What party, dinner, visit to a restaurant or a tailgate gathering would be complete with Kentucky’s gift to adult beverages. Bourbon is most certainly social.
When the settlers moved into the territory of Kentucky they began farming. And one of the key crops was corn. Often, it was easier to turn that corn into alcohol rather than store or transport large quantities of the crop.
During prohibition there were distillers in Kentucky who could continue producing bourbon legally for medicinal purposes. I suspect that when some people visited the doctor and said “It hurts when I do this” the answer was not “Don’t do that.” Instead they may have been given a prescription for a pint of bourbon.
So you see, here are two aspects of the social nature of bourbon.
In 1963 the University of Kentucky Press published The Social History of Bourbon: An Unhurried Account of Our Star-Spangled American Drink, by Gerald Carson.
Carson wrote several books looking at the social history of products. Another of his works was on breakfast cereal.
Here’s your chance to add The Social History of Bourbon to you library.
Fill out the entry form below to be entered into a random drawing for a copy of the book. A big thanks goes out to The University of Kentucky Press for offering me a copy of the book. Be sure to take a look at the official contest rules.
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