This advertisement is from the 1893 Edition of The California Demokrat, a German periodical of the time printed in San Francisco, CAL. Renz must have still been producing the product, although it may have been paper labeled at that point. Listed as being at 315 Commercial Street, San Francisco, probably between Montgomery and Sansome Streets at that time. It also makes mention of Renzs Blackberry Brandy, so maybe he ordered large and then took his sweet time to unload the inventory. The Germans really controlled the wholesale liquor and brewing industries for years, and a whole community within a community existed, enough to support this newspaper which has great ads of other dealers all written and printed in the native tongue. Has anyone seen a tooled top Renzs?
I also stumbled onto the German S.F. newspapers when I was researching the German "whiskey bottle connection" back in the 1990s, and had a friend's German wife translate several of them for me. I was amazed that they had their own newspaper, and yes, they were stuffed with liqour ads ! It kind of started putting the magnitude of their involvement in Western liqour dealings and their associated bottles into perspective for me.
ReplyDeleteI have never found nor seen a tooled Renz's Bitters. I would imagine the bitters bottles were labeled slicks in the later yrs. Renz did make two different embossed clear fifths in the 90s (both are Rare), one of which may have contained the Blackberry Brandy, as I don't recall seeing ads for the Bonanza Bourbon in later yrs.
I had a tooled top Renz's. Plain amber no crudity.
ReplyDeleteSold it to Pete from Washington while at the Helena show a couple years back.