A Legacy Restored,
Meet the belle of bedford
A Spirit Reclaimed.
Every brand has a beginning. Ours starts with a woman whose name was nearly lost to time. Belle of Bedford isn’t just a label or a clever nod to history - she’s real. And the journey to find her wasn’t a branding exercise. It was personal. I didn’t set out to start a whiskey company. I set out to find out who she was - and what she left behind.
What I found wasn’t just a story. It was a whiskey with soul - complex, spirited, and unapologetically alive. The liquid itself is the thread that ties everything together. It’s the character at the center of the plot. From the first sip, it tells you this isn’t fiction. This is something recovered, reawakened, and poured with purpose.
Inheritance
I’m Cyrus Kehyari — and I didn’t invent Belle of Bedford. I uncovered it. Not in a boardroom or a barrelhouse, but buried in dusty boxes and folded into family stories passed down over drinks and dinners. I found brittle postcards, crumbling newspaper clippings, bottles with ink-faded labels, and the same names repeating like a chorus: John J. Hughes. Patrick Hughes. And Catherine - the Belle of Bedford. My inheritance wasn’t money or land. It was something stranger. Something waiting to be unearthed.
The deeper I looked, the more it felt like I was chasing someone who wanted to be found. Catherine’s name kept appearing, wrapped in mystery and myth. She became the face of something bigger — the soul of a story that had been waiting for its second act. And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, that story chose me.
The Mill & the Railroad
John J. Hughes, my great-great-grandfather, was a farmer-distiller with a knack for turning grain into something finer. In 1872, he bought a gristmill in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and began distilling rye whiskey from his surplus harvest. His sons - sharp, entrepreneurial - turned that practice into Hughes Bros. Distillers, a family business grounded in grit and grain.
They found a perfect partner in the Pennsylvania Railroad. Their whiskey rode the rails from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, Chicago to Baltimore. The bottles bore their name and a reputation for purity that made it past state lines and into saloons. But in 1920, with the hammer of Prohibition, it ended. The stills went quiet. The brand was buried — at least for a while.
The Spark
I didn’t come into whiskey through legacy. I came through bars. For years I ran cocktail programs and curated spirits lists, thinking I was chasing a passion - not a past. But then it started clicking: the stories I’d grown up with, the fragments of family history, the way my palate bent toward rye. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was instinct.
I started asking questions. Calling cousins. Visiting libraries. I met Dave Pickerell - a giant in the whiskey world - who saw what I saw. He guided me, mentored me. When a Kentucky deal fell through, Dave connected me to Perry Ford at MGP. Perry had the barrels. I had the history. And between us, we had the makings of a resurrection.
Resurrection
It began with 2,500 barrels of aged rye and a name embossed on a forgotten bottle: Belle of Bedford. I flew on weekends, sold barrels to bootstrap funding, and obsessively hunted down design cues from old Hughes Bros. labels. I visited the family’s property in Shellsburg, turning over stones and memories. One thing became clear: this wasn’t just a project. It was a calling.
We built Belle from reverence, not recreation. The whiskey is straight rye, but it’s also story - aged, nuanced, and unapologetically bold. Catherine’s legacy - once a footnote - now sits at the heart of every bottle. This isn’t about reviving a brand. It’s about reclaiming a name. It’s my family’s story.
Now it’s yours to taste.
