National Bootlegger’s Day

Templeton Rye Whiskey shares its January 17th birthday with bootlegger Al Capone and the son of another bootlegger, Meryl Kerkhoff.During the 1800s, the term bootlegger came into use in the Midwest. The word described the act of concealing flasks of liquor in a boot top when going to trade with Native Americans. The term found its permanent place in the American vocabulary when Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol in 1920.

The first observance of National Bootlegger’s Day was in 2015, instated by Infinium Spirits to celebrate the birth of Templeton Rye, a whiskey distilled by farmers in Templeton, Iowa, during the heights of the prohibition.