Blue (Grass) Velvet

Like jazz, bourbon is truly American. Its birth dates to 1791, when the Distilled Spirits Tax led to the Whiskey Rebellion, and angry Scotch-Irish moonshiners (who’d made Scotch from barley in their native Scotland and Ireland) headed west to the region now known as Kentucky. The thing is, barley didn’t grow well there, so the ’shiners planted rye instead, which German settlers had been using to make schnapps. Somehow or other, distilling corn became interesting, especially in Kentucky, where the fertile bottom loam of limestone-water creeks helped raise richly flavored grain.