(Entree Dallas)
In the early 19th Century, bourbon was still in its infancy. It was less refined, less consistent, and much less available than it would eventually become. Before the drink of Jacob Beam could become the megabrand of Jim Beam, before bourbon could find its way into saloons and barrooms around the country, before it could be recognized as America’s drink, many other things around it had to change. Industrialization would create previously unimaginable possibilities of scale and provide methods of getting that unheard of volume of product to ever more, bigger, distant markets. Circumstances beyond anyone’s control would introduce whole regions of the United States to Kentucky whiskey. The need to fund America’s costliest-ever war would change the way the nation is taxed and shape the uneasy relationship between whiskey and Washington. Westward expansion and Manifest Destiny would take bourbon to every corner of this nation, where it fueled cowboy and Indian alike. Corruption, greed and legal wrangling would lead to the first laws determining what can be called bourbon just before even more corruption, greed, legal wrangling and a lot of stupidity made alcohol illegal altogether. Bourbon traveled a long, unlikely and unpredictable road from a drink produced by countless distillers in a 19th Century cottage industry to the major conglomerated operations of today. Packed with winners, losers, casualties, and captains of industry, bourbon’s journey helped define the drink. A familiarity with that journey is essential to an understanding of the marketplace today, and to know what it really is that you are ordering at the bar.
In the early days, bourbon was laborious and time consuming to make, was costly to consume and was different from one batch to the next. Bourbon begged for the labor-saving ease, scale and consistency that only industrialization can provide. The first major improvement in the technique and practice of distillation in possibly 1000 years was the invention of an Irishman named Aeneas Coffey: the Coffey still. For the entire history of distillation prior to Mr. Coffey’s invention, everything was the product of a pot still – a metal (usually copper), bulb-shaped vessel with a coil at the top. A pot still can only produce whiskey (or whatever else is being distilled) one batch at a time. A Coffey, or continuous, still can operate continuously and is not limited to making only individual batches. To say that there is disagreement about the relative merits of these two types of stills is to put it mildly. Irish distillers are particularly attached to their pot stills, while the Coffey still led to the creation of blended Scotch whiskies. Bourbon distillers use a column still – an American variant of Mr. Coffey’s design. According to Gavin D. Smith’s definition in “The A-Z of Whisky,” a column still works in stages. The first column separates the alcohol from the wash and the second column further refines the spirit. Some American column stills are over four stories in height. While some bourbon whiskeys, like Woodford Reserve, are still (at least partially) produced in pot stills, columns are the norm. Without the enormous scale that the continuous operation of column stills makes possible, large scale whiskey production would be but a dream and even bottom shelf bourbon would be an expensive beverage.
There is however, little point in making a lot of whiskey if one cannot sell it. The means to move the product to market is an absolute necessity in all industries. As has already been seen in “Bourbon: Part One,” early bourbon distillers benefited from access to navigable rivers. The obvious drawback of using only rivers and riverboats as the vessels of freight transportation is that the product can only be sold in riverside and port towns. One particular product of 19th Century industrialization changed all of that: the railroad. In Kentucky, the railroad meant the L&N, or Louisville and Nashville. According to Paul F. Pacult, the L&N could cover the 185 miles between Louisville and Nashville in only ten hours – an amazing rate of speed in 1850. Just as early distilleries were always built on streams, by the middle of the century, distillers began building along rail lines. Trains could carry more freight farther and to more places in less time than any other mode of transportation yet invented. Trains were only limited by the rails they rode on. The 19th Century saw an absolute explosion of the rail industry. Construction of rail lines was booming at such a pace that nothing could stop it, except for explosions of another kind. The American Civil War (1861-1865) stopped everything. Even in initially neutral Kentucky, the trains had to dump the whiskey and make room for soldiers and cannons. Both armies enthusiastically took to the practice of destroying rails and rolling stock if they thought that doing so might give the other side a headache. But the destruction of railroads was the least of the problems caused by the war.
Because whiskey is made from grain, its availability and quality depend on the distiller’s ability to procure corn and other grains. As Pacult points out, when the war started, there were so few men left on the farms that grain harvests were dramatically reduced during the war years. Add to that the requisition of corn and grain by both armies in order to feed soldiers and even livestock. In addition, what corn was available for distillation was not always available for beverage alcohol. Whiskey was widely used for medicinal purposes in the 19th Century and in the Civil War there was a particular need for whiskey as both an antiseptic and an anesthetic. These factors drove the price of whiskey up considerably. Pacult notes that a gallon of Old Tub (an old brand of the Beam family) cost $0.25 in 1860 but had risen to $35 by 1863, the midpoint of the war. To put that into perspective, $35 is about the price of a 750ml bottle of some of Jim Beam’s premium brands today, 150 years later. However, whiskey was still available. In “The Life of Johnny Reb,” historian Bell Irvin Wiley notes that heavy drinking was quite prevalent in the Confederate Army. Despite the scarcity of distilled spirits after 1862, soldiers still managed to find and drink whiskey in “amazing quantities.” Soldiers always had a way of finding whiskey in cities such as Atlanta or Richmond. In the country and even in camp whiskey was still available as some soldiers doubled as bootleggers. Throughout the war, Reb and Yank often found themselves close enough to each other that, when there was no shooting going on at the moment, they could be “civil,” have a chat, and share a drink. For many soldiers from the Northeast, that shared drink was often their first taste of Southern whiskey. In that regard, the war may have actually expanded bourbon’s market.
When the war ended, the South was devastated. Many Southern cities had been destroyed – Atlanta had been completely destroyed – and nobody had any money. Kentucky avoided many of the problems that her Southern neighbors faced during the years of Reconstruction by initially remaining neutral and then joining on the Union side. Kentucky distillers were in a much better position to resume production after the war than was anyone in any of the Southern states. However, a quarter of the distillers operating in Kentucky in 1860 still went out of business during the war and Reconstruction years and never came back. With the Southern states decimated and suffering from crippled economies, and the Northern states also busy recovering, the nation looked west. The progress of the railroads that had been halted by the war resumed immediately after the war had finished. In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad track was completed and it became possible to move large amounts of people and goods all the way to San Francisco in record time. The drink that went out west was whiskey. It had to be. Whiskey is stronger than beer and wine and, therefore, stretches further, making whiskey a more efficient cargo. In addition, beer and wine would not have held up very well for very long in the sort of conditions that usually prevailed on journeys across the continent into the Old West. Whiskey was completely ubiquitous in the Old West. Every establishment that had a bar and even some that didn’t have a bar, served whiskey. As Charles K. Cowdery cleverly put it: “The cowboy in town with money in his pockets had three entertainment options: the saloon which featured whiskey, women, and gambling; the dance hall which featured whiskey, women, and music; and the brothel which concentrated on whiskey and women.” Whiskey was everywhere in the Old West. But, unfortunately for cowboys spending their hard-earned, whiskey in the Old West was almost never any good. The whiskey that was served in a bar in a Western mining camp was almost never the same as when it left Kentucky. Many distillers, led primarily by Colonel E.H. Taylor wanted to change that. After all, if whiskey is funding the federal government it is only fair that she get some protection from Uncle Sam in return.
In the 19th Century, most whiskey when it reached the consumer was “rectified whiskey.” In one sense, “rectified” means blended, but it means a lot more than that. Many distillers sold their product while it was still new, unaged. Unaged whiskey is clear and lacks much of the flavor that aged whiskeys have. Rectifiers frequently “aged” whiskey artificially. Caramel and other natural flavors and colorings were common, but so were many additives that were harmful to the drinker. There were not any regulations in place to let the drinker know exactly what he was drinking. There was no legal system in place to guarantee that a whiskey is as old as the seller says. Many times, if the rectifier was going to go to the trouble of artificially aging a whiskey, then he might as well go to the trouble of lying and calling it several years old. It should be noted that not all whiskey rectifiers were illicit. Some operated in much the same way that blenders of Scotch whisky do: they merely blended several whiskeys, possibly added some neutral grain spirit, and sold the result honestly as a “rectified bourbon.” However, many sold rotgut under false pretenses. What was worse for many reputable distillers was that some rectifiers sold rotgut under a counterfeit label. Colonel E.H. Taylor was particularly concerned that the law should protect the integrity of bourbon and of the distilling industry as a whole. In response, partly to Colonel Taylor’s efforts, Congress passed in 1898, the Bottled in Bond Act. This act enabled a distiller to put the words “Bottled in Bond” on the whiskey label, provided that the whiskey had spent at least four years in a bonded warehouse and was bottled at 100 proof . The Bottled in Bond Act of 1898 was among the first food and drug purity acts in the United States. That law gave distillers a way to distinguish their product from counterfeiters and rectifiers who sold artificially aged whiskey. But, it still remained for the law to define bourbon.
Kentucky distillers wanted a legally defined way to distinguish their whiskey from everyone else’s. Some distillers, including the so-called “Whiskey Trust” (a consortium of distillers who, in 1890s fashion, colluded to increase mutual profits), wanted only bourbon to even be allowed to be called whiskey. Scotch, it was argued, is too recognizably different to be of any concern. What the distillers in the whiskey trust were concerned about was what they called “imitation whiskey.” They wanted such whiskey to even say “imitation whiskey” on the label, and much of what they were referring to was from Canada. Hiram Walker & Sons – makers of Canadian Club – particularly objected to that idea. They even went so far as to publish a pamphlet about the attempt to establish standards for whiskey labels that, not without hyperbole, was titled “A Plot Against the People.” Food and Drug purity laws seem to us today like their merit should have always been plain to see, but there was a very long and hard fight between various whiskey interests in Washington D.C. Every distiller and rectifier seemed to have his own idea about what whiskey is. It was left mainly to Dr. Harvey Wiley, the chief of the Bureau of Chemistry to decide, and he largely sided with the bourbon distillers. In the end, it was agreed that only whiskey made in the United States can be called bourbon. Furthermore, the whiskey must be made from at least 51% corn, though not entirely from corn. Bourbon whiskey cannot be distilled at higher than 160 proof, cannot be aged at higher than 125 proof, and it must be aged for at least two years in new, charred oak barrels. Straight bourbon whiskey may not have any additives. President Roosevelt signed that bill into law in 1906. It became effective in 1907. The next time the government would rule on whiskey, it would outlaw whiskey and every other alcoholic beverage.
Up next: Prohibition, conglomeration, and bourbon today.