Business
Lessons From America’s Oldest Distillery
America turns 250 this year. Laird & Co., a family-run distillery in Colts Neck, N.J., can beat that—easily.
The roots of the business go all the way back to 1698, when founder William Laird began making and selling spirits; it became a formal business entity in 1780, in the midst of the Revolution. George Washington, according to family lore, enjoyed its signature Laird’s Applejack brandy.
Today, the company has expanded and diversified, and become the leading seller of American apple brandy in the U.S. and abroad. But it still makes its signature product with the same recipe, using the same methods. And it is still run by Lairds.
On some level, the arc of the Lairds’ business mirrors the arc of the country: from a colonial, farm-based economy to a national market stitched together by rail, through the shock of Prohibition and the mobilization of war, and into a modern era of reinvention and consolidation. The specifics change—laws, technologies, tastes—but the underlying challenge remains the same: how to survive in a country that is constantly remaking itself.
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