Isaac Wolfe Bernheim

Isaac Wolfe Bernheim (November 4, 1848 – April 1, 1945) was an American businessman notable for starting the I. W. Harper brand of premium bourbon whiskey (a historically important brand currently owned by Diageo). The success of his distillery and distribution business helped to consolidate the Louisville area as a major center of Kentucky bourbon distilling. Bernheim was also a philanthropist, establishing the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Bullitt County.

Early years Isaac Bernheim was born in Schmieheim, Grand Duchy of Baden, now part of Kippenheim in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1867 with $4 in his pocket. He originally planned to work in New York City. However, the company where he wanted to work went bankrupt, and he was forced to follow a different line of work. He became a traveling salesman or "peddler" traveling throughout Pennsylvania on horseback selling household items to housewives and made a respectable living. However, he was forced to stop peddling when his horse died.

Distilling business Following the death of his horse, Bernheim moved to Paducah, Kentucky, where he worked as a bookkeeper for a wholesale liquor company, Loeb, Bloom, & Co. He was able to save enough money to bring his brother Bernard to America. He quickly moved on, however, and with the help of his brother Bernard Bernheim and their friend Elbridge Palmer as a silent partner, he was able to open up his own liquor sales firm called Bernheim Brothers in 1872.

In 1875, Palmer's interest in the business was bought out and Isaac's brother-in-law Nathan Uri (the brother of Isaac's wife Amanda) became a partner in the business, and the company was renamed as Bernheim Brothers & Uri. Because of their business's proximity to large waterways, the company grew rapidly.

Bernheim Brothers & Uri moved its operations from Paducah to Louisville (on Main Street between 1st and 2nd) in 1888, and Uri left the business in 1889. The company then continued under its prior firm name of Bernheim Brothers and continued to expand.

Bernheim Brothers bought the Pleasure Ridge Park Distillery in Louisville and it began operating as the Bernheim Distillery. In March 1896, the distillery's bonded warehouse at Pleasure Ridge Park, which it shared jointly with another whiskey business, was destroyed by fire. The loss of the property itself was covered by insurance, but the cost of the unpaid whiskey tax on the lost product proved difficult to settle for the business – the matter was not settled until near the end of 1897. The courts eventually ruled that the tax was not due since the whiskey had been destroyed by the fire before it was sold. They then took the brand off the U.S. market entirely. United became Diageo in 1997 when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan, and Diageo continues to own the brand but no longer owns the distillery. The modern Bernheim distillery is not to be confused with the prior Bernheim distillery sites.

The Bernheim distillery was purchased by Heaven Hill Distilleries in 1999, and it was substantially refurbished to become Heaven Hill's main distilling plant. Heaven Hill purchased the site after a 1996 fire destroyed its prior distilling plant in Bardstown.

In March 2015, after the brand had been off the U.S. market for 20 years, Diageo announced that it was reintroducing the I. W. Harper brand in April 2015, using spirits distilled at the new Bernheim distillery, aged partly at the Stitzel-Weller warehouses, and bottled at Diageo's George Dickel plant in Tullahoma, Tennessee. and the brand's web site hasn't been updated since March 2015.

The Bernheim Original wheat whiskey brand introduced by Heaven Hill in 2005 was also named after the Bernheim brothers, the distilling company they founded, and the modern distillery that bears their name.

Written works The Story of the Bernheim Family (1910) The Closing Chapters of a Busy Life (1929)