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... ..a quantity of foreign and domestic liquors,—consisting of French Brandy, Peach Brandy, Rum, Wine, Gin Cordial, Cherry Bounce, Monongahela Whisky, Cincinnati Rectified Whisky, Country Whisky...
cowdery wrote:I also believe that at this time it described a place of origin and not a "style" as such, in that someone was not making a "Monongahela-style whiskey" in Indiana or, for that matter, in Pennsylvania. It meant "whiskey from the Monongahela region" but that doesn't mean it wasn't stylistically distinctive.
cowdery wrote: Modern bourbon evolved when people discovered that a little rye went a long way in a corn spirit, in terms of giving it a pleasing flavor that was not as overpowering as the Monongahela.
cowdery wrote:Frontier producers don't have any reason to name a style. They're making whiskey and, where they are, it's the only whiskey there is, so they call it "whiskey" and leave it at that. A "type" name (e.g., Monongahela) only emerges when the product enters commerce in markets away from its point of origin, where the merchants and consumers need to distinguish one product from another.
cowdery wrote:I also believe that at this time it described a place of origin and not a "style" as such, in that someone was not making a "Monongahela-style whiskey" in Indiana or, for that matter, in Pennsylvania... ..It meant "whiskey from the Monongahela region" but that doesn't mean it wasn't stylistically distinctive.
afisher wrote:I think in addition to meaning "whiskey from the Monongahela region" it probably specifically meant it was stylistically distinctive; otherwise who cares? Why bother specifying?
cowdery wrote:"Rectified" meant "corrected," which typically involved redistillation or filtering through charcoal or bone dust, which was done to eliminate more of the undesirable congeners, but it would be going too far to equate that with neutral spirit or with what we would consider blended whiskey today.
Since this was before the introduction of the column still, there probably were issues of whiskey straight from the distillery often being too low in alcohol content and what the rectifier was "fixing" through redistillation was bringing the whiskey up to proof (i.e., 50% ABV).
cowdery wrote:I am convinced that Monongahela was made primarily from rye and thus, even aged, had a stronger and rougher flavor than corn whiskey. I also suspect that some of the first corn whiskey, or bourbon, in commerce, where it would have been compared to Monongahela and other spirits, was either 100% corn or made with corn and barley malt only, and thus had very little flavor. Modern bourbon evolved when people discovered that a little rye went a long way in a corn spirit, in terms of giving it a pleasing flavor that was not as overpowering as the Monongahela.
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