![]() The Lairds would relinquish 90% of the company for over 20 years before wrestling back full ownership in 1993. Maintaining a hold on the family business proved too much in the 1970’s as New Jersey’s apple orchards were nearing extinction and big players were entering the spirits markets. Eventually, Americans began losing their taste for Jersey Lightning as California wine, imported vodka, and mixed drinks came to dominate the spirits market. But they soon learned, killing the competition also narrowed the market for applejack. ![]() Refusing to be just another applejack brand, the family would over time purchase nearly 150 applejack labels and several distilleries. Not to be outsmarted, Dunn’s grandfather John Evans Laird invented an unrefillable bottle with a fixed metal one-way spout… love the innovation! ![]() This lead to another problem as counterfeiters began refilling Laird bottles with rotgut. The Jack Rose cocktail, made with Laird’s Applejack, lemon juice, and grenadine, would captivate fashionable drinkers at the time, but soon the Lairds would be forced to transition to nonalcoholic apple drinks and food preservatives for the Army in order to keep the business afloat.ĭuring Prohibition, all of Jersey was a hotbed of applejack bootlegging, and it was believed that much of the nonalcoholic cider was bought by bootleggers who’d ferment and distill it into hooch. Opportunities and challenges emerged as America went through the Roaring Twenties and eventually into prohibition. Robert Laird would eventually found Laird and Company in 1780, and in the process receive License No. There are even entries that appear in Washington’s diary in the 1760s referring to the production of “cyder spirits.” As a Revolutionary soldier serving under George Washington, Robert Laird and his family provided the troops with Applejack. Interestingly, prior to 1760, George Washington wrote to the Laird family requesting their Applejack recipe. Now, consumers can expect a smooth blend of apple brandy in a base of clear neutral spirits of at least 80 proof, coming across as a strong, faintly apple-flavored liquor reminiscent of bourbon or golden rum. Modern-day Laird’s Applejack is a far cry from what colonists sometimes called hedgehog quills. Apples were the most abundant natural resource in the area, so Alexander made use of what he had to produce the now world-famous Applejack for his own pleasure, as well as his friends. The Laird family began distilling in America in 1698 after Alexander Laird emigrated from County Fife, Scotland, where he had already perfected his distilling technique. Laird & Company is synonymous with apple spirits, producing the vast majority of all Applejack and American Apple Brandy on the market.
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