A limited release from America's oldest distillery.
Product Highlights
One hundred bottles for each of the thirteen original colonies. A finite tribute to the thirteen states that became a nation.
One percentage of alcohol for each of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration. The men who put their names, fortunes, and lives to a single piece of parchment.
Thirteen years in oak, one for each of the thirteen colonies. An apple brandy that has taken its time, the way the country took its time to become itself.
Two hundred and fifty years of American independence. Ten generations of a single family still distilling the spirit that helped build it.
The Liquid
Laid down in 2013, rested thirteen summers in charred American white oak. Bottled at 56% ABV, the strength chosen so the orchard can speak first.
The Package
No stickers. No stamps. No shortcuts. The label is screen-printed in three colors on the front, one on the back, on the same 12-year decanter the family has bottled for decades.
Brand Heritage
William Laird begins distilling apple brandy in Monmouth County, New Jersey — seventy-eight years before the Declaration.
Moses Laird guides General Washington before the Battle of Monmouth. Washington takes his rest at the Laird tavern.
The first federal Fruit Distilling License in the country issued to Laird & Company at the end of Prohibition.
The tenth generation of Lairds bottles this release on the same land their ancestors first distilled.
Before whiskey had a name, there was apple brandy. Cyder spirits, as the colonists called it, was the first distilled spirit native to what would become the United States. Not imported. Not adapted. Grown, fermented, and distilled here. It is the original American spirit, and Laird has been making it, in one family, since 1698.
William Laird, the first of the family to distill on this continent, set up in Monmouth County, New Jersey in 1698. That is seventy-eight years before the Declaration. By 1780, his grandson Robert Laird recorded the family's first commercial transaction. Laird & Company has measured its years against the country itself ever since.
In June 1778, Moses Laird rode at General Washington's side as his personal guide in the days before the Battle of Monmouth. On the night of June 29, Washington and his officers took their rest at Moses Laird's tavern, where the family poured them the same apple brandy they had been making for eighty years. In the years that followed, Washington wrote to the Lairds asking for the recipe for cyder spirits — the only person outside the family ever entrusted with it.
When Prohibition ended in 1933, the United States issued its first new federal license to distill fruit brandy to Laird & Company — DSP-NJ-1 — Distilled Spirits Plant, New Jersey, Number One. It is the license under which the family still operates today. First in America. Still first in America.
Press & Credibility
"The Pappy Van Winkle of the North."Saveur
"One of the oldest continuously operating family businesses in America."The Wall Street Journal
"A company that grew up with the country itself."CNBC
In the Press
The tenth generation of America's oldest distillery.
Inside the American family that has made apple brandy since 1698.
Companies That Grew With America.
Serving Suggestions
A small pour in a wide-mouth glass. Let it breathe for thirty seconds. This is how our master distiller drinks it.
A single large-format cube. It opens the nose and softens the finish. Best for a slow evening.
2 oz Laird's · ¾ oz lemon · ½ oz grenadine. Shake hard. Strain into a coupe. The original Laird cocktail. Older than the martini.
1,300 bottles. One release. Never again.
Get the 250th Anniversary BottleUnited States only · Must be 21+ · Allocation mechanism confirmed at launch
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