Thursday, August 12th – Bill Samuels, Jr., President & Ambassador-at-Large of Maker’s Mark

Our guest this week is Bill Samuels, Jr., the seventh generation of the Samuels family to make whiskey. The legend of Maker’s Mark dates back to 1784 when Robert Samuels, a Scottish-Irish immigrant, arrived in Kentucky and started making whisky. In 1953, Bill Samuels Sr. (Robert’s great, great, great grandson) decided to make a more distinguished style of bourbon. With a flair of dramatic departure, he set fire to the 170-year-old family recipe, paving the way for the creation of Maker’s Mark bourbon. He reinvented the bourbon recipe to include winter wheat (instead of the harsher rye) while baking bread in his own oven. Today, Bill Samuels Jr. continues the family’s hand-made bourbon tradition, and remains true to his father’s innovation of fine bourbon whisky and vision of Maker’s. Bill and I will talk about the history and making of Maker’s Mark, their iconic advertising campaign & Ambassador program, Makers 46 – the first new product in the brand’s history – and much more. Cheers!

Guest Bio:

Bill Samuels Jr., President of Maker’s Mark Distillery in Loretto, Kentucky, is the 7th generation in a long line of bourbon makers. Samuels took over the family business from his father, Bill Samuels Sr., the man who invented the Maker’s Mark recipe & the premium bourbon category. It’s only natural that Bill Jr. wound up taking over the family business – as a child, he played Lincoln Logs with an aged Col. Jim Beam. Bill had big ideas about playing basketball, becoming a rocket scientist & lawyer. So, he did all three -college at Case Western Reserve, where he studied rocket science; UC Berkeley where he helped design the fuel injector nozzle for Polaris IIA, & Vanderbilt University to study law. Upon finishing law school, he returned to Kentucky to work “temporarily” for his father – 13 years later he was still there. In 1980 The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article about Maker’s Mark, which rapidly became known for its irreverent ads, written by Bill Jr., and smooth taste.