NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- A New Jersey family has been supplying Americans with liquor since just about the time America became America. And they continue that tradition to this day.
The New Jersey compound started in the early 1700s and 10 generations of one family have been making the same product.
"The ninth tends to be a little bossy, the 10th is coming along just fine," joked Larree Laird, who is eighth generation at Laird & Company.
The Laird family has been in the business, giving each other the business for more than 300 years.
"Yup, too long," Laird quipped.
As Mike Sugerman reports in this week's Sweet Spot, it's among the oldest family businesses in America and the business is liquor.
"My ancestors who came over here in 1678 were Scotch distillers," Lisa Laird Dunn said.
The stuff they usually used wasn't around but they used small, sharp bitter apples that weren't pleasant to eat so the only use they found for the fruit was to produce hard cider or distill the hard cider into apple brandy or cider spirits. They made Applejack and Laird's was the first large scale American facility making America's first liquor.
Methods have improved since George Washington requested the recipe and they now make several kinds of spirits.
After generations of ups and downs, Applejack is making a comeback especially among younger folks.
Gerard Dunn III is helping spread the word and teaching the company social media while hipster bartenders are finding the flavors and mixability of a Laird Apple Jack very hip.
"It was wonderful because everybody was like, 'What's Applejack? Do you make the cereal?'" Dunn said.
The history of Apple Jack and the history of the Laird family in Monmouth County are intertwined and in both cases spirits are running high.