Weekend Cooking: Bourbon by Dane Huckelbridge

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.

_______

Although many people think of apple pie, hot dogs, and baseball as being particularly American, one of the true gems of our nation is the invention of bourbon, which is based on a New World native plant: corn. Corn whiskey has been around since the first colonists and has grown from family stills to a mega-industry and now full circle back to craft distilleries over the last few hundred years.

In Bourbon, Dane Huckelbridge tells the story of the development of bourbon from the corn beers of the Aztecs to the finest sipping whiskeys of the twenty-first century. His fun, entertaining, and casual style masks a well-researched study of the history of American whiskey and the part it played in our society. The books is easy to read because Huckelbridge quotes diaries, letters, and historical documents and breaks up the text with fabulous old photographs and period advertisements.

I enjoyed this short history of the quintessential American drink and learned quite a bit about bourbon and its role in American history. Here are few things I discovered:

• George Washington had multiple whiskey stills; not surprising considering that the farm manager of Mount Vernon was a Scotsman.
• Moonshiners made a fortune selling whiskey to soldiers during the Civil War; a canteen full of bourbon cost at least $10.
• Many of the brands of bourbon we drink today have roots more than 150 years deep.
• Most of the whiskey sold in the Wild West saloons was bourbon, although not all of it was the good stuff from Kentucky.
• Within an hour of the passing of the Volstead Act, a "medicinal whiskey" supplier had been robbed of $100,000 worth of bourbon.
• Bourbon distilleries were used to produce industrial alcohol during World War II.

Bourbon is a quick read that takes you through the history of America as seen through the rise and fall and rise again of an all-American drink. As I mentioned, Dane Huckelbridge's style is far from academic, and he includes a number of stories about famous Americans and their love of corn whiskey. This isn't what you learned in high school American history!

Thanks to Huckelbridge, I think I'm going to have to take a drive along the Bourbon Trail, tasting my way through Kentucky. I wonder if I can talk Mr. BFR into being the designated driver.

Published by HarperCollins / William Morrow, 2014
ISBN-13: 9780062241399
Source: Review (see review policy)
Copyright © cbl for Beth Fish Reads, all rights reserved (see review policy)