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Kentucky Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey are called the original American spirits, their origins dating back to the first European settlements in the fifteenth century. Determined to make a new life in the Kentucky wilderness, settlers first arrived in Kentucky around 1767. Traveling from Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas, these early settlers were lured to Kentucky by stories of rich soil and abundant game. With a long history of distilling, settlers carried on their tradition of making whiskey in their new home. Kentucky settlers made a living in the ways common on the frontier. Many traded animal skins, worked as blacksmiths or felled trees to earn their way. But most planted crops, including wheat, rye, corn, tobacco and sorghum. There were often surplus grains, which had to be utilized before they rotted. Frequently, this grain was used to make whiskey, popular for its many uses. Kentucky bourbon whiskey was prescribed for its medicinal qualities and was used to barter with the native Americans for food, fur and sometimes land. Around the mid-1800's, the business of grain production became secondary to the production of whiskey. The spirit had become a very valuable commodity on the frontier, worth much more than the value of the grains used to make it. In the early 1800's, the only method of shipping was to painstakingly load the 600 pound barrels of whiskey onto flatboats. In the spring, after the thaw, the barrels were floated down river to New Orleans for sale. Merchants and frontiersman alike savored the product and by the 1840's began calling it bourbon, after the county in Kentucky where much of the whiskey was produced.
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