Boozy Book Review: Manny Shwab And The George Dickel Company
Back in 2020, I was invited by a former university professor of mine to give a talk at his congregation’s virtual Havdalah service about the Jewish influence in American Whiskey and Kosher cocktails. In Louisville, that’s a pretty easy task because we have the history of people like Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, the Shapira brothers, Henry Kraver and many more. But there was a Rabbi from a Tennessee congregation in attendance who asked me to give the same talk to his congregation but to also include Jewish people in the distilling industry from Tennessee and Kosher whiskey. After posting on Facebook asking colleagues for any information, Chuck Cowdery told me about Manny Schwab, George Dickel’s business partner.
At the time, I could not find much information about him, so he was just a footnote in the talk. So when I learned that his great-grandson, Clay Shwab, had written a biography about him, I reached out to get a copy for review. Manny Shwab and The George Dickel Company: Whisky, Power, and Politics During Nashville’s Gilded Age soon arrived in my mailbox.
This book is more about the life and times of Victor Emmanuel “Manny” Shwab and his family and business associates than it is about the whisky, though there’s a lot of historical context regarding the brand’s creation and struggles. Prohibition was the law of the land in the Confederacy, and several of the states in the South, including Tennessee, were constantly on the verge of becoming totally dry, which Tennessee did around the turn of the century. Running a Tennessee distillery was a continual challenge, and Manny Shwab did everything from allegedly bribing elected officials to allegedly dodging taxes to keep the business going.
In this book there are prostitutes, murderers, and lots of people with syphilis. Each page is another snapshot of the historical circumstances surrounding the George Dickel brand. There’s even a mention of someone in there who is probably one of my ancestors, John Fitch, though not the same one who invented the steamboat and is buried in Bardstown — another mystery for me to unravel in my free time. There’s civil asset forfeiture, in which the United States government charged barrels of whisky with a crime, and even the seizure of the entire Cascade Hollow Distillery by the Federal Government at one point. One of Manny’s daughters becomes a famous concert pianist. There’s a lot going on with the Shwab family.
Some interesting historical tidbits that warrant additional research include the unfinished square boxes that the Dickel brand used to take its whisky to market as well as the notion that there was once a certification for the sour mash process. Fortunately, this book has excellent footnotes and a thorough index, so finding the source of that information should be simple enough.
Manny’s father, Abraham, came to the United States and became a wine and spirits importer, and at one time even imported the newest European craze, sparkling water. It’s easy to see where Manny would get the idea to first become a nondistillery producer and then to actually manufacture spirits in Tennessee. He partnered with George Dickel, a German immigrant and shoemaker, to create the Cascade Distillery. Shwab seemed to be a master at marketing, coining the phrase “mellowed by moonlight” to depict the fact that the mash was cooled at night.
As the tides turned toward Prohibition in Tennessee, the Shwabs contracted with the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery in Louisville to continue production until wartime Prohibition and eventually nationwide Prohibition took over. After Prohibition was repealed, the Shwab family made the decision to sell the brand and distillery grounds.
Sadly, just days after Manny Shwab died, the Cascade Distillery burned to the ground in a forest fire. He was buried in a plot he had purchased a few years earlier where he had buried his friend and business partner, George Dickel.
The story of George Dickel usually centers around Dickel, but Shwab was behind the success of the brand and in fact owned two-thirds of the distillery they founded together. But it’s almost impossible to separate the Dickel and Shwab families because they did so much together in life as well as in business. Jack Daniel’s gets the most attention when it comes to Tennessee whisky, but George Dickel’s Cascade Whisky was once the powerhouse of Tennessee Whisky.
After reading, I caught up with author Clay Shwab to learn more about the book.