AN AMERICAN TIPPLE

The popularity and exponential growth of the American whiskey industry

- NIKHIL AGARWAL

The United States of America as we know it today began to take shape somewhere late in the 17th century. Masses of immigrants from mostly Western Europe armed with skills and dreams crossed the Atlantic Ocean on ships to claim their futures in the new and unknown world.

Those with the skill of distilling found an abundance of rye and corn to use as raw materials to convert them to whiskeys, different from the barley and grains they were used to distilling within their homeland now far away. They also found out that aside from this new and abundant crop they had access to pure water filtered through limestone rock that added to the whiskey's quality.

These settlers left everything behind to create this new world using innovation and a larger-than-life thought process. Their take on making whiskey in America reflected this mindset. The oak must be charred by lighting it on fire from the inside before putting the spirit into it to age, to get the effects of caramelised wood, big and complex flavours. The Americans like to bottle their whiskeys at high alcohol strengths to give each sip layers and depth.

In the case of Tennessee whiskey, they use the Lincoln Country process of passing the spirit through sugar maple charcoal to give the whiskey a smooth, mellow richness the world loves.

This is America's contribution to the global whiskey world.

Bourbon and rye whiskeys can be made anywhere but we mainly see a concentration of whiskeys coming out of Kentucky. The whiskey industry was thriving in the late 17th century but then it suffered many serious setbacks, the first being the application of a Whiskey Tax. This led not only to what is now called the Whiskey Rebellion but also made many distilleries relocate to Kentucky and Tennessee where this tax did not apply.

Eventually, the tax was lifted, and whiskey sales started to grow rapidly. Bourbon and Rye distilleries mushroomed across the country.