Born into a well-off family in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Leon Kuhn, shown here, found his way from Hungary to America, working in the whiskey trade in several Midwestern cities before seizing the opportunity to open a distillery near Mexico City. That enterprise would make him rich, but later was destroyed in brutal civil conflict. Kuhn’s story is the stuff of which novels are made.
According to their own lore, the Kuhn family originally was Swiss, involved in the shipbuilding industry. Possibly because Switzerland is landlocked, the ancestors “for better business prospects” moved to the city of Arad, shown below, a major city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a Jewish population of more than 10,000. There Leon was born in 1854.
Of the boy Leon, little is known. He was given a good education, including a period at the prestigious Technical University of Dresden where he studied chemistry, a subject directly related to his career. Meanwhile, in the early 1870s his two brothers, seeking to avoid conscription in the army of Emperor Franz Joseph, left for America, settling in Texas. At the age of 19, Leon followed, sailing from Bremen in August 1873 aboard the Kronprince Wilhelm.
Kuhn’s early residence and occupation has gone unrecorded but it appears that at least for a time he was living in Pennsylvania and possibly using his chemistry background to good effect in distilling. A sole clue is his having obtained American citizenship in Meadville, Pennsylvania, a notable center for the production of rye whiskey. Kuhn then seemingly moved to Cleveland, Ohio.
In 1881, Kuhn made a return trip to Europe. His passport description recorded his height at 5’ 11” and his eyes blue. On a visit to Budapest he met Theresa Edmunda de Prorok, a young woman from a wealthy family, who was spending the summer there. They fell in love and in on May 1, 1881, the couple were married in England. Leon was 26; Theresa, 21.
After their honeymoon, the couple lived in Cleveland where their daughter Alice May was born. Soon after Kuhn saw better opportunities in the Cincinnati area, at the time the center of the American liquor industry. The couple settled in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River. Their sons were born there, Alfred in 1884 and Leonard in 1888. A Covington business directory in 1886 listed Kuhn as “distiller,” likely working for one of the sixty organizations listed as distilleries in the Cincinnati area.
Kuhn’s reputation in the liquor industry was growing, becoming known for his ability as a yeastmaker. Whiskey guru Michael Veach has emphasized the importance of well-prepared yeast to the final product. Even if the contribution of yeast is only 5%, he says: “…It is a vital component to the whiskey. Think of it this way — adding salt to a dish is a small part of the overall taste, but if there is too little or too much it is noticed in the taste. The same can be said for yeast in whiskey — the wrong yeast will be noticed.”
That is what the American Spirits Manufacturing Co., an arm of the “Whiskey Trust,” apparently was thinking in 1888 when it reached out from Peoria, Illinois, to ask Kuhn to join its distilling team. ASM recently had purchased from John H. Francis several properties, including the Monarch Distilling Company, below, a facility Francis personally had built in Peoria. Not related to the Monarch distilleries of Kentucky, the Illinois Monarch has been described as “operating at certain times of the year for the manufacture of whiskies, gins and spirits.” The Wine and Spirits Bulletin of February 1903 included the Monarch, shown below, with other Trust properties in declaring: “These distilleries will eventually furnish the trade throughout the United States with cheap Bourbons that heretofore have been manufactured in Kentucky but of late years in Peoria.”
Over the next dozen years, with the Monarch Distillery as his headquarters Kuhn built a reputation in Peoria as a leading yeastmaker and distiller for the Whiskey Trust. Increasing affluence allowed him to house his family in the large frame home. It also brought him into the inner workings of the Trust itself during the years 1888 to 1895, its heyday. The syndicate produced 300.4 million gallons of alcohol — 75 percent of that produced in the United States. With a seeming stranglehold on American whiskey production the Trust responded by raising prices, in part to help pay off extravagant bonuses they earlier had promised to distillers who joined. It backfired. The combine slowly slid into bankruptcy.
By 1894 Kuhn apparently could see the impending demise of the Trust. He began to look around for other opportunities. His brothers earlier had left Texas and gone to Mexico. As he looked “South of the Border” Kuhn saw a possible opportunity. In September he made an exploratory visit to Mexico City. After several weeks of investigation, he concluded that the possibilities were great in Mexico for the distilling business.
Kuhn’s next step was to get assured financial backing from East Coast “money men.” He may have had an advantage there from his earlier stint in Pennsylvania where he possibly had met Francis V. Strauss, a capitalist who operated from Philadelphia and New York City. Strauss, assuming the role of senior partner, assembled a group of investors who agreed to back Kuhn’s initiative in Mexico.
Armed with those assurances and his own reputation as a distiller, Kuhn was afforded an interview with Mexican president, General Porfirio Diaz. His timing was propitious. Díaz's regime had ended years of political instability and was attempting to achieve growth after decades of economic stagnation. The President fostered a group of technocrats known as científicos ("scientists"), whose economic policies were tailored to benefit his allies and foreign investors. The latter were offered Industrias Nuevas contracts, part of a program by Diaz to encourage investment from abroad.
Diaz was willing to give the Strauss, Kuhn Compania a monopoly on manufacturing and sales of whiskey and other alcohol products in Mexico so long as the Presidente was given a fifth of the firm for himself and his son. The partners agreed. By August, 1895, the Chicago Chronicle newspaper reported that Kuhn was in Mexico supervising construction of a distillery capable of producing 5,000 gallons of spirits daily. It was located on the right bank of the Viga Canal on the outskirts of Mexico City near the Indian village of Santa Anita. The distillery was named “Le Grande Union.”
Kuhn shipped material for the building and equipment from Peoria on 26 train cars. A correspondent for the Chronicle visited the site, described as “a busy scene”: “Boilers, pumps, iron tanks, lumber, etc., are piled around and are conveyed to the site by the natives. Gangs of men are busy erecting buildings of solid masonry, the machine shops, warehouses, and a malthouse over 100 feet long being nearly completed. The foundations of a large mill building four stories high are now in progress.”
The newspaper reported that the property contained barns to accommodate as many as 800 to 1,000 head of cattle. As was common with distilleries in the United States the cows would be fed from the spent grain mash. The owners expected the distillery to be finished and in operation by October, 1895. Below is an illustration of the completed complex. The Strauss, Kuhn distillery was a most impressive facility.
The enterprise was a family affair. Gustave Strauss, likely a brother of Francis, born in Switzerland and educated in Germany, was an officer of the distillery while keeping a New York City address. Francis Strauss visited frequently but also resided in the States. At least one of Kuhn’s brothers, Fred, was on the scene in Mexico to assist and the Kuhn sons were enlisted when they completed their schooling. Kuhn was so keen that his children should get excellent European educations that he bought a house in Paris for them to live. From passport records he seems to have visited them frequently. After graduation his eldest son Alfred dutifully moved to Mexico to assist at the distillery.
The second son, Leonard (“Leo”), at the direction of his father had been sent to England for postgraduate training in business. The expectation was that he too would join the distillery management team. Although Leo went to Mexico in 1907, his daughter related, he determined “…He was not cut out for business, preferring the arts instead.” Shown here, Leo painted pictures he never sold, avoided the liquor business, and lived off family money.
As the years passed, Mexico increasingly was driven by unrest, resulting from civil repression, regional conflicts, strikes and other uprisings from labor and the peasantry. Both had been left behind economically. The year 1910 marked the beginning of “The Mexican Revolution,” a conflict between government and rebel groups, struggling among themselves for power. In 1913, the revolution came to the Strauss, Kuhn distillery. Likely seen as a symbol of the hated Porfirio Diaz or “Yankee imperialism,” rebels attacked and destroyed the plant.
Leaving his brother Fred to watch over the ruins, Leon Kuhn left Mexico and returned to the United States. After order had been restored by the Carranza government, Kuhn returned to Mexico in 1916. The purpose he said on his passport application was “looking after investments.” Kuhn may have been seeking compensation from the new government for the destruction of his distillery. There is no indication he was successful.
Two years later, on Christmas Day 1918, Kuhn died in Boston, perhaps on a visit to his daughter, Alice May, who was living there. His will, written on New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel stationary, listed assets of $500,000 (equivalent to almost $10 million today) in a New York bank, bank accounts in Europe, the house in Paris, and properties in Mexico. Perhaps wishfully, Kuhn also counted as assets 378,500 pesos worth of shares in the now defunct and destroyed Distillery Grande Union.
Although Leon Kuhn’s long road to Mexico ended badly, his role as a pioneer in whiskey history cannot be denied. He was the first American distiller to venture “south of the Border” and for almost two decades prospered. He showed the way to other whiskey-makers like Mary Dowling, Peter McGowan, and John Casper who moved their operations to Mexico in response to America’s National Prohibition of the 1920s and early 1930s.
Note: This post owes its origin from information sent me by Michael Tarabulski, an archivist working for the National Archives in St. Louis. He also graciously provided me with the pictures of Leon Kuhn and his distillery. Thanks also are due Aileen Blomgren, who is steeped in all whiskey matters connected with the name “Monarch.” She sent me materials crucial to this post, including the Chicago Chronicle article.
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