In 1952, the Jim Beam Co. introduced the first of what would become hundreds of specialty bottles and decanters made from glass, china and ceramics that honored states, sports, celebrities and more. A series of Executive Decanters was decorated with 22-karat gold. The…
On Nov. 5, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office by defeating Wendell L. Willkie. Celebrate by drinking an Old Fashioned, which was said to be Roosevelt’s drink of choice in the book “Whiskey, An American Pictorial…
In light of yesterday (Oct. 28) being the 94th anniversary of the day Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, thus beginning Prohibition, here is an interesting fact from Sam K. Cecil’s book, “The Evolution of the…
The word “speakeasy,” first used to describe an unlicensed saloon around 1890, is the combination of the words speak + easy, from the practice of speaking quietly about such a place in public, or when inside it, so as not…
In the early days of whiskey-making, there was little consistency from batch to batch. That changed largely due to the efforts of one Dr. James Christopher Crow, a Scottish immigrant trained in medicine and chemistry who took a job with…
The first malting house in Kentucky was in Woodford County. There are no longer any malting houses in the state. Corsair Artisan Distillery, which has operations in both Bowling Green, Ky., and Nashville, Tenn., is planning a malt house at…
A standard bourbon barrel holds about 53 gallons. About 3 gallons of bourbon are immediately absorbed into the wood, and approximately 3 percent is lost to evaporation each year of aging – the so-called “angel’s share.”
I’m going to be featuring a lot of tasting notes on the blog this week, so in today’s Trivia I’m sharing a tip for tasting bourbon: Don’t ”nose” it the way you do wine. You know how you stick your whole nose…
The Kentucky Distillers’ Association originally formed in 1880, when 32 distillers met at the Galt House in Louisville and organized to protect bourbon from “needless and obstructive laws and regulations.” One pretty big obstructive law, Prohibition, led to the KDA’s…
If you threw a party for the whole world, and served only the bourbon that is now aging in barrels in Kentucky, every man, woman and child* on the planet could have four drinks apiece. Source: Colin Blake, creative director…
© 2024 The Bourbon Babe
