Tuscaloosa Whiskey‽‽‽
March 8, 2016 6:33 AM   Subscribe

I found a reference to Tuscaloosa Whiskey in an old book explaining how to copy liquor. Tuscaloosa is my hometown, and I've never heard of this before. Newspaper archives reveal many people advertising that they have Tuscaloosa Whiskey for sale around 1850. Does anyone have suggestions of how to learn anything more about Tuscaloosa Whiskey?

Who made it? Where was it made? Does the real recipe survive? Are there any contemporary reviews of it? What books (that Google hasn't scanned) should I look at? Are there whiskey historians I can email? I've reached out to a few people in Tuscaloosa, but haven't found anything through those channels yet.
posted by gregr to Society & Culture (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
The opening post in this old thread seems to infer that Tuscaloosa Whiskey was a mix of plain neutral alcohol and various flavorants.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:17 AM on March 8, 2016


Response by poster: @Thorzdad there are two recipes for Tuscaloosa Whiskey listed in that book on how to copy liquor, the one from that thread seems to also come from that book. I'm assuming, that these recipes attempt to copy some original, though I'm not totally sure of that.

@witchen I actually work on the Univeristy of Alabama campus. I'll walk over this week and see if special collections has any recommendations.
posted by gregr at 7:36 AM on March 8, 2016


link
posted by parmanparman at 10:38 AM on March 8, 2016


I found a hit in ProQuest from the Wall Street Journal: a review of the book "American Amber" by historian Michael R. Veach. Looks like it would be worth looking up in a library. Relevant quotes:

"...While bourbon lore is mostly fun, there is an industry-wide misdirection at work that obscures the actual history of the trade. The nation's distillers market their whiskey as one part olde apothecary (look at the labels) and one part log-cabin folklore. The recipes are supposedly family secrets, closely guarded while generations stirred the same small pot and proudly bottled their whiskey in the family cave. Bourbon labels are works of art, not public record. As the spirits writer Chuck Cowdery once wrote regarding this phenomenon: "There are no actual Keebler Elves."

...The importance of marketing "genuine" whiskey as such was fueled by the prevalence of rectifiers, who took high proof, clear spirit and flavored it to resemble the whiskeys of the day. Mr. Veach quotes from a manual published around 1860 that has recipes for imitating the flavors of not only Irish, Scotch and Old Bourbon Whiskey but also for Tuscaloosa Whiskey (flavored with tea and wintergreen, colored with cochineal and burnt sugar) and Oronoko Rye Whiskey (refined sugar, burnt sugar, tea and oil of pear). These recipes, writes Mr. Veach, are valuable not only as "direct evidence of the way in which cheap whiskey was being produced" but also as "indirect evidence about the products being imitated."
posted by Miko at 5:11 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


A Google Book Search on Veach + "Tuscaloosa Whiskey" should get you a relevant excerpt in the preview of his book: Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage.
posted by Miko at 5:13 PM on March 8, 2016


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