Authors: Reid Mitenbuler
America beckoned. Starting around 1717, large waves of Scotch-Irish streamed into the Carolinas and Pennsylvania. From there, many drifted into remote western territories where, unbothered by authority, they lived as they pleased and put their indelible stamp on the land. John Steinbeck many years later would write in
East of Eden,
“The names of places carry a charge of the people who named them, reverent or irreverent, descriptive, either poetic or disparaging.” The Scotch-Irish gave the American places where they made whiskey names like Gallows Branch, Cutthroat Gap, or, in one instance, Shitbritches Creek. In Lunenburg County, Virginia, they even named two streams Tickle Cunt Branch and Fucking Creek. They often called themselves “rednecks,” an old Scots border term for Presbyterians. Another title they used for themselves was “crackers,” a term that came from the Scots word
craik,
which literally means “talk,” but was typically used to describe the kind of loud bragging that usually leads to a fight.
The Scotch-Irish in America intimidated easterners who failed to understand why these backwoodsmen would actually choose to live in the howling wilderness. During their odd visits back east, these people from the frontier wore buckskin and spoke of living among Indians while at the same time killing them. Many seemed to prefer this dangerous life. They emerged only periodically from the woods, sporting long greasy hair and rifles that proved deadly accurate against tiny squirrels or other humans. They were accomplished killers whose skills at fighting were matched only by their ability to turn grain into liquor.
British general Cornwallis was particularly wary of having these men along his western flank as he marched north in 1780, the prospect of defeating the rebels coming into sharper focus. The two years since Valley Forge had been miserable for the Continental Army, forcing George Washington to write in one letter that “I have almost ceased to hope.” Cornwallis, cautious as victory loomed, sent a thousand troops inland under the command of a brash major named Patrick Ferguson to protect his flank against the frontiersmen who threatened his northern advance. Ferguson, sniffing at the group of frontiersmen he called a “set of mongrels,” strutted to the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains and told the “backwater men” that if the frontier didn’t surrender to the Crown, it would be met with “fire and sword.”
Ferguson clearly didn’t consider his audience very well, and the threat only could have dredged up bad memories with Americans who had abandoned the Crown on poor terms. The frontiersmen responded by rallying two thousand troops, many reporting for duty with little more than a rifle and a blanket for sleeping outdoors. A Scotch-Irish preacher named Samuel Doak replied that Ferguson’s threat would be matched by “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”
The sides clashed at Kings Mountain in South Carolina near the North Carolina border. The frontiersmen cornered the British troops on the mountain peak, killing Ferguson with at least eight shots when he refused to surrender. Colonial losses were 28 killed and 62 wounded; Tory casualties were nearly 300 killed, 163 wounded, and almost 700 taken prisoner. The victory greatly boosted American morale, undermined Cornwallis’s campaign, and was praised by Thomas Jefferson for helping turn the “tide of success which terminated the Revolutionary War with the seal of independence.”
Washington, his morale lifted, was characteristically more reticent than Jefferson, calling the battle proof of the “spirit and resources of the country.” The backwoodsmen had given him the boost he needed. Their whiskey—made entirely from homegrown grains and not reliant on imports—increasingly turned into a popular symbol of national unity that helped clear away rum’s whiff of colonial rule.
But while Washington was appreciative for now, he’d eventually find himself on the wrong side of the frontiersmen’s ferocity a decade later, when he made the same mistake the British had years earlier, of trying to tax their whiskey to pay for a war they had helped win.
• • •
The modern distillery at Mount Vernon is housed in a barn covering an area a little smaller than a basketball court. It holds five stills, just like it did in the 1790s when the distillery, at its peak, produced over eleven thousand gallons per year. Today it is a kind of working museum and the inside is dark and warm, full of scents of smoke and cooking grains. Steven Bashore, who currently manages the distillery and its adjacent gristmill, where grains are ground into flour, shows me around. Whiskey was one of Mount Vernon’s most important business ventures and demand from nearby customers was brisk from the beginning, Bashore explains. History books, however, rarely mention this fact, probably because of historically unfavorable opinions of alcohol surrounding the temperance movement, he continues. But as attitudes toward whiskey have improved Mount Vernon has decided to highlight the distillery as part of the nation’s heritage, rebuilt in part with funds from the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), the whiskey industry’s biggest lobbying group. As we poke about, Bashore, wearing a full period costume, tells me that the historic site intends to promote the idea of Washington as a businessman as much as a military and political leader.
The distillery makes rye whiskey, based on a recipe from Mount Vernon’s records but reengineered for the modern effort by David Pickerell, a former master distiller at Maker’s Mark who now consults with numerous craft distilling upstarts, making him a kind of Johnny Appleseed of America’s burgeoning craft whiskey movement. Pickerell holds two degrees in chemistry and his knowledge of distilling is legendary. His is a Midas touch to emerging outfits who otherwise would have spent decades struggling to learn a craft with one of the longest learning curves in the food business.
Rye whiskey, made primarily from the grain it takes its name from, was the dominant whiskey of the United States’ early decades. The grain grows well where other grains don’t, particularly in parts of eastern states like Maryland, New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. To be labeled rye whiskey today, the spirit must contain at least 51 percent rye, with the remainder of the grains left up to the distiller. Many of today’s rye recipes, though not all, contain at least some corn. The original recipe for Washington’s whiskey was about 60 percent rye, 35 percent corn, and 5 percent malted barley (distilleries typically refer to the proportions of grains as the “mash bill”). This approximates what today is often called the Maryland style of rye, including modern brands like Pikesville, which have a considerable amount of corn. Pennsylvania-style mash bills, such as Dad’s Hat Rye, generally carry more than 80 percent rye (or are entirely made of it), although neither the Pennsylvania nor Maryland styles is regulated by a strict definition (and there is a minor debate about their origins). No matter the grain makeup, most American whiskies contain at least a little barley because it is a good source of the enzymes that convert grain starches into fermentable sugars.
Think of rye as bourbon’s sibling. The majority of modern recipes for each style of whiskey contain the same ingredients, just in different proportions (bourbon’s greater portion of corn would become the eventual result of people moving west and settling land where the grain thrived even more than it did back east). Rye whiskey was best described by the American historian and author Bernard DeVoto, who once wrote, “In the heroic ages our forefathers invented self-government, the Constitution, and bourbon, and on the way to them they invented rye.”
The rye grain is also an important part of traditional bourbon. The majority of bourbon brands today incorporate rye into their recipes as a “flavor grain” to help balance corn’s sweetness with rye’s dry spiciness. There are a handful of contemporary bourbon brands, such as Maker’s Mark and W.L. Weller, that use wheat as a flavor grain instead, which
lends a sweet smoothness in place of rye’s kick, but wheat is typically an exception, and the mash bills of most bourbon brands generally use between 10 and 20 percent rye. Some “high-rye” bourbons, such as Bulleit, use 28 percent rye or even more, although there’s no official definition of what is “high” or “low” rye content (Old Grand-Dad is another high-rye bourbon, carrying a mash bill that’s 30 percent rye). Wild Turkey, with a rye content of about 13 percent, is generally considered a medium-rye bourbon.
The combination of rye and corn in a whiskey forms a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Corn on its own can sometimes taste a little one-note, but rye gives depth in the way that adding a horn section to a band helps bring a song alive. Rye on its own is often flavorful and delicious, but can also have a spiky quality that benefits from the introduction of a smoother corn spirit to mellow its edges. If the grains in bourbon formed a band, corn would be the suave frontman, providing body and mass but not quite able to hold the stage down all by himself. Rye would play bass, giving the ensemble style and soul but a little weird when heard playing alone. You’d still recognize the song without rye, but it wouldn’t have near the same groove.
Just as Washington’s distillery was being rebuilt, rye whiskey, which largely disappeared from American liquor stores during the later decades of the twentieth century as tastes veered toward different drinks, started making a comeback. Its retro status as a forgotten treasure clicked with drinkers and a cocktail scene looking to the past for nostalgic inspiration. Many new craft distilleries emerging during that time chose to make it in order to create a name for themselves by doing something different from the bourbons that more established distilleries were already doing very well. Rye’s relative obscurity gave it the kind of outsider cred that’s the currency of cool.
Of course, not everything at Washington’s rebuilt distillery is exactly the same as it was two hundred years ago. Bashore and his colleagues, careful not to sugarcoat things, emphasize that slaves were about 75 percent of the distillery’s original workforce. Also, Washington wasn’t making his whiskey for connoisseurship. He, like other
distillers of this time, made it to sell as a bulk commodity—brand names didn’t yet exist and producers like Washington therefore had no incentive to spend the time or money to age it. Whiskey was often stored in ceramic crocks owned by the final purchaser, which added nothing to the flavor, and barrels were only used to briefly transport it, which added little.
A book in Mount Vernon’s main museum contains Martha Washington’s recipes for dressing up young spirits with fruit to make cordials. This was needed in light of the reality that George Washington’s whiskey probably tasted hot and harsh, and achieving consistency between batches was almost certainly a problem (nevertheless, the modern unaged version sells for an eye-popping ninety-five dollars per pint in the museum gift shop, no doubt due to its novelty status as “Washington’s whiskey”). When I try a sample, it’s relatively bright and clean for a white dog, but by no means good enough to enjoy regularly on its own. Bashore hands me another sample that’s been aged for two years and it’s much better—the wood has contributed notes of light pepper and tangerine, although it could still use a little more time. In any case, it’s no doubt better than any of the spirits drunk by the frontier rebels who were about to rise up and threaten the young nation’s survival after Washington decided to tax the whiskey that had become an important part of their economy.
• • •
As George Washington slogged through the humid hills of western Pennsylvania on his way to subdue the Whiskey Rebellion during the summer of 1794, all he really wanted was to return home to Mount Vernon. He was barely a year into his second presidential term, which he had originally hoped to avoid, and was feeling the strain of his sixty-two years as the steel parts of his dentures cut into his inflamed gums. Now he had to take care of this mess on the frontier.
Settlers in isolated regions of the countryside had risen up against the unpopular whiskey tax Washington had implemented three years earlier in 1791. Since then, the insurrection had swelled into a debate
over the nation’s soul. The question of how to best tax whiskey would partially determine how to organize a loose collection of isolated areas into a nation. Would big business or small be the guiding force? The rebellion threatened the young nation’s sovereignty, and because Washington had speculatively invested in frontier property, it also threatened his personal fortune.
Two opposing sides were arguing their cases in each of Washington’s tired old ears. His response would not only draw the blueprint for the nation’s economic future, it would determine how the whiskey industry would operate and decide whether distillers would have a proper environment to refine their craft.
On one side was Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s right-hand man since the Revolution and the architect of the hated whiskey tax. Hamilton came from humble beginnings in the Caribbean but had pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps to quickly gain acceptance among the elite power brokers of New York finance. During the Revolution, he was assigned to Washington’s staff and impressed the general, quickly becoming one of Washington’s most trusted advisers. After the war, he was appointed as the first treasury secretary at the age of thirty-two. From that lofty perch he championed industry and big finance and wrote the whiskey tax to promote the advancement of larger, more established distilleries on the East Coast, to the detriment of smaller frontier distilleries. His grave today rests in his adopted city of New York, in a cemetery at the top of Wall Street.
Talking into Washington’s other ear was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was familiar with the same elite circles as Washington and Hamilton—he had inherited five thousand acres and a full labor force of slaves—but his sympathies ultimately rested with the small farmers operating the thousands of tiny stills puffing away on the frontier. To him, those small farmers were “the chosen people of God” and Jefferson didn’t think they should be governed by Hamilton’s brand of centralized policies, which he called “a tissue of machinations against the liberty of his country.” Whereas Hamilton was a devotee of the economist and philosopher David Hume, who
argued that a nation’s success relied on wealth controlled by a few powerful individuals who knew how to invest it properly; Jefferson championed local economies. He was a disciple of the writer John Locke, whose hands-off philosophy of laissez-faire economics promoted a decentralized version of capitalism.