Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey by Michael R. Veach

Author:Michael R. Veach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

It took a number of years for the concept of bottled-in-bond whiskey to become well-known among the general public, even though public attention had been first drawn to the practice by Hiram Walker and Sons’ 1893 Chicago World’s Fair exhibit, which spotlighted the Canadian bottled-in-bond law, which had been passed in 1883. In fact, the passing of the Bottled-in-Bond Act went almost unnoticed until the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, where one feature of the Kentucky Building was a display sponsored by Kentucky distillers explaining the difference between bonded and nonbonded whiskey. From that time until Prohibition, sales of bottled-in-bond whiskey improved every year.

The war between the distillers and the rectifiers was not yet over, however. The two groups crossed swords again over the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. The act had been prompted by the recent work of those investigative journals known as muckrakers who exposed the dangers to which the practices of many companies in the food and drug industries exposed consumers. Whiskey, which fell under its purview, was defined in it as straight whiskey. All other products were imitations or compounds and should be labeled as such. This set the stage for a fight that would last over three years.

The rectifiers challenged this definition of whiskey. They argued not only that their whiskey was whiskey but also that it was the most pure form of whiskey, straight whiskey being higher in congeners and fusel oils, many of which were poisonous. Canadian and British producers joined in the challenge since, if the definition were upheld, almost all Canadian and Scotch whiskey exported to the United States would have to be labeled as imitation. Straight whiskey producers countered that the rectifiers did, in fact, add substances to their products, that many of these substances were newly developed, that the long-term effects of these substances on the human body were unknown, and that even some of the more familiar substances (such as sulfuric acid) were known to be harmful.

Pure Food and Drug Act

President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was a progressive-minded president who sought social reforms through government. One of these reforms was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which prevented the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines and liquors” (William L. Downard, Dictionary of the History of the American Brewing and Distilling Industries [Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980], 155). The act covered interstate and foreign commerce and had an impact on the spirits industry worldwide since, to sell their products in the United States, distillers had to follow the regulations established by the act.

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