Captain Morgan was, of course, a pirate, but who was Johnnie Walker?
Clearly, the name has come a long way from John Walker, the Scottish grocer who never distilled a drop himself. At the beginning of the 18th century, the British wanted to tax Scottish whiskey. Instead of kowtowing to what they saw as an imposition on their native drink, local producers started operating like jungle cocaine labs — making small batches of the stuff in hiding and splitting before the red coats could find them. Quality suffered.
Enter John Walker, a grocery store owner from Kilmarnock. He was skilled at blending tea leaves from multiple suppliers; why not try mixing a variety of the coarse single-malts he carried in his store? He did, and the resulting blend — the first blended whiskey brand — proved popular.
If you look on a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, you’ll find the signatures of R&A Bailey:
In 1970 the folks who sold Gilbey’s gin started working on a drink that reflected idealized Irishness. They came up with a rich blend of cream and whiskey, but it needed a name. The project team in Dublin enjoyed a post-work pint across at the Bailey Pub; the offices of the team in London overlooked the Bailey Hotel. Coincidence? No, convenience. The brain behind the brand, David Dand, looked at the company’s Gilbey’s gin bottle and saw the signatures of founding brothers W & A Gilbey. He changed the W to an R and the R & A Bailey signature was born.
So R&A Bailey were pure fiction.
How about Smirnoff?
The Smirnov brothers, Nicolai and Vladimir, made vodka for czars. Accordingly, the Bolsheviks took over their business, executed Nicolai and tortured Vlad. Vlad escaped, headed to France, changed the spelling of his name and started making vodka again. In 1933 an old friend visited from America with a plan to take Smirnoff to the States, but Americans didn’t bite. Enter John Martin, who bought the company in 1939, and exploited the emerging cocktail craze: Cases of his vodka were shipped with labels marked, “White Whiskey — No Smell, No Taste.”
From Behind The Booze Brands.