When Evan Williams opened his commercial whiskey distillery in 1783, it was the first of its kind. A few years later, in 1785, Bourbon County in Kentucky was named after the House of Bourbon, the French royal family, and in 1788 Jacob Beam settled in Bourbon County and began distilling whiskey. Eventually, the Whiskey Rebellion that took place from 1791 to 1794 caused Northern distillers to relocate to Kentucky.
Over the next hundred years, new technology helped the bourbon whiskey industry grow, such as the sour mash process. In 1880, the Kentucky Distillers Association was formed in order to protect the bourbon industry from growing prohibitionist sentiment. In 1888, Paul Jones, Jr. trademarked Four Roses Bourbon. Ten years later, Kentucky senator E. H. Taylor introduced the Bottled in Bond Act to authenticate bourbon quality.
During Prohibition, the period from 1920 to 1933 in which the sale, production, and distribution of alcohol was illegal, Four Roses was one of just six bourbon distilleries legally allowed to remain open for “medicinal purposes only.” In the 1960s, Four Roses stopped being sold in the US until, in 2002, it began to be sold once again. To find out more about the history of bourbon whiskey, check out this infographic presented by Four Roses Bourbon.
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