Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking

Bourbon whiskey is perhaps Kentucky’s most distinctive product. Despite bourbon’s prominence in the social and economic life of the Bluegrass state, many myths and legends surround its origins. In Kentucky Bourbon, Henry C. Crowgey claims that distilled spirits and pioneer settlement went hand in hand; Isaac Shelby, the state’s first governor, was among Kentucky’s pioneer distillers. Crowgey traces the drink’s history from its beginnings as a cottage industry to steam-based commercial operations in the period just before the Civil War. From “spirited” camp meetings, to bourbon’s use as a medium of exchange for goods and services, to the industry’s coming of age in the mid-nineteenth century, the story of Kentucky bourbon is a fascinating chapter in the state’s early history.