Noah Rothbaum has been writing about cocktails and whiskey for 25 years. He just released his fourth book, The Whiskey Bible: A Complete Guide to the World’s Greatest Spirit, a massive 600-plus-page tome that covers the history of whiskey, the nuts and bolts of how it’s made, and even dozens of cocktail recipes to try at home. Here’s what the author had to say about his years of research and discovery.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

The Unicorn Review: How would you like me to introduce you?

Noah Rothbaum: Booze writer Noah Rothbaum? People ask me about beer or wine, and while I enjoy drinking wine and beer, I'm not an expert. Please feel free to ask me anything about whiskey! This is my fourth book, which I can't believe. They keep getting bigger.

That's a good problem to have because I feel like a lot of the cocktail books now are pared down so they are like an airport read. The Whiskey Bible seems to be many books in one. 

Absolutely. Each chapter could be its own book. Nobody had ever done, to my knowledge, a whiskey timeline across all categories. That could have been its own book. There are 60 whiskey cocktail recipes in the back—30 classics and 30 modern classics from top bartenders around the world.

What are some of the myths that you tried to debunk in this book? 

As I started writing, I realized that, collectively, so much of what we know is not correct. Nobody had really done a deep dive into the origins of whiskey lore around the world. So much of what we thought we knew turns out not to be true.

In American whiskey, obviously, we use new barrels. You ask people when that started, and you either hear, "We've always done that, it’s part of our tradition,” or that it started in the 1960s when Congress called bourbon America's native spirit. But in reality, I found out that it happened right after [Prohibition’s] repeal.

The FAA (the Federal Alcohol Authority) was trying to create new standards of identity, and also ways to collect taxes which we desperately needed during the Depression. There was a fight in Washington, D.C. between bourbon and rye makers over whether or not they should use new oak. At the time, the coopers had already lost beer producers because they had switched to steel kegs, so they couldn't afford to lose the whiskey makers too. Bourbon obviously benefits from aging in a new barrel. But, at the time, a lot of rye was aged in used oak.

So not only was this a way to help the coopers, but also a way for bourbon producers to kind of stick it to rye producers. Back then, people were either rye drinkers or bourbon drinkers. Now everybody drinks both, and bourbon producers make both types of whiskey, but it was way more contentious then. It was a way for bourbon producers to really hurt rye producers by making them use new barrels. This was something that played out in the halls of Congress for years as they're debating this.

That's really fascinating. I don't know if this came up in your research, but the other side of that was that it was part of a jobs bill to get people back to work at the tail end of the Great Depression. 

The country could not afford more people losing their jobs at that moment. Requiring essentially all whiskey makers in America to use barrels was a boon to coopers, arborists, and the people who owned the forests. It makes sense that they were trying to get as many people back to work, and we all pay income tax because of Prohibition. It was very hard for the government to justify Prohibition because the alcohol business was such an economic driver, and it was hard to continue Prohibition when we needed the economic stimulus from the booze business.

Another thing that I found was that a lot of the decisions that distillers or brands made in the past seem to be very calculated. But in reality, they're very practical and we've given them all types of romantic notions. The Macallan has the smallest stills in Scotland, which obviously has a direct effect upon how the whiskey tastes. But at the time, it was probably because most people were buying used stills.

Maybe those were the only stills available, or maybe their barn had a short roof. Glenmorangie has the tallest stills in Scotland. That obviously affects the way that the whiskey tastes. But when it started, I doubt that the founders were thinking, “This is taller, we'll have more reflux, it's going to be a lighter spirit.” They were like, "This is what's available and what we can afford.”

So did you find in your research that a lot of the answers just really come down to practicality?

Absolutely. The underlying story is often taxation and sometimes necessity. People make alcohol with whatever they can get, whether it's barley or grapes or potatoes or corn. Whatever grows locally, they're going to turn into alcohol. We kind of forget that. In the modern world, we can go to a grocery store and get kiwis all year round. Well, that wasn't the case when people started distilling.

One of the things that I tell people all the time is that bourbon didn't come about because a bunch of dudes were sitting around a conference room table saying, "We're going to make it out of corn, we're going to put it in this kind of still." It's all these incremental changes that have taken place largely out of necessity over the years. When you really dive into it, you realize this thing that we think has remained unchanged for generations has really changed quite a lot.

Anybody who tells you that their whiskey is exactly the same as what they were producing 100 years ago, that's not true. Everything changes. The grain changes, the yeast changes, the technology, even the techniques change.

One of the other fallacies is that we can debate day and night who first created whiskey, whether it was Ireland or Scotland. But the truth of the matter is, the whiskey that people were drinking centuries ago had almost no relation to what we drink today or what we call whiskey today. Whiskey started out as a clear spirit flavored with botanicals and honey and raisins, depending upon where it was made. In some ways, it was closer to gin.

In fact, the modern whiskey age actually starts much later than we think. Whiskey was really far behind other spirits until, essentially phylloxera, which pushes whiskey out in front of people. Because other types of drinks weren't available, people began to look at whiskey seriously for the first time. 

That makes sense, because if you've been drinking wine or brandy or champagne for generations, and suddenly there's this spirit that's harsh and woody and big and bold and spicy, it makes sense that it would not be quickly adopted.

A lot of medical journals covered phylloxera because, at the time, cognac and brandy were common medicines that were being prescribed. Doctors were given the seal of approval to start prescribing whiskey instead of brandy or cognac, which was also a huge boon to sales. It's all these interesting global developments that cross over and create movements and trends.

I found that Jack Daniel’s was historically made on a three chamber still, which explains why they use the Lincoln County process—to clean up the spirit coming off that kind of still. The way that Jack Daniel’s makes their whiskey today, they don't need to use the Lincoln County process. It's a modern column still. Dickel uses the Lincoln County process too. They don't have a rectifying part of their still.

My contention is that when they rebuilt their distillery in the '50s, they made the still that way so it would mimic the flavor of a chamber still, and they also used the Lincoln County process. That's something that nobody talks about. People were charcoal filtering water and other things long before we were making whiskey. It was a well-known technique. We even see the Lincoln County process being used by other brands in the 1860s. But my contention is that Jack Daniel’s and Dickel and others were using charcoal filtration because they were using a chamber still and that was less developed than our modern still technology.

Are there any mysteries that you were not able to get to the bottom of?

One glaring one would be where the name bourbon comes from. There's a great quote in which someone says, "We'll never know, and it doesn't matter." From what I remember, it started showing up in old newspapers in the early 1800s. But before that, it's also being used for coffee,  which is very confusing. It's shrouded in mystery.

There have been many explanations for when we started calling bourbon “bourbon,” but none of them really check out. There's no smoking gun. But the incredible thing is that tomorrow somebody could find a book, a newspaper article, a pamphlet, or a memoir that has a description of why or how that came to be.

What do you want the takeaway to be for people who might be interested in reading this book? 

The Whiskey Bible is truly for everybody. Whether you're just getting into whiskey or you've been a fan for years, you should find plenty of information in the book. Most people won’t read it cover to cover, although you certainly could. But I imagine that it would be most helpful if somebody sees a bottle and wants to find out more about it, they could read that section about that distillery or distiller.

Obviously, I enjoy the act of drinking, but it's more satisfying when I know about the person who has made it, where it comes from, and how it reflects its origins and its location. I hope that people will be a little more educated, and they'll read The Whiskey Bible and be able to tell their friends and family about that whiskey.

Intentionally, I did not put in tasting notes. I think it's more important for people to know about the house style, the history, the people who made it, and you can taste for yourself. What's so lacking is that basic knowledge about what makes a place so interesting. And hopefully, that's presented in an entertaining, accessible way for everybody.