Ralph Dupps
“The Cascade Hollow Engineer”
Ralph Louis Dupps was born October 15th, 1917 in Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated from Male High School and served as a pilot in World War 2. He graduated from the Speed Scientific School of Engineering, University of Louisville and became a mechanical engineer. He eventually ran the Bernheim Distillery in Louisville after starting in the business working on boilers for the Shenley Corporation who at the time was one of the largest liquor companies.
The original Cascade Hollow Distillery was managed by Augusta Dickel and her family very successfully and in 1904 was the largest in Tennessee. But Tennessee prohibition began in 1910 and the distillery was closed, and Cascade Hollow production was moved to Kentucky.
After Schenley’s founder Lew Rosenstiel was turned down by the Motlow family to buy Jack Daniel’s (which instead went to Brown-Forman) and already owning the brand Cascade Hollow, decided to instead build a new distillery to produce George Dickel Tennessee Whisky and produce it once again in Tennessee.
Rosenstiel turned to Ralph Dupps to build and run the new distillery. Dupps was very familiar with the brand and his family moved to Tennessee and began work on starting the new distillery. Dupps worked to purchase 850 acres of land nearby the original Cascade Hollow distillery location. The new location had access to the same Cascade Hollow water source which comes through layers of limestone to be pure mineral and iron-free water, key to making good whisky. The new distillery is located in Coffee County.
After finding the location, Dupps had to go to work to win a referendum to produce alcoholic products since Coffee County at the time was a dry county. According to Dupps, “It was close, very close, but the referendum passed.”
Dupps then spent time researching the recipe used to create the original Cascade Hollow Tennessee Whisky, and was able to obtain George Dickel’s manuscripts including the recipe and processes used to make it. He first tried using charcoal produced in kilns to filter the whisky, but it caused the whisky to have a bite rather than a smooth flavor. He then used the process originally used by Dickel of stacking sugar maple and burning it to become charcoal. This charcoal is then used to filter the new distillate before aging filtering through sugar maple charcoal for up to 10 days. This was a much more expensive process, but resulted in much better flavor and smoother whisky.
Dupps once said “If you didn’t have that added process you’d have bourbon.” He went on to say “I think I could take any person, I don’t care whether they drink bourbon or rum and get them to drink nothing else but George Dickel for 3 weeks and they would never leave this.” Obviously Dupps was very proud of the product.
The first whisky produced at the Cascade Hollow was distilled in July of 1959 and was aged for 6 years. It was first marketed in 1964. Along the way Dupps became the master distiller, though he was modest about this saying “They call me that?” and went on to say “I guess it’s true to a certain extent.”
George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey has since gone on the thrive. During Dupps time at the distillery he developed the George Dickel No. 8 and No. 12 brands and used great care that made the brand a high quality brand for over 130 years.
Ralph was past president of American Society of Mechanical Engineers and former director of St. Joseph's Hospital in Louisville. He was a member of Second Presbyterian Church and the Pendennis Club where the famed Old Fashioned was discovered. He also belonged to the Owl Creek Country Club and the University of Louisville "L" Club.
Dupps was married to Rosemary Holland Dupps who passed away in 1977. Dupps retired in 1977 as the President of George Dickel Distilling Company. He married again to Martha Hayes Dupps and were married 29 years until his death. Ralph Louis Dupps passed away in Louisville at the age of 90 on Saturday December 1st, 2007 and buried in the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. Dupps had 2 sons (Ralph L. Dupps Jr. and Kirk Dupps) and a daughter (Ann Dupps Kegley).
