Kentucky Bourbon, The Early Years of Whiskeymaking
Henry G. Crowgey, 2008, University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 978-0-8131-9183-6
It’s rare for a scholarly treatise that tackles the labyrinthine murk of Bourbon history to end up being a good read, but that’s exactly what Crowgey has done in this utterly entertaining review of fact vs myth regarding Bourbon’s genesis.
Being scholarly, the book is replete with tasty historical tidbits that, however compelling, we don’t have space to share, but are truly worth the price of the book on their own. That said, the core of Kentucky Bourbon is how Crowgey addresses two “eternal” questions: Who was the first distiller in Kentucky, and who made the first Bourbon whiskey?
Regarding Kentucky’s first distiller, Crowgey asserts that, contrary to common belief, it was neither Evan Williams, as legend favors, nor the Baptist minister, Reverend Elijah Craig. Indeed, he persuasively argues against any “first distiller.” Whiskey came with the territory.
The question of who made the first “Bourbon Whiskey” has more bite to it. To begin with, what is Bourbon? There’s the mash bill (at least 51% corn, malt, mostly rye, and then barley) and then subsequent maturation in charred white oak barrels for a minimum of two years. According to Crowgey, who omits the more recent requisite of backset, or “sour mash” to the legal definition, the first published recipe for what we might consider “Bourbon” appeared in an 1823 edition of the Lexington Gazette, quoting “A receipt for distilling by a process called sweet mash, by which an average of two gallons of excellent spirit has been made by a noted distiller in the neighborhood of Lexington.” The recipe that follows called for (very roughly) 70 percent corn, 20 percent rye, and 10 percent barley. Crowgey also pins a date for the first appearance of the term “Bourbon Whiskey,” in an 1821 edition of the Bourbon County newspaper Western Citizen and notes that by 1840, “the use of ‘bourbon’ in identifying this delightful whiskey had become a statewide practice.” History is less revealing, however, regarding the critical use of charred white oak barrels to deliver the distinctive flavor and color of the Bourbon we know today. “Harrison Hall, in 1818,” Crowgey observes, “did go into considerable detail on treating the interior of mash containers,” and that “‘during the summer months, it would be necessary to burn the insides with straw.’ Here is probably the origin of charring whiskey barrels, and it is quite likely,” Crowgey concludes, “that the practice originated in somewhat the manner that Hall outlines—the use of straw or some other flammable material to burn off the rough interior of new oak staves.”
Crowgey also takes a moment to chide the whiskey historians of the era, most notably William Henry Perrin. “There was never a serious attempt on the part of nineteenth-century historians of Kentucky to perform the necessary research [into the origins of Bourbon],” he asserts. “Thus was much valuable history lost, perhaps beyond recall, and therefore arose many pleasant legends in its stead.”
To both history and myth, let us toast.
–Penn Jensen
