Frederick Stizel

Frederick Stitzel was born in Germany to Dominick and Magdelena Stitzel. He emigrated to the U.S. with his family at the age of 14 with his parents and two brothers, Philip and Jacob. The Stitzel family was first recorded living in the Louisville, Kentucky area in 1855.. 

The three Stitzel brothers eventually started a distillery in 1872, appropriately naming it Stitzel Brothers Distillery. There, they conducted experiments on bourbon using different mashbills. The Stitzel Brothers produced brands such as Fortuna, Glencoe, Mondamin, and “Old Fred Stitzel.” They were some of the first distillers to use wheat instead of rye in their bourbons. They never commercially produced the wheat mash bill, but instead passed that information on to Jacob’s son, Arthur Stitzel, who promptly put it to use when he opened his own distillery in 1903. The Stitzel Brothers Distillery itself remained open until Prohibition.

Frederick Stitzel was recently named by Whiskey Magazine as one of the top “100 greatest whiskey people” in history, largely because in 1879, Frederick gained a patent for a tiered storage system that would allow air circulation around the barrel; this soon became the standard for most rickhouses in the United States. Before this, barrels were stacked directly on top of each other, which was very risky, inviting the possibility of many problems occurring. Each barrel holds about 53 gallons of whiskey, and when filled, it weighs around 550 pounds, so that direct stacking often caused major leaks. Stacking barrels also risked fire, loss of product, wood splitting, and collapse. 

Frederick’s new system, in contrast, consisted of what he called rails; basically, these are small shelves attached to heavy-duty framing to support the weight. The rails are spaced far enough apart so that when a barrel is placed on its side, each end would be supported by a rail. A warehouse worker could then easily roll a barrel all the way down to a bottling area without lifting it. The system also allowed for the barrels to be turned from time to time, assisting the aging process. Stitzel also designed it so that the system is constructed in independent sections. This made it more portable and easier to configure in a warehouse. On the contrary, warehouses using pallets to stack barrels on top of each other does not allow the air to fully circulate around the barrel to encourage the maturation process.

1880 patent of Frederick Stitzel’s ‘Barrel Tiering Design for Whiskey Storage’

Not only did Frederick invent the tiered rack system that is still

used in most warehouses today, but he also held many other patents

for inventions, including a signal system for the railroad

industry that requires circuits to be placed at the beginning and ends

of a block of rail so that when the train drives over the circuits,

it will send a signal for caution or danger to the conductor and

to other potential traffic on the rail line.

In 1874, Frederick married Emma Laval, and five daughters were born of their union. Frederick and Emma were married for fifty years before Frederick caught a bout of bronchial pneumonia and quickly died in 1924 and was subsequently buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville. Having no sons to carry on his distilling legacy, Frederick had poured hard work into the training and education of his nephew, Arthur Philip Stitzel, who would go on to make a name for himself with the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery. Later, another moniker for the distillery came about when W.L. Weller & Sons combined with the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery to form the distillery known since as Stitzel-Weller. The Stitzel name remains legendary in bourbon, leaving its mark in history as the original producer of the Pappy Van Winkle product line. The ever-popular Van Winkle product caused the Stitzel-Weller Distillery to earn the nickname “The Cathedral of Bourbon.”