We understand today that there is a difference between bourbon and whiskey we don't always know
what it is but we understand culturally that there is a distinction. In the time period of
the 18th century whiskey was whiskey and it didn't look like this that looked like this.
I lived in Kentucky for 10 years of my life now I'm not a native to Kentucky and if you are from
Kentucky or generally from the south you can smell that on me I'm not from down there. Lived
up here in Indiana when I was younger and I moved down to Kentucky and as soon as I did I hear this
word bourbon. Bourbon bourbon bourbon everywhere and there are a lot of really strong feelings
about bourbon versus what people call Tennessee whiskey. Down in Kentucky is not uncommon to
walk into a household say you're going over to a friend's house and somebody proudly says "not all
whiskey is bourbon but all bourbon is whiskey" and what they're doing there is they're making
a clear distinction that there's something special about their Kentucky bourbon. They want people to
know this is bourbon in fact you'll even hear that for a bourbon to be a bourbon it has to be made in
Kentucky which is not true and it never has been but that is part of their heritage they're proud
of that. You will hear people say that the reason that bourbon is special and needs to be made in
Kentucky is because of all the Limestone the water is filtered through in Kentucky and because the
climate in Kentucky is perfect for storing all throughout the year Bourbon in barrels and these
big barns that hold it at distilleries and if you go into one of those barns and you smell it
and you take it all in it is a sight to behold and it's wonderful for the senses. Now to be
perfectly honest with you even though I am not a Kentucky native I was drawn into this I love
Bourbon and I'll tell you to this day even if I go into a grocery store or a liquor store and
I'm looking for a bottle of bourbon if it is not distilled in Kentucky I will not buy it.
And that might seem silly to a lot of people but that is something
that is special to me and it's probably because of my time living in that state.
The reality is is that until I started researching bourbon for historical context I didn't even
realize that it wasn't even regulated until 1964 which blew my mind and what it means to be bourbon
is it has to be a 51 at least corn mash Bill and it has to be made in the United States territories
which it was almost disappointing to find that out because I believed man this has to be made
in Kentucky. The late 18th century is where I've been focusing most of my research and at that time
whiskey is not top dog as far as alcohols are concerned people are really liking Brandy then
comes rum then comes whiskey and that's because things like brandy taste like what's coming from
France and rum has been used for a long time and that's very strong as far as the British
are concerned and it's being imported like crazy. Whiskey is being made here made out of necessity
farmers are distilling whiskey because they don't want their crops to go bad. If you're a farmer at
this time in history your fields are plentiful the grains are going crazy because this ground is so
fertile especially corn. As you're harvesting your corn you need a way to not have waste you can't
store that corn forever and it just not go bad you can turn it in to alcohol you can bottle it up and
you can store that for a long time and along the way you can turn that into money by selling it you
can use it as a currency by bartering and trading it turns into part of your household budget and it
stores forever without spoiling. So we're not only talking about corn you can distill pretty much
any grain into an alcohol and if you look through historical cookbooks they're going to go through
grain after grain after grain there's buckwheat whiskey there's all kinds of whiskey but it's a
way for farmers to be able to pull from harvest and not have anything ruined. Another rule that
people know and recognize about bourbon is that it needs to be stored in charred White Oak barrels
that wasn't happening in the time period these farmers were doing most of the distilling there
weren't a lot of huge operations and they weren't making enough to fill up a barrel they're storing
it in jugs and a lot of the color that we see from bourbon nowadays that's coming from that charred
White Oak Barrel that's one of the reasons that we don't have that. Now they weren't even storing
it for super long because they're turning that into income and so when it comes out white and
it's lean and it's young they're storing back what they need for themselves they're using the rest to
turn into currency because their household still has to move and they still have to make money out
of those crops even though it's not being sold as corn. So where does the name bourbon come
from? and we're so stuck on this name now but in the time period they weren't. There
were lots of distilling operations throughout the West right so Virginia is distilling a lot
so it's Kentucky you see a little bit in Indiana but mainly Pennsylvania and up in Maryland there's
distillation happening in all those places and whiskey it's on the come up it's starting to
catch on a lot of people still aren't sure how much they like it but it's happening and like I
said it's happening so that crops don't go bad so bourbon itself there's a lot of folklore there's a
lot of assumptions as to where the name comes from and there are a lot of claims that this is their
true one this is the right one but really I'm not sure and I don't think anybody is actually really
sure where the name bourbon comes from. What is known now as Bourbon County Kentucky was actually
part of Virginia in the time period in 1785 they started to split up some counties it eventually
becomes part of the state of Kentucky. Popular folklore says that the bourbon or the whiskey
that was being taken out and exported from Bourbon County Kentucky was marked with the word Bourbon
and that's where the name comes from. Other people say that it was a rich whiskey culture
down in New Orleans and that's where the name comes from. Some people say that Elijah Craig
was the first person to make bourbon whiskey now there was a lot of whiskey being made around him
what do you guys think? what have you heard about bourbon? what's the true story? Let me know in the
comments section. So let's imagine for a moment that we're in the late 18th century and you're
traveling you come across a public house you're going to stay at the tavern and you walk in and
you want some whiskey. This is going to be what the proprietor pushes towards you this is the
whiskey let's take a taste and see what it's like because it's not anything like what we're used to.
It's not bad but it's not great it's not aged it's not treated over time. When we
taste a white whiskey like this now it can leave a little bit to be desired we're used
to Bourbons that have been aged in these white oak barrels for several years and they're more
rounded they're not so lean and mean but it's still it's still good it's it's fine what was
really popular in the time period was to make it brandy or a rum punch and you start to see
whiskey coming in as the alcohol in those punches so we're going to make a punch right now. For that
we're going to need about four ounces of sugar 12 ounces of water then we're gonna get is six
ounces of the White Whiskey with six ounces of citrus juice maybe a little bit of zest and the
sprinkle in nutmeg. super simple you can do it at home and it's going to taste fabulous.
Our whiskey punch is finished it looks great
it smells really good it smells like a complex lemonade because it's got all these different
citrus fruits in it it's very sweet you can smell the whiskey just a little bit we'll see how much
of it you can taste here in a minute first I want to thank Brian Cushing from the Victorian
bar room Channel thank you so much for your help in making this episode it was really wonderful
to be able to take my research and run it past somebody who's been researching this forever
and he is just a wealth of information all right let's see what's going on here.
Ooh yeah that's really good that's really good the Whiskey's there you can't smell it but you
can taste it but not overpowering it's just right there in the middle okay what do I think after
all that research in the time period whiskey was a whiskey they're making it from different
grains but Whiskey's whiskey now all bourbon is whiskey but not all whiskey is bourbon.