A WHISKEY FOR THE AGES
Kentucky bourbon is best thought of in a historical context as an agricultural product. Unlike many of the other popular collector items of today, bourbon wasn’t created around a boardroom table with the express intent of going viral. Rather, it was a slow process of improvement on natural preservation techniques, until the spirit we know today emerged around 200 years ago.
As settlers worked their way through the United States, having a still was almost as important as settling somewhere that had salt and an abundance of fresh water. The still enabled settlers to create something of value in a place without industry, which could be used for medicine, calories, sanitation and trade.
In , bourbon historian Michael Veach addresses not only the historical evidence for the formation of the whiskey style we today call bourbon, but also the marketing rumours and innuendo that complicate many consumers’ understanding of that history. The Whiskey Rebellion is one of the most common misconceptions he addresses. Many believe that distillers fled the northeastern United States when a tax was levied on whiskey by George Washington to pay for the Revolutionary War, taking their stills to
