab (44:07.185)
Come on. But he said the Swabin Company was the business most in imminent peril, but the only real loss was a guy named Mr. Lackey had a valuable watch and $20 taken from his pocket. But in 1874, there was a serious fire in Nashville. The roof and windows were kind of blown out of the George Dickel building.

Drew Hannush (44:16.367)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (44:23.376)
wow.

Clay Shwab (44:36.912)
and a stock of whiskey, champagne and imported French liqueurs were mostly damaged by the water where they were trying to put the fire out. But I thought it was interesting that about there were 11 insurance companies that George Dickel had for for their product. At the end of the article on that fire, he said it appears Mr. Sal Scott was at the fire, not Mr. Dickel.

Drew Hannush (44:44.291)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (44:57.156)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (45:05.936)
But in 1881, there was a massive fire. 34 buildings in Nashville were wiped out in four hours. And they said it was one of the city's finest blocks. Over 1 ,350 ,000 square feet of building was destroyed. Three wholesale liquor houses burnt to the ground. And that was the only time since 1869 to 1917.

Drew Hannush (45:25.562)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (45:36.122)
that the address won the same address in Nashville on Second Avenue. It took a year for him to rebuild.

Drew Hannush (45:41.071)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (45:44.581)
That's crazy. description of the liquor warehouse that was right near the Maxwell House Hotel was pretty descriptive in itself talking about, sounded like cannon fire going on with the barrels exploding.

Clay Shwab (45:59.99)
Yes, the horses running wildly through the streets and women screaming out the windows and stuff. mean, it was really fun reading the newspapers. The descriptions of all that were fascinating.

Drew Hannush (46:16.518)
You kind of wish that somebody would make a movie out of, you know, some of these, these old times and kind of show some of this stuff. What a scene that would have been.

Clay Shwab (46:25.333)
Yes, I feel like this book lends itself to that. The characters are pretty intense.

Drew Hannush (46:32.472)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (46:36.101)
Yeah, absolutely. So were you, were you as interested as I was in trying to figure out what that $2 ,000 lawsuit was against Jack Daniel?

Clay Shwab (46:45.772)
haha

Yeah, and talking with Kate Gaston, who I mean, she was a brilliant researcher. But I mean, the rumor was that Jack Daniels was going around in the different saloons trying to sell his cheaper version of whiskey to the clientele within the establishment. And I'm guessing it could have been that it was George Dickel Company against Jack Daniel, the man. And

Drew Hannush (47:16.206)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (47:18.092)
You just don't know. mean, you know, it was dismissed in December. But it's just it's fun to think about it. And that would be that would be an interesting scene in a movie as well.

Drew Hannush (47:23.3)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (47:27.833)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (47:32.581)
Yeah, I kind of got the sense maybe in a way that, know, Jack Daniel was probably, that they were, cause they talked about bringing Lincoln County whiskey in and that's so generic because there were so many different distillers in Lincoln County that that could have really been anybody. But you sense that at some point George Dickel was selling Jack Daniel's whiskey.

Clay Shwab (47:57.803)
Well, I don't know. I don't know. Once they had Cascade, they shifted from the Swabin Company formula. And I think they really focused on selling Cascade. mean, going to DRC, they wanted to launch it internationally, and they did very successfully. And I think that's where the focus was once Manny owned it 100%.

Drew Hannush (48:09.124)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (48:12.504)
Right.

Drew Hannush (48:19.727)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (48:27.268)
Right.

Clay Shwab (48:27.467)
I don't know, but if you look at the ads that were in the paper after about 1890, the only thing they talked about was Cascade Whiskey.

Drew Hannush (48:41.187)
Yeah. I love those advertisements too, because they really went all in on talking about that. is authentic sour mash whiskey. They, they wanted you to know that the head of the revenue department was actually even confirming that this is real sour mash whiskey.

Clay Shwab (48:59.72)
Well, distinction between Salmash and Sweetmash was enormous at the time. Let me, can I read you a couple of sentences about that? The national banner since, because Cascade was getting this huge reputation, they sent a journalist down there to look at how the number one whiskey in Tennessee was being made. And it said that,

Drew Hannush (49:05.369)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (49:09.955)
Sure, sure.

Clay Shwab (49:29.639)
Cascades competition was a flood of common and pure and poisonous liquors and rectified highway wines. And it was an incontestable fact that many of the odors and flavors of bourbon, Scotch, Irish, and other whiskies were due to the presence of fusible and other alcohol poisons. And then it goes on to say, I guess you could say the journalist was biased.

Drew Hannush (49:51.502)
Mm -hmm.

Drew Hannush (49:58.213)
Hehehe.

Clay Shwab (49:59.609)
It says that it's incontrovertibly less obnoxious in its effects than bourbon, sour mash is, rye or any other known whiskey. The more of it can be drunk than any other kind. The topper who confines himself to it will live longer than he who drinks bourbon as it is not an obtrusive flavor like other whiskeys, which cannot be disguised. And she was talking about the writer.

Drew Hannush (50:07.62)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (50:27.144)
sour mash and at the time you could get two and a half gallons of whiskey of sour mash from a bushel of corn, but you could get five gallons of whiskey sweet mash out of a bushel of corn. So, you know, the reputation was that different between, and as you said, the advertisements

Drew Hannush (50:49.156)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (50:55.907)
we're trying to declare that we are only sour mash and get the government to verify that.

Drew Hannush (51:05.419)
And what I found interesting in my own research is that of course, that was a very interesting article because I was reading through it and I was reading about this, talk about sweet mash and how it wasn't, how it was inferior. And we have modern definitions of what sweet mash and sour mash are, but they're not the same definition that they went by back then. And so I had to.

You know, ask and show this to distillers and say, you know, here's the process versus cause they outline the entire process, in that article, which is fascinating. But if you'd asked your, Jack Daniel, the same question, he would have told you the exact same thing that those guys up in Kentucky and those people in Robertson County, they're all making sweet mash whiskey. make the true deal here, which, I think the key to sour mash whiskey in the old days was the fact that they.

naturally fermented. did not add yeast like they do today. And of course, if you get a sour mash whiskey today, they add yeast. So in reality, what they're making now is, what used to be called sweet mash whiskey. And it's just interesting to watch these guys all snipe at each other and talk about, but that, and to have a newspaper actually, kind of defending one side versus the defending the other because

Clay Shwab (52:18.285)
Yeah, well it is.

Drew Hannush (52:28.229)
Robertson County was right around the corner and believe it or not in 1896 or seven, I found an article on Charles Nelson's distillery and he was using the sour mash process up there. He was doing natural fermentations and everything, everything that they were saying that they didn't do, you know, that they were, they were being charged with. There were a handful, that were doing it that way.

Clay Shwab (52:44.676)
Alright.

Drew Hannush (52:57.229)
In fact, Old Crow is probably one of the reasons why that became a successful whiskey was because he also used to do natural fermentation. So there was a lot of ties between how Cascade was doing it, how Nelson was doing it and how Old Crow were doing it. And all of them had great reputations.

Clay Shwab (53:17.453)
Yeah, a couple of things I read credited McLean Davis with coming up with the process. But when I showed it to Nicole Austin, who is the distiller and general manager of George Dickel today, and she read the book, but she read that portion and she says, I don't know how in the world they do this. And she's a chemist. So and my thought was, well, you ought to try.

Drew Hannush (53:31.332)
Mm

Drew Hannush (53:42.052)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (53:47.653)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm with you there. Yeah. Cause I mean, well, and this was what, was interesting for me was I had to kind of figure out what I found was in the night or in the 18 seventies, the whole industry basically shut down in Tennessee for two years because they had outlawed making sour mash whiskey because it required you to have open tubs.

And the government didn't want you touching or having access to any liquid at any point in the process. so they got into, they got into this huge fight and, Lincoln County distillers actually went up to, went up to Washington to argue this point. And there were Kentucky distillers that went up to argue this point as well. Sour mash whiskey almost disappeared because.

Clay Shwab (54:21.442)
Really?

Drew Hannush (54:40.677)
the government was basically legislating it, out because they didn't want this open fermentation going on and they didn't want you. These were small distillers. So they usually would take one pot still distill, put it into a container, then distill it again in the same still. And they didn't have the money to buy two stills so that they could run a continuous operation. And so, and so that was part of the reason behind it. So yeah, it's funny to find these little.

Clay Shwab (55:04.394)
interesting.

Drew Hannush (55:10.563)
tidbits that you kind of have to jump beyond. But I have talked to distillers in Tennessee and I have said, I would love to see if this was something that anybody could pull off, but you're talking about, you know, in corporate distilleries, they're not going to do that because they, the accountants would have a fit if they started cutting, cutting their yields down and getting less whiskey out of a bushel of grain. So,

Clay Shwab (55:29.801)
What?

Clay Shwab (55:33.439)
Yes.

Drew Hannush (55:37.155)
So definitely thumbs up to, Macklin Davis for what he, what he did back there and talk about him. To me, it's so sad actually that a man who really should be a name that's revered like a James C Crow or, even a, you know, a Jack Daniel or whoever you want to, to mention from that time period that is famous. That, somehow Macklin Davis just disappeared from.

from our history.

Clay Shwab (56:09.02)
I think it's a criminal that that's the case. You know, he's known as Key, Key Davis, and his son married one of Manny's daughters. So they're very close to the family. But he was very innovative. I mean, he insisted that the maple charcoal was only made in the open air, that no water would ever touch the

Drew Hannush (56:15.535)
Mm

Clay Shwab (56:37.055)
charcoal, couldn't extinguish the flames with that. But mainly that the mash was cooled only by moonlight at night. you know, so that's where the phrase mellow is moonlight came from, which was used on every bottle of Cascade whiskey from that point until they stopped in 1917. But I think I think I think he was a genius. He bought a third of the

Drew Hannush (56:51.887)
Mm -hmm.

Drew Hannush (57:01.988)
Yeah and

Clay Shwab (57:07.102)
of the distillery in 1883 and the whiskey almost immediately became known as the famous Cascade.

Drew Hannush (57:15.491)
Yeah. Yeah. And then, mean, throughout that time, I found plenty of articles that were talking about the fact that cascade really was a revered whiskey at that, at that time. I mean, you can see all the advertisements you want to, but when people are talking about it as a whiskey, that's at a different level than everything else around it. that says a lot.

Clay Shwab (57:37.576)
Well, yeah, I mean, when the distillery finally burned, you know, while they were burying Manny, newspapers throughout Canada, Los Angeles, throughout the whole country were talking about the famous Cascade Whiskey. And one of the articles said that it actually did achieve what the slogan said. It was mellow as moonlight. And I can attest to that because I've tasted it.

Drew Hannush (58:03.309)
Yeah. So talk about this because this is, I can read a book, but I can't taste the whiskey through a book, unfortunately. But if you were to describe, well, first of all, tell me how you, you got your hands on this particular bottle of cascade, whiskey, and then, kind of your experience of tasting it.

Clay Shwab (58:10.076)
You

Clay Shwab (58:24.541)
Well, it was a cousin of mine. family had George Schwab was one of the two brothers that went to Kentucky to oversee the distilling. But the family had hoarded away from 1912 a case of extra special. That's what they called it, Cascade Whiskey, and that they would bring out every time there was a

christening or a marriage in the family, something like that. And so we decided to have a tasting. And my sister was with me and my son. And my sister, who claims that she only will drink Miller Lite because everything else makes her misbehave, said that, I mean, she took a little sip of it and her eyes just got huge. She said, I could drink this all day. And

Drew Hannush (59:10.191)
Ha

Clay Shwab (59:20.075)
I had exactly the same reaction. It was very, almost none of the bite that you normally get. And I'm no connoisseur, so I don't even know the right terminology. But flavor after flavor, a promenade of flavors came through. Not even a blend, it was just amazing, the taste. so, you know, of course I'm biased, but I thought it was damn good.

Drew Hannush (59:32.58)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (59:46.392)
Pappy Van Winkle thought it was good too, so that's enough for me.

Drew Hannush (59:50.595)
Yeah. there you go. Yeah. No, it's a, there's something about drinking those, those old whiskeys. And I guess the, the hard part about it is, that, you know, it's sat in that bottle for a long time. It's probably just a little bit of evaporation has gone on. It's not exactly like it was, but you still get kind of the character of, of what was there and the skill of the, the distiller and in tasting that,

Clay Shwab (01:00:08.022)
Mm

Drew Hannush (01:00:18.251)
How would you compare it to today's George Dickel?

Clay Shwab (01:00:23.45)
It was mellow as moonlight. was, was more, I mean, some of the stuff that Nick Hull's making now is just phenomenal. Expensive, but phenomenal. But it all had, all of it has more bite than what I had. And the flavors, the flavors just were more distinct. I don't know how to describe it any other way.

Drew Hannush (01:00:26.884)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Drew Hannush (01:00:45.411)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (01:00:52.718)
you'd get a certain type of flavor from the more expensive dickle stuff right now, cascade stuff. Thank goodness they've gone back to that name. I'd buy it before I'd buy anything else I've tasted.

Drew Hannush (01:01:04.762)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:01:12.389)
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I've had some of those older whiskies. it was just actually talking about how I had had a bottle of old Taylor that was distilled in 1917. And to me it tasted young, but it was a four year. Whiskey that, they, they had only aged it for four years, probably because prohibition was coming in. So they needed to sell off whatever supplies that they had coming. it's an interesting point.

In the history of George Dickel, or not of George Dickel, but of Cascade distillery and what happened with it after Tennessee went into prohibition in 1909. And you talk a little bit about it. There seemed to be this magnet to Hopkinsville, Kentucky for distillers. How long was he, how long did they actually keep that?

warehouse open in Kentucky.

Clay Shwab (01:02:10.808)
I think only for about two years. And I think it probably had to do with just the geography of it, you know, because they moved it from there to Louisville. But I really don't know why Hopkinsville, other than the fact that it's proximity to Nashville.

Drew Hannush (01:02:22.659)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:02:30.659)
Yeah. Well, and the other thing they had was mail order. So you could mail order whiskey back into Tennessee and that was legal. So yeah, that was a, that was a very interesting strategy because, Jack Daniel ended up in Hopkinsville as well. They both had, warehouses there that they were selling whiskey back into the state of Tennessee, at that time. So,

Clay Shwab (01:02:37.174)
Yes, yes.

Clay Shwab (01:02:54.75)
Probably a good road in a short distance.

Drew Hannush (01:02:57.377)
Yeah. Yes. So, so basically where did Manny go after that? Did he stay, involved in the business until in, in the distillery until it's, well, not the distillery, but in the, property, or let me get this right. the George Dickel, wholesaling company is that, did he stay basically involved in that all the way?

while it was in Kentucky.

Clay Shwab (01:03:29.011)
No, actually, after the federal seizure of the plant, he sort of just focused on all the other businesses he was involved with, and he turned it over to his son, George, and his son, Hugh. And so they were more managing the George Dickel part of it, the distilling part of it, at least. Manny was probably involved in the accounting of the firm. But

Drew Hannush (01:03:42.691)
Okay.

Drew Hannush (01:03:57.891)
Yeah.

Clay Shwab (01:03:58.599)
But his interests were more in the banking railroads and electric telephone company and that stuff at that point.

Drew Hannush (01:04:10.757)
Yeah. Well, and one of the things I couldn't really figure out, and you kind of came across and, and got an answer to this. And this is probably mostly through your conversations with the family and maybe Kate Baker Gaston, but, the relationship with Augusta Dickel and the fact that, George died in 1894. And when that happened, he had basically told her to sell the business. And that is kind of where.

the story ends, some people have, this was what I heard when I went to the George Dickle distillery way back when that she ran the distillery after that. but of course she had no part in that distillery. she, she was not an owner of the distillery ever cause George was never an owner of the distillery. So, so what was the relationship between Manny and Augusta?

Clay Shwab (01:04:56.189)
Right.

Clay Shwab (01:05:00.903)
Well, you know, obviously they were brother -in -law, sister -in -law, but she in her will, well, when George died in writing, he said that she needed to sell the business, her portion of the business. And he told the rest of her family that that's what he wanted. He wanted her to go ahead and sell it and have that money and, you know, live comfortably.

But Manny convinced her not to do that and said that we're going places and you need to come along with us. And we called her Auntie. My family called her Auntie at the time and she lived with the family and she was a great cook. But that was about it. I mean, if you read her will, the very first sentence says that I am interested in the George Dickel Company, but I have never had anything to do with its management. I've left that to my brother -in -law.

Drew Hannush (01:05:30.404)
Mm -hmm.

Clay Shwab (01:06:00.37)
VE swab. And so she never had a thing to do with that. She was beloved, but Manny bought real estate in her name and his wife's name, Emma, and in his own name, obviously, but I think a lot of that had to do with taxes. he managed her estate to the point when she died, it was worth $27 million.

Drew Hannush (01:06:18.426)
Yeah.

Drew Hannush (01:06:28.879)
Yeah, it's good to have somebody watching over you that has good business sense.

Clay Shwab (01:06:32.537)
Yeah, and it's a she was she was wise not to follow Georgia's dictation.

Drew Hannush (01:06:39.749)
Absolutely. So what do you think the takeaway from from all your research is in terms of the man, Manny Schwab and who he was?

Clay Shwab (01:06:51.985)
Well, I think that first and foremost, he was a visionary. And I mean, the fact that almost everything that knew that came out, I mean, he had one of the first car dealerships, the telephone company was able to convince Nashville to give a monopoly to the telephone company by telling them that they would take down the telephone poles and run the cables underground. so he was able to, was thing that.

Drew Hannush (01:07:10.766)
Hmm.

Clay Shwab (01:07:19.939)
after thing after thing like that, that I came across that where he was doing something innovative. And but the impact he had on Tennessee politics is astounding. you. Jonathan Swift wrote that you can tell when a genius occurs on the earth because there's a Confederacy of Dunces united against them and.

Drew Hannush (01:07:32.516)
Mm.

Drew Hannush (01:07:46.776)
You

Clay Shwab (01:07:48.279)
And I think that when you read the newspaper accounts of his adversaries coming after him, the things that they had to say about him makes you think that he really did have a profound impact and he needs to be part of the history books of Tennessee.

Drew Hannush (01:08:05.837)
Yeah, that's absolutely brilliant. I love that. So where can people find a copy of your book and what is the title of the book?

Clay Shwab (01:08:15.823)
The title of the book is Manny Swab and the George Dippel Company Whiskey Power and Politics to a Nashville's Gilded Age. And you can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble anywhere, but I prefer you get it directly from me. See Swab at mellowismoonlight .com or just go to mellowismoonlight .com. And remember there's not a C in my last name. But I sell it for about $10.

Drew Hannush (01:08:37.445)
Very good. S -H -W -A -B.

Clay Shwab (01:08:43.311)
$8 cheaper than the rest of the guys and you'll get a signed copy. Buy it from me.

Drew Hannush (01:08:47.629)
very nice. Good to know. Good to know. Well, Clay, it's been fantastic talking to you and learning a bit more. And it's such a fascinating story. And it's one that I'm glad is finally seeing the light and that people understand what was going on behind the name George Dickel and, and that distillery and, that relationship between Manny and, not only the Dickel company, but also

Cascade and the city of Nashville. It's just fascinating all around.

Clay Shwab (01:09:19.639)
Well, thank you for your time. And I would like to say that the distillery has been great about this. They've opened their archives to me and they're selling the book and they're changing their tours to be more reflective of the reality and the truth.

Drew Hannush (01:09:32.344)
Nice.

Drew Hannush (01:09:36.473)
That is fantastic. Well, thank you for your research and putting this all together.

Clay Shwab (01:09:41.805)
Well, thank you for your time.

Thanks again to Clay for being on the show, make sure to grab a copy of his book at mellowasmoonlight.com. And if you’ve missed Whiskey Lore: The Interviews, know that I’ve been doing quite a bit of interviewing over on the Whiskey Lore Stories podcast. 

I’ve been deep diving into the modern craft distillery movement and interviewing distilleries in England, Scotland, Ireland, and all over the United States. I just finished up interviews in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Indiana on my Great Lakes Tour - and not only are the interviews on the Whiskey Lore Stories podcast, they are also audio presentations that can be found on the brand new Whiskey Lore distillery travel guide at whiskey-lore.com. 

If you love traveling to distilleries, I urge you to check out the site. I’ve got nearly 600 distilleries listed with maps and tools that will help you put together your ultimate personalized distillery trail. All you’ve got to do is sign up for a free membership and then create a wish list you can come back to when you’re ready to hit the road.

That’s at whiskey-lore.com/travelguide -And that is the same site you can go to for show notes and transcripts from this show, head to whiskey-lore.com/interviews.

I'm your host Drew Hannush, thanks for listening and until next time, cheers

Whiskey Lore is a production of Travel Fuels Life LLC.