"According to Gerald Carson's book "The Social History of Bourbon", the former governor of Kentucky Augustus Owsley Stanley claimed that the first Kentucky whiskey was made from rye, but following a disastrous rye crop one spring, "the Kentucky distillers mixed corn meal with their rye mash as a desperate expedient, and so discovered the proportions of what became famous later as bourbon.""
"Whether or not this legend is true, Carson writes: "For a long time, and just how long no one knows, whiskey was just whiskey in Kentucky ... Packaged in uncharred barrels and with no identification as to its source, the liquor was colorless, with a sharp odor, and biting taste." Early so-called bourbon therefore had more in common with the unaged, untaxed, and illicit liquor we today know as moonshine due to its potent, less refined profile."
Bourbon is defined under U.S. regulations as a mash of at least 51% corn, distilled no higher than 160 proof, and aged in new charred oak barrels. Nineteenth-century bourbon differed markedly in taste and production from the modern legal definition. A legend credits a failed rye crop with Kentucky distillers adding cornmeal to rye mash, producing the corn-forward proportions associated with bourbon. Early Kentucky whiskey was often unaged, stored in uncharred barrels, colorless, sharp, and biting. The Gilded Age whiskey industry suffered corruption and tax evasion, and much early bourbon resembled unaged, untaxed moonshine.
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