50 Fun Facts About Bourbon

Which US city is home to a Bourbon Street that was laid out in 1721, before bourbon whiskey existed?

New Orleans got its street plan from engineer Adrien de Pauger in 1721, generations before Kentucky distillers began selling whiskey under the same name.

Which grain must make up at least 51% of the recipe for a whiskey to be labeled bourbon?

Corn is the one grain the law insists on, and the remainder of the recipe can be any cereal the distiller chooses.

Bourbon County, Kentucky, a likely source of the whiskey's name, was itself named to honor whom?

A French royal family, the House of Bourbon, was being thanked: King Louis XVI had backed the colonies during the American Revolutionary War.

Which bourbon cocktail, traditionally served in a silver cup, is the Kentucky Derby's signature drink?

Mint julep has been promoted at Churchill Downs since 1938. Drinkers traditionally hold the cup only by its top and bottom edges, so their hands do not warm it.

What do distillers call the portion of aging bourbon that evaporates through the barrel each year?

Angel's share losses can actually make a bourbon stronger: when more water than alcohol escapes, what stays in the barrel gains potency.

Bourbon barrels can be filled only once, so which spirit's makers buy many of them second-hand?

Scotch whisky has no new-barrel rule, so its makers gladly take the barrels that American law stops bourbon distillers from refilling.

Which Kentucky bourbon is sold in squarish bottles sealed with a trademarked coating of red wax?

Maker's Mark owes the look to Margie Samuels, the founder's wife, who also gave the whiskey its name and drew its label.

During Prohibition, six companies could still legally bottle bourbon and other whiskey for which purpose?

Medicinal use meant a doctor's prescription was required to buy a bottle, while the ban devastated the rest of the bourbon industry.

Bourbon barrels are built by craftspeople with which traditional job title, the origin of a common surname?

Cooper is the old trade name for barrel makers, who heat or steam each wooden plank until it is pliable enough to bend into shape.

Which Hollywood actor was hired in 2016 as creative director of a major Kentucky bourbon brand?

Matthew McConaughey was brought in as both creative director and spokesman, with a brief to win over more women and more drinkers overseas.

Federal rules say bourbon must be aged in new, charred containers made from which type of wood?

Oak is the only wood the rules allow, and charring it is what gives bourbon its brown color and much of its distinctive taste.

Which classic cocktail muddles sugar with bitters before adding bourbon and an orange garnish?

Old fashioned was what drinkers called the original recipe of spirits, bitters, water and sugar when it came back into vogue, and its short glass now shares the name.

Which living ingredient, added last to the cooked grains, ferments a bourbon's sugars into alcohol?

Yeast strains are treated as heirlooms: one famous Kentucky bourbon family kept the same strain going from the end of Prohibition onward.

Kentucky bourbon distillers credit their iron-free water to natural filtering through which type of rock?

Limestone is so plentiful beneath central Kentucky that distillers tout the filtering it gives their water as a signature step in making bourbon.

The Kentucky version of which vodka, ginger and lime cocktail simply swaps in bourbon as the spirit?

Moscow mule is an American invention despite its name: a 1942 Hollywood column placed its origin in Los Angeles, where the drink was then most popular.

Which bourbon is named for the family distiller who rebuilt the business in 1933 after Prohibition ended?

Jim Beam was James Beauregard Beam, and at least seven generations of his family have made whiskey for the company since 1795.

Which bourbon is said to be named after samples an executive took on a 1940 hunting trip?

Wild Turkey, the story goes, began when Austin Nichols executive Thomas McCarthy brought warehouse samples along on a shoot for that very bird.

A drinker who orders a bourbon served "neat" should expect the whiskey to arrive in which way?

No ice or mixer is the rule for a neat pour, which also arrives at room temperature rather than chilled.

Which cocktail stirs bourbon or another whiskey with sweet vermouth and bitters, then adds a maraschino cherry?

Manhattan drinkers usually get two parts whiskey to one part vermouth, stirred rather than shaken and strained into a chilled glass.

Which famously hard-to-find wheated bourbon shows its namesake lighting a cigar on the bottle's label?

Pappy Van Winkle is made in such small quantities, and aged for as long as 23 years, that bottles are extremely difficult to find.

Which famous Lynchburg whiskey do its makers insist is not a bourbon, citing an extra charcoal-filtering step?

Jack Daniel's is sold as Tennessee whiskey, yet trade law defines that style as a bourbon made in Tennessee, and the distillery's home county is dry.

On an American bourbon label, which stated figure is always exactly twice the alcohol percentage by volume?

Proof is defined differently from country to country, but in the United States it is simply double the ABV, so a bourbon at 100 is half alcohol.

Which Kentucky city's Main Street earned the nickname Whiskey Row as the home of the bourbon trade?

Louisville's Whiskey Row stands close to the Ohio River, and its cast-iron-fronted buildings once stored barrels from the distilleries nearby.

Bourbon stills are traditionally built from which metal, valued because it strips sulfur compounds from the spirit?

Copper reacts with the sulfur in the rising vapor and holds on to it; left in, those compounds would make the whiskey unpleasant to drink.

In the American South, bourbon mixed with plain water is traditionally ordered as "bourbon and" what?

Branch is a Southern term for water from a natural stream, though at a bar it now simply means plain water rather than soda.

Which word on a bourbon label promises at least two years of aging and no added coloring or flavoring?

Straight is a legal term rather than marketing: a bourbon sold without the word has no minimum aging period at all.

Which label term, created by an 1897 law, guarantees a four-year-old bourbon from one distillery and one season?

Bottled-in-bond rules answered widespread adulteration of American whiskey by making the federal government the guarantor of what was in the bottle.

Which bourbon-making method starts each new fermentation with spent grain from the previous batch for consistency?

Sour mash is named for the acid the old batch brings with it, which keeps unwanted bacteria in check while the new one ferments.

Which term do bourbon distillers share with brewers for the recipe of grains that goes into each batch?

Mash bill details are a selling point for bourbon fans: swap the usual rye for wheat, and the result is sold as a wheated bourbon.

What do bourbon makers call the unaged spirit that comes fresh off the still, before any barrel time?

White dog goes into the barrel as clear as water; every bit of a bourbon's color comes later, from the charred wood.

Which Baptist minister is often credited, in bourbon legend, as the first to age whiskey in charred barrels?

Elijah Craig was a busy entrepreneur as well as a preacher, credited with Kentucky firsts that include a paper mill, a fulling mill and a ropewalk.

Which bourbon, launched in 1870, was the first to be sold exclusively in sealed bottles?

Old Forester was the idea of George Garvin Brown, a former pharmaceutical salesman, and it has stayed on the market longer than any other bourbon.

Which Frankfort bourbon distillery claims to be the oldest continuously operating distillery in the United States?

Buffalo Trace takes its name from an ancient trackway where herds crossed the Kentucky River, and it was allowed to keep working through Prohibition.

Which bourbon, launched in 1984 as the first modern single-barrel brand, tops each bottle with a racehorse stopper?

Blanton's stoppers come in eight designs, each carrying one letter of the name and showing a different moment of a horse race.

Which bourbon is made at the former Old Oscar Pepper Distillery, about eight miles from Versailles, Kentucky?

Woodford Reserve's home is a National Historic Landmark, and the brand has long marked the Kentucky Derby with a commemorative bottle.

Which step filters new Tennessee whiskey through charcoal before it goes into barrels, setting it apart from bourbon?

Lincoln County Process is a name frozen in time: it honors the county where a famous distillery began, yet the method is no longer used there.

Which Kentucky town hosts the annual Kentucky Bourbon Festival and calls itself the Bourbon Capital of the World?

Bardstown's boast is official in one sense: the festival's organizers registered the phrase as a trademark that applies specifically to the town.

What name is given to each of the narrow wooden planks that form the curved sides of a bourbon barrel?

Staves bound with hoops are an ancient design: an Egyptian tomb painting from about 2600 BC shows a wooden tub built the same way.

Which cocktail of bourbon, Campari and sweet vermouth first appeared in a Paris bar book in 1927?

Boulevardier was also the name of a Paris magazine founded by the drink's creator, Erskine Gwynne, and the recipe then went unmentioned in cocktail books for 80 years.

Ruth Booe of Rebecca Ruth Candies invented which whiskey-laced Kentucky chocolate treat in 1938?

Bourbon balls made to her recipe wrap a creamy, whiskey-laced center in dark chocolate and finish it with a pecan on top.

What short name is given to the stopper that seals the filling hole of a bourbon barrel?

Bung is the stopper and the bunghole is the opening it plugs, bored into the middle of the barrel so the whiskey can be drawn out later.

When a bourbon label states an age, the number must refer to which whiskey in the bottle?

The youngest whiskey in the blend sets the number, so everything else in a bottle marked 10 years is at least that old.

The bourbon brand 1792, made at the Barton distillery, is named for the year of which event?

Kentucky's statehood gives the brand its number, though the bottle has changed names: it was formerly sold as Ridgewood Reserve 1792 and as 1792 Ridgemont Reserve.

Booker's bourbon goes into the bottle undiluted, at the potency it left the barrel, a style known as what?

Cask strength Booker's began as a gift: distiller Booker Noe first bottled it for close friends and family before a 1,000-case public release in 1988.

Which bourbon is named for a Welsh immigrant whose 1783 still is marked as Kentucky's first commercial distillery?

Evan Williams was born in Dale, Pembrokeshire, and a historical marker now stands on the site where he is said to have begun distilling.

Which family-owned Kentucky distiller lost about 90,000 barrels of bourbon in a huge warehouse fire in 1996?

Heaven Hill's fire sent a river of flaming whiskey flowing from the warehouses and almost completely destroyed its production plant.

Which Japanese drinks company agreed in 2014 to pay about $13.6 billion for the American maker of Knob Creek bourbon?

Suntory kept the American company as a subsidiary, which was renamed Suntory Global Spirits in 2024.

Bourbon vanilla contains no whiskey: it is named after the former name of which Indian Ocean island?

Réunion was once called Île Bourbon, and the label now covers vanilla grown across the region, most of it in Madagascar.

The portrait on every bottle of Old Grand-Dad bourbon shows which distiller, the grandfather of the brand's creator?

Basil Hayden was well known as a distiller in his own lifetime, though the family's first commercial distillery was not created until 1840.

Which nickname is given to the pot still that redistills bourbon as vapor, rather than as liquid like a doubler?

Thumper and doubler do the same job, a second distillation in a pot still, but the doubler is fed spirit that has already been cooled to liquid.