Curated by DiscoCraft

Old 49

Los Angeles, CAEst. 2016·2 spirits

Our Story

Old 49's recipe traces back to Nat Kidder, a 34-year-old electrical contractor who began distilling vodka aboard Navy battleships for sailors in 1940. He spent years refining a whiskey recipe too, marking each bottle with a Navy stencil. On December 5, 1941, Kidder and his pregnant wife sailed for California, narrowly avoiding the attack on Pearl Harbor two days later. He finalized his whiskey recipe in 1949, and Old 49 takes its name from that year. The modern company launched out of a Los Angeles garage in 2016, and Old 49 California Whiskey and Nat Kidder Navy Strength Vodka are now sold at over 300 locations across Southern California and the West Coast.

The Founders

Old 49 is run today by David Glicksman, Nat Kidder's grandson, who brings decades of hospitality management experience, and Aaron Fitzgerald, one of Red Bull's premier aviation athletes. The two relaunched Nat Kidder's original recipes as a modern company from a Los Angeles garage in 2016.

How We Make It

Old 49 California Whiskey is distilled, barreled, and bottled entirely by hand based on Nat Kidder's original 70-year-old recipe. Nat Kidder Navy Strength Vodka is distilled six times, filtered repeatedly across activated charcoal, and proofed with alkaline water. Both are made in Los Angeles, California, per the bottle labels, though the site doesn't name a specific production facility.