Reflections of Isaac Wolfe Bernheim

In 1867, a Jewish immigrant by the name of Isaac Wolfe Bernheim arrived to America from Germany. He rode in steerage during his trip across the Atlantic and survived on potatoes-a humble beginning to the bootstrapping success story he would tell decades later, after building one of the biggest whiskey brands in the world. Despite his achievements within the whiskey industry, Bernheim was always ambivalent about the liquor business, a trade he had fallen into in 1868 after two distillers from Paducah, Kentucky, enlisted him for his bookkeeping abilities. After earning enough money to bring his brother Bernard over from Europe, the two began their own distillery in 1872. The new operation needed its own brand, which presented a dilemma: What should Bernheim call it? His decision would not only reveal how Americans filter notions of history and national myth, but also how the rich Jewish heritage of bourbon, the most iconic of American whiskies, would be lost from the drink's traditional narrative. Isaac Wolfe Bernheim understood the enduring value of connecting people with nature. It was vision that led him to purchase over 12,000 acres of eroded and logged-out land in Bullitt and Nelson Counties in Kentucky in 1929. He established the I.W. Bernheim Foundation in 1929 as a means of protecting and managing this living legacy. He understood that land, if properly cared for, had the inherent capacity to recover. His gift of land would become a place where all people could find peace, understanding and common interest in nature, regardless of race, creed or economic status.