Editing Old Crow (section)

==History==
[[James C. Crow]], a [[Scottish people|Scottish]] immigrant, started [[distilling]] what would become Old Crow in [[Frankfort, Kentucky]], in the 1830s. Reportedly a very skilled distiller, he made whiskey for various employers, which was sold as "Crow" or, as it aged, "Old Crow" – and the brand acquired its reputation from the latter.<ref name="trade">{{cite book
  | title = The Trade-mark Reporter, Vol. 6
  | publisher = United States Trademark Association
  | year = 1917
  | pages = 10–27
  }}</ref> Crow died in 1856. [[W.A. Gaines and Company]] acquired the name and continued to distill whiskey according to his methods, hiring Crow's assistant William F. Mitchell to be the chief distiller.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Carson |first=Gerald |title=The social history of bourbon : an unhurried account of our star-spangled American drink. |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=1963 |pages=83}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cowdery |first=Charles K. |date=January 1995 |title=How To Make Bourbon My Way, by Dr. James C. Crow. |journal=The Bourbon Country Reader |volume=2 |issue=2}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Middleton |first=Chris |date=2020-12-10 |title=The James Crow Chronicles: Part 8 (Old Crow Distillery) |url=https://thewhiskeywash.com/whiskey-styles/bourbon/the-james-crow-chronicles-part-8-old-crow-distillery/ |access-date=2023-01-11 |website=The Whiskey Wash |language=en-US}}</ref> The substantial remaining stock of original Old Crow<ref name="trade"/> acquired near-legendary status.  After the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] the Old Crow logo was changed from a picture of James Crow to the current [[crow]] perched atop grains of [[barley]]. In 1875, offering drinks from the last available cask reportedly secured the election of [[Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn]] of Kentucky to his first Congressional term.<ref name="alvey"/>  A dispute over ownership of the name "Old Crow" was decided in 1915 in favor of the Gaines company.<ref name="trade"/>

Although the whiskey had been at one time the top selling bourbon in the United States, it underwent a swift decline in the second half of the twentieth century. A production error in the amount of "setback" (the portion of spent mash added to a new batch in the [[sour mash]] process) negatively impacted the taste of the whiskey, and the distiller's inability or unwillingness to correct it led to many customers switching to other brands. Parent company National Distillers was sold to [[Jim Beam]] in 1987. The Old Crow recipe and distillery were abandoned and the product became a three-year-old bourbon based on the Jim Beam [[mashbill]].<ref name = CowderyStraight>{{cite book | title = Bourbon, Straight: The Uncut and Unfiltered Story of American Whiskey  | author= Charles K. Cowdery  |publisher = Made and Bottled in Kentucky |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_BhGAAAACAAJ&q=Cowdery,+Charles+K.,+Bourbon,+Straight:+The+Uncut+and+Unfiltered+Story+of+American+Whiskey | year = 2004  | page =  25 | isbn = 978-0975870303 | access-date = 15 October 2012 }}</ref> In 2013 Glenns Creek Distillery started operations in part of the former Old Crow Distillery.<ref>{{cite web |title= OUR STORY |website=Glenns Creek Distilling |url= http://glennscreekdistillery.com/ |access-date= 2019-06-01 }}</ref>