The Great Crossing: A Historic Journey to Buffalo Trace Distillery, by Richard Taylor. Frankfort, Ky.: Buffalo Trace Distillery, 2002. Contents, Notes, Bibliography, Appendix, Illustrated, pp. 109.
This books is fairly well researched and has endnotes and bibliography so the reader can determine the sources used. The problem is there very little history of Buffalo Trace. There are only 97 pages of text in the book. The first 30 are spent talking about the founding of Leestown. This is important to the distillery's history, but the chapter could have been pared down to 15 or 20 pages easily. The writer tends to repeat himself and even cites the same quote from the same source twice in the chapter.
After the first chapter the starts to talk about E H Taylor, Jr. Yet another important subject in the history of the distillery and does a fairly good job even though again, he tends to repeat himself. The history of OFC distillery is tied to Taylor and is covered fairly well and the writer does a good job of explaining the history which is often confusing. He spends many pages talking about Taylor and Taylor's history but the reader is often left wondering when he will get back to the subject of the distillery.
He finally get back to the subject of the distillery with Albert Blanton but then zips through this history touching upon many subjects, but not giving much detail. He is often wrong in the facts he does present. An example of this is his claim that the Geo. T Stagg distillery was the only distillery in Kentucky that was allowed to make whiskey during prohibition. This is wrong because the A. Ph. Stitzel distillery in Louisville was also making whiskey when the government allowed for distilling to replenish stocks of medicinal alcohol. It is hoped that what the writer meant was it is the only distillery in Kentucky of that time that is still making whiskey.
The book is worth adding to your bourbon library because it does give some good history of E H Taylor and the OFC/Stagg distillery. There are some very nice photographs and maps as well.
Mike Veach