Miscellany
George Washington completed his second and final term as president in 1797 and moved back to Mount Vernon, where his farm manager, a Scotsman, convinced him to build a whiskey distillery to earn higher profits on his estate. “I make use of no barley in my distillery,” he wrote in 1798. “Rye chiefly and Indian corn in a certain proportion compose the materials from which the whiskey is made.” Having expanded operations by 1799, the year of his death, he owned five stills in a building of 2,250 square feet with a yearly yield of nearly 10,500 gallons. It is considered to have been one of the country’s largest distilleries at that time.