National Bourbon Heritage Month

Welcome to National Bourbon Heritage month. There’s nothing like getting sauced before marching out in the woods armed with a shotgun to hunt forty-five pound rabbits! Something about this guy just screams Elmer Fudd and it suggests an alternate reason for the hapless hunter’s speech impediment. The G&W ad is from the November 1937 issue of Life Magazine and I think it features the least realistic rabbit I've ever seen sort of Bugs or Roger.

What makes any particular whiskey bourbon? Well, according to the Fed:

• Produced in the United States
• The grain used in its manufacturing must be at least 51% corn
• It must be aged in new, charred-oak barrels
• It must be distilled to no more than 160 (U.S.) proof (80% alcohol by volume)
• Though there isn’t any defined period for aging bourbon, it must placed into the barrel for the aging process at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume)
• It must be bottled at 80 proof or more (40% alcohol by volume)

The history of bourbon is as convoluted and confused as the dirt roads that wind through the hollows and hills of Kentucky from which the spirit is reputed to originate. The first distillers in Kentucky arrived in Bardstown in the 1770s and most historians agree that by 1783 when Louisville was founded some of the area’s earliest inhabitants had already started distilling whiskey. In the eastern reaches of Old Bourbon County exports of corn whiskey became widely known as “Bourbon”, a name that stuck. At some point the barrels used for aging bourbon were charred, something often accredited to Baptist preacher Elijah Craig, and now the practice of aging bourbon in charred oak barrels has become an earmark of good bourbon whiskey.

So, raise a glass of oak, smoked cornfields, and cold limestone springs and take a moment to sit in the year’s aging sunlight. Soon enough everything will be sleet and snow, but for the moment the mellow fire of summer burns inside and everything is softened.