Page "Elijah Craig" Paragraph 12

As American whiskey authority Charles Kendrick Cowdery has observed, " By the time Bourbon County was formed in 1785, there were dozens if not hundreds of small farmer-distillers making whiskey throughout the region … Ultimately, most of the corn-based whiskey made west of the Alleghenies was called ' bourbon ', to distinguish it from the rye-based whiskies that predominated in the East.

" Cowdery and some other historians assert that no actual historical evidence exists to indicate that Craig's whiskey was unique in its time or that he practiced charring of the aging barrels, and that the first known publication potentially alluding to Craig as the inventor of bourbon was not published until 1874 ( and includes only a brief entry in a densely packed list without actually mentioning Craig himself or pointing to any evidence, and without any elaboration as to what was claimed to distinguish the product as the first bourbon ).

In fact, it has been stated that considerable evidence exists to indicate that " Elijah was making exactly the same kind of whiskey that most of his contempararies were making " and that Craig's reputation as the inventor of bourbon is simply a " charming legend ".