Kentucky distillers have produced bourbon and rye whiskeys for more than two centuries. Part I of this book examines the complexities associated with nineteenth-century distilling’s evolution from an artisanal craft practiced by farmers and millers to a large-scale mechanized industry that adopted increasingly refined production techniques. The change from waterpower to steam engines permitted the relocation of distilleries away from traditional sites along creeks or at large springs. Commercial-scale distilling was accompanied by increasing government taxes and oversight controls. Mechanized distilleries readily expanded production and increased their demand for labor, grains, cooperage, copper stills, and other metal fixtures. Improved transportation—turnpikes, steamboats, trains, and dams and locks—allowed distillers to extend their reach for grains and equipment while distributing their product to national and international markets. Industrial production produced large amounts of spent grains, or slop, which had to be disposed of by feeding it to livestock or dumping it in sinkholes and creeks. Industrialization also increased the risk of fire, explosions, personal injury, and livestock diseases. Overproduction during the last third of the nineteenth century, among other problems, forced many distilleries to stop production or close. The temperance movement eventually led to Prohibition, which was in effect nationwide from 1920 to 1933. A small number of distillers survived that period by making medicinal whiskey. Part II consists of two case studies that provide detailed information on the general process of mechanization and industrialization: the Henry McKenna Distillery in Nelson County, and James Stone’s Elkhorn Distillery in Scott County. Part III examines the process of claiming product identity through naming, copyright law, and the acknowledgment that tradition and heritage can be employed by contemporary distillers to market their whiskey. Distillers venerate the “old,” and reconstructing the past as a marketing strategy has demonstrated that the industry’s heritage resides on the landscape—much of it established in the nineteenth century in the form of historic buildings, traditional routes, distillery towns, and other features that can be conserved through historic preservation and utilized by contemporary whiskey makers.
