Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Raise a Golden Glass for National Bourbon Heritage Month

TJ Carter
By

national bourbon heritage month
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Bourbon may be a French word, but it’s an all-American spirit. Sweet, delicious bourbon tastes the way gold looks, and serves as a trusty companion to, well, just about anything. Since a single day can’t sufficiently honor such a divine spirit, this September is National Bourbon Heritage Month.

This isn’t just some arbitrary celebration manufactured by corporate interests — god, no; rather, it’s an arbitrary month-long holiday manufactured by the U.S. Congress in 2007. The resolution creating the holiday was passed by unanimous consent, proving that our lawmakers are capable of agreeing on something.   

national bourbon heritage month
Image used with permission by copyright holder

As with many old and hallowed things, the origin of bourbon is somewhat unclear. Bourbon was likely developed by European settlers of the American frontier (Appalachia) during late 1700s. In a Bourbon Country Reader article, whiskey writer Charles K. Cowdery writes that whiskey-making on the frontier was “as common as baking bread.”

Recommended Videos

Some claim that a Baptist minister named Elijah Craig made the first Kentucky bourbon in the 1780s, when he opened a distillery in what would become Georgetown, KY. While Craig was a real figure, this is a massaging of the truth perpetuated by anti-temperance folks in the late 19th century (“bourbon can’t be all bad — it was invented by a minister!”).  

Related: The Best Old Fashioned Recipe

Related

Bourbon is named after Kentucky’s Bourbon County, the spirit’s widely accepted birthplace. Bourbon County was so named as a tribute to the French, who lent the U.S. a hand during the American Revolution. The spirit swiftly gained popularity and was eventually sold downriver to New Orleans, where the population embraced it as an inexpensive alternative to Cognac. The rest is sweet, golden history.

In 1964, Congress declared bourbon “America’s Native Spirit” and laid down hard and fast rules for what exactly bourbon is and isn’t. Bourbon must be made with at least 51% corn, stored in charred white oak barrels, distilled at less than 160 proof (80% ABV), and have no artificial flavoring. Today, bourbon accounts for at least two-thirds of all U.S. spirit exports.

We could write about bourbon for days, but we’d rather be drinking it. Without further ado, here are some excellent bourbon drink ideas that you might consider sometime this month (and every month after, until the sun explodes).  

1. The AnytimerThe Anytimer burned

Ingredients:

  • 1.3 oz Bulleit Bourbon
  • 1 oz orange juice
  • 1 oz. lemon juice
  • ½ oz. simple syrup
  • ½ oz. amaretto

Directions:

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into an ice-filled glass. Garnish with an orange and cherry.

2. Gramercy Buck

(Created by Amanda Tissue of the Gramercy Park Hotel, NYC)Gramercy Buck

Ingredients:

  • 1.3 oz. Blade and Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
  • 1 oz. lemon juice
  • .75 oz. simple syrup
  • muddled strawberries
  • ginger beer

Directions:

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a highball glass. Top off with ginger beer.

3. Old FashionedOld Fashioned 2

Ingredients:

  • 1.3 oz. I.W. Harper Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
  • Bar spoon of brown sugar
  • Dash of orange bitters
  • 2 dashes aromatic bitters

Directions:

Combine ingredients in a tumbler, stir. Garnish with orange twist and cherry. 

4. Orphan Barrel Rhetoric 21 Year OldRhetoric 21-Year-Old Bottle Shot burned

Ingredients:

Directions:

Enjoy neat or on the rocks

Editors' Recommendations

TJ Carter
TJ Carter
Former Digital Trends Contributor
TJ Carter wears many hats, both figuratively and literally. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 2011 with a degree…
The 10 Best Whiskies For Boulevardiers
Boulevardiers

Looking to up your cocktail game during quarantine, but not sure where to start? Well, say you want bourbon (because yes, bourbon is as much a summer liquor as it is a fall or winter one), and you want something boozy (because quarantine). Well, we have just the thing for you.

One of the biggest cocktail fads of the last few years has got to be the rise of the Negroni. This classic Italian aperitif combines gin, Campari, sweet vermouth, and an orange slice, resulting in a refreshing and bittersweet libation ideal for warm afternoons and evenings.

Read more
Kentucky’s New Riff Distillery Has Released a Peated Bourbon and Rye
New Riff Distillery

New Riff is a newcomer to the Kentucky whiskey scene, but has made quite a name for itself already. The bourbon and rye it distills are both bottled-in-bond, meaning they are at least four years old and bottled at 100 proof. The mash bill for the bourbon is high-rye (65% corn, 30% rye, 5% malted barley) while the rye is 100% rye (with 5% malted rye). The latest additions to the lineup are two whiskeys called Backsetter, a bourbon and a rye that use peated malt in their production. The whiskey is also bottled-in-bond and not chill filtered. New Riff co-founder Jay Erisman said that this project came about back in 2015 in a sort of understated fashion. "I wish I could say there was some grand, overarching strategy to make an absolutely unprecedented whiskey," he said, "but really it was a matter of a creative, intrepid team of distillers at a young distillery determined to make a new riff on an old tradition. Backsetter is a collision of old and new; a cover tune, perhaps of a Scottish Hebridean reel filtered (or rather, unfiltered) through Kentucky bluegrass and a Marshall stack."

The name Backsetter is really just a reference to the classic Kentucky sour mash process, where a portion of the stillage left over from distillation is added to the next batch, kind of like a sourdough starter. "We strain off a portion of the stillage, and 'set it back' to add into the next mash," said Erisman. "This is called (in old time Kentucky distilling parlance), 'backset.' Some 25 percent of the liquid content of a mash consists of backset. What makes these Backsetter whiskeys so unique is the nature of that backset: it was from a peated malted barley distillation."

Read more
A Brief History of The Whiskey Sour
A whiskey sour atop a table.

The Whiskey Sour officially dates back to the 1860s, but sailors in the British Navy had been drinking something very similar long before that. On long sea journeys, water was not always dependable, so to combat that, spirits were often used. Scurvy, too, was another danger on these journeys, so lemons and limes were consumed to help prevent the disease (incidentally, this is also one of the reasons why British folk are called ‘Limeys’). Finally, sugar and water were added for taste. At this point, the drink is probably starting to sound familiar. (Grog, the rum-based favorite of pirates across the seven seas, is made from the same components, substituting whiskey for the sugar cane-based spirit.)

When it comes to the official record, there are three main points of reference for the Whiskey Sour. The first written record comes in the seminal 1862 book The Bartender’s Guide: How To Mix Drinks by Jerry Thomas. The original recipe reads:

Read more