When George Washington retired from the American presidency in 1797, he returned to farm life at Mount Vernon, where he was already building a distillery. In 1796 his employee, James Anderson, had written Washington a letter detailing the benefits of turning some of the grains from the farm into whiskey and some of the fruits from the orchard into brandy. By the second year of its operation, Washington’s distillery would become the largest distillery in the United States. After Washington’s untimely death in 1799 at the age of 67, his family continued to run the farm for a few generations until it proved too expensive, and the property and house fell into disrepair. The distillery was destroyed in a fire in 1814. By 1858, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association had purchased the home and surrounding 200 acres (which had been 8,000 acres in Washington’s time) and began to restore various parts of the property. While there was an archaeological survey of the distillery during Prohibition, its rebuilding would not begin until 2005.
“In 1796, [Washington’s] current farm manager was retiring because of health issues,” explains Mount Vernon’s director
