Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage

This book imparts a substantial bit of knowledge about bourbon and whiskey in general while being a light and fun read with the statistics woven into the narrative. The author beings the history by explaining that whiskey became popular in America as the populace moved from the East Coast inland and found that rum and gin, the alcoholic beverages of choice at the time, were too expensive to transport, leading to small batch distilling on a far more local basis.The author also gives a nice discussion of how sweet and sour mash differ and why they yield slightly different end products. One of the bits of trivia included that I found interesting was what the difference in spelling of WHISKY and WHISKEY implied. The lore is that WHISKY spelling supposedly implied distillers who originally had ties to England as Canada and Scotland, while those allied with the colonists as the Irish spelled it WHISKEY. It turned out to be marketing lore, but it still makes for a good story.The manufacturing principles of distilling with many early recipes are given.What I found to be a most interesting section was on some of the early innovators in the business of making bourbon and even how bourbon supposedly got it name. For instance we learn that a Louisville physician named Jim Crow made several improvements to the distilling process and was credited with using a thermometer to record the temperature which allows greater accuracy in distillation and allows various cogeners to be included thereby affecting the desired end flavor; he also was credited with using a hydrometer to more accurately assess the true ABV level; and he used litmus paper at various steps in the process to prevent bacterial buildup from spoiling a batch. We also learn that central Kentucky is famous for its bourbon due to the limestone filtered water which is low in iron content thereby giving it its distinctive taste. We even learn how Kentucky whiskey differs from Tennessee whiskey, again this is marketing hype more than anything else.We are introduced to George Remus, called "the King of bootleggers." He was a lawyer who owned a string of pharmacies, and after prohibition was enacted, he decided he could make much more money making his own booze than buying from the few legal distillers enabled to sell to pharmacies, which could only dispense the precious spirits with a doctor's prescription. George also thought of a neat gimmick of hijacking his own insured shipments and then reselling it at much higher prices than he could in the pharmacies. He made about 40 million in the 1920s. He was eventually sentenced to two years in jail, during which time his wife Imogene filed for divorce. George wasn't too happy about what Imogene had been doing while he was behind bars. He got out before the divorce could be finalized; hunted her down; killed her then pleaded insanity and got off. He died of natural causes in 1952. Is that a cool story or what.We learn about Hiram Walker and how his Canadian whiskey morphed into a club whiskey [and what that means] called Canadian Club. There is much more in the story of bourbon whiskey than I briefly covered in this short synopsis. Highly recommended and greatly enjoyed while sipping my own favorite Kentucky bourbon.

Released earlier this year to much fanfare, Michael Veach's Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey is exactly what bourbon drinkers who are also readers have been thirsting for for at least twenty years now: a narrative history of Kentucky's bourbon industry, produced by a regular publisher and written in modern times. As such, the book deserves all the attention it has received and more.Veach is one of the very few individuals who could be described as a professional, independent bourbon historian: someone who gets paid to do bourbon history, but not at the behest of a liquor company (at least not at present). It shows, with almost a quarter of the book's page count going to the endnotes. That sort of attention to academic detail doesn't make the book an academic work, however. Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey is instead an easy read, entertaining the reader as it paints a clear picture of the ups and downs of distilling in Kentucky, from Revolutionary times right into the early 21st Century.If you read and drink bourbon, and in particular if you like to read while you drink bourbon, this is the book for you. My only complaint was with the Kindle version, where the conversion from print to e-book formatting proved crude and distracting when it came to the factoid boxes. The fault there lies with the University of Kentucky Press, however, and not Mr. Veach.Richard ThomasThe Whiskey Reviewer

I really like this book. Plain and simple. I don't consider myself an expert in Bourbon by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough to be dangerous and enough to impress my friends. That being said, Veach does a great job sifting through a ton of history (much of which is unknown and undocumented) and delivers it in a way that is both highly readable and informative.Veach does a great job of dispelling many myths and legends around bourbon whiskey and lays out as much information as he can. There will be names in the book you'll recognize: Van winkle, Stizel, Weller, Crow, E.H. Taylor, Elmer T. Lee and others, and it was interesting to put the names on the bottles into historical context.My only complaint with the book is a petty one: It's incredibly short. I finished the book in 3 hours and was left wanting more. much of the book is spent before and shortly after prohibition, and by the time we get to the names people are much more familiar with (Jim beam, buffalo trace, Labrot and Graham) we're at the end. The author states in the preface that the book is high level and an overview, and it is.I think everyone can get something out of this book. whether you've been drinking Bourbon whiskey for year, or you just learned the difference between "neat" and "on the rocks" and are wanting to start the journey, you'll find this book insightful and incredibly readable.