Consumers’ thirst for applejack had grown dramatically throughout the 1800s and, in 1904-one of the best apple years ever seen in our state-New Jersey was on track to produce an estimated 1 million gallons of the spirit (see sidebar, page 29).īefore Loughlin could move his distillery into Nesbitt’s mill, the mill had to be converted from grain grinding to cider production- the first phase in making applejack. According to patent filings, he began labeling his product “Tiger Apple Jack” in 1901. For several years prior to taking on that lease, Loughlin had purchased the entire annual applejack output from Thompson’s distillery-presumably to bottle for resale. A liquor wholesaler from Newark, Loughlin had been leasing a distillery at the Thompson farm on Hilltop Road in Mendham since 1899. Loughlin purchased Nesbitt’s mill in January 1905. With his passing, the mill ceased the processing of local flour and feed-a once-common industry that was being undercut by the easy transport of Midwestern grain. After climbing to the top floor, however, his history of heart trouble overtook him and there, one day shy of his 86th birthday, he died. Thanksgiving was only a few days away and a warming trend undoubtedly eased the prospect of working in the unheated mill. When John Ralston Nesbitt headed to work on November 21, 1904, it is unlikely he had any sense that this would be the final day of operation for the grist mill that he and his mother had built in 1848. Nobody took anything.” That visit set into motion a multi-year effort by Nadaskay and others to restore the mill and create a living museum dedicated to the production of New Jersey’s most renowned intoxicant: applejack. When they walked away from, they just left it. I looked up on the next floor and I saw two presses,” Nadaskay says. “I saw a great big vat on my left, another vat on my right. Those musings gave way to resolve on the day he was invited to look inside the mill. As an architect and entrepreneur, he also contemplated the various ways that the building, which he assumed was a gutted shell, could be put into residential or commercial use. As a member of Mendham Township’s Historic Preservation Committee, he wondered how the mill could be saved from further decay. Standing overgrown and abandoned alongside Route 24, Nesbitt’s mill had long intrigued Raymond Nadaskay.
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