A resource and community for whiskey enthusiasts in and around Pennsylvania
ETYMOLOGY OF
RYE WHISKEY
By: Sam Halliday [2021]
Let's start with 'whiskey'. Like Vodka, Whiskey derives from the Proto-Indo-European *wódr̥ (water). PIE *wedor (collective nominative of wódr̥) became 'wando' (water) in Proto-Balto-Slavic, and voda (water). Vodka was a diminutive of voda, so 'little water', meaning roughly watering down, as in 'vodka of grain wine (distillate)'. Grain wine was the old term for vodka, but 'vodka' became shorthand for the finished product in a process called ellipsis.
On the other hand, whiskey comes from the PIE *uden (genitive singular of wódr̥) which became Proto-Celtic uden+sk+yos (water), with the suffixes making it a noun. And udenskyos gave rise to Irish uisce and Scottish Gaelic uisge, both still meaning water. When Irish and Scottish distillation began in the late middle ages, they were borrowing from French and Italian alchemists.
Bonaventura da Iseo coined the term aqua vite (water of vite) in reference to an alcohol he produced which supposedly had medicinal properties. While later Franciscans like Jean de Roquetaillade would render it aqua vitae (water of life), it is possible da Iseo meant an inflection of vitis (grapevine), which would make aqua vite = water of wine, in the same way 'water of grain wine' represented vodka. Regardless, aqua vitae took, slowly replacing aqua ardens (burning water).
So when Irish and Scottish distillers started their own experiments with it, they borrowed the term aqua vitae, referenced in 1405 in Ireland. Other alcohols with the same name include eau de vie and akvavit. Distillers would calque/nativise 'aqua vitae', either to Irish 'uisce beatha' (water of life) and then to Scottish Gaelic 'uisge beatha', or in Scottish Gaelic first and then adopted into Irish. I'm not going to take a stand, since it ties into issues of national pride.
Regardless, it was adopted into English as uskebeaghe (1581), iskiebae (1580s), usquebaugh (1610), usquebath (1621), and usquebea (1706). It was spelled whiskey starting in 1715, but sources continue to render it something like whiskeybae into the mid 1700s.
That's whiskey established. However, there is some confusion about the difference between kinds of whiskey. To look at the divide in American whiskey it can still be helpful to look at Europe.
Rye is an old word. Some sites have it as pre-900 but it descends from Middle English (post-1066). Merriam-Webster is probably accurate when it just says 'before the 12th century'.
Rye descends from Middle English reighe/rie, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wrughyo/*hrugʰís (Secale cereale, rye grain). Just going by wiktionary, it would seem all other descendants of *wrughyo (in Balto-Slavic, Finnic, and Germanic) refer exclusively to the grain (S. cereale), and that rye's association with alcohol is unique to English. Acc. Merriam-Webster, 'rye whiskey' is only attested in 1785.
But Rye had been used in alcohol before 1785, just not in England, where barley and wheat are more common. Roggenbier (rye beer) was common, especially in Bavaria, until banned in Munich in 1487.
The Reinheitsgebot (purity order) only allowed water, barley, hops (and yeast) as ingredients in beer, and was applied across Bavaria when it united on 15 Apr 1516; it was intended to stop price competition for wheat and rye and ensure that bakers had unrestricted access to it, and also limited the use of ingredients the religious establishment weren't comfortable with.
This essentially means that Roggenbier was common before the 1480s. And Kvass, a drink made from fermented rye flour/bread, has some antiquity; it dates back to at least the late 900s, spreading into the newly formed Poland from the Kievan Rus'. Around the same time, the barley/rye-base beer Sahti developed in Finland.
Rye and oats were wild weeds that imitated wheat and barley to survive, in a process called Vavilovian mimicry. Evolving in mountainous Anatolia, they became an annual crop rather than a perennial, but remained hardier than wheat. Wheat, which has large yields with high caloric content, but needs fertile soil and a warm climate, was perfect for Italian volcanic soil and the Egyptian floodplain. Rye, on the other hand, has a lower yield and a low caloric gain, but is durable and can be cultivated in poor soil. It has smaller leaves and a larger root system which means it uses water more efficiently. So it survives in dryer, colder, and less fertile soil. The poor soil of north-central Europe could handle a rye monoculture without soil depletion. And since rye needs frost to germinate, it cannot be cultivated far south except for the Upper Po valley and mountainous regions like Anatolia.
Indeed, the region where rye was and still is cultivated (Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, etc) lies on a transitory region approaching the Russian taiga, with generally poor soil. This is probably the reason that the Proto-Indo-European term for rye only has living descendants in the languages of this region: Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Finnic. Rye was found in this region (Merseburg) from the 600s BCE, with rye cultivation in Poland by the turn of the millenium. Rye cultivation increased in the early middle ages as migrants to northern Europe needed crops, and rye was the best option for providing for an influx of colonists into a harsh new region. Its use increased in the 900s as centralised states emerged with a rising population (or perhaps this is an illusion caused by the adoption of writing with Christianisation during the same time). In this region, rye was the most common bread and wheat was used for specialised food like brioche, pretzels, bagels, etc. It seems that well into the 20th century, home-baked bread, mostly rye, was the most common form of bread in Eastern Europe. Rye was an essential staple food into the 1800s, when it was partly replaced by potatoes, oats, and wheat. Potatoes were introduced in Poland in 1683 and gradually grew in popularity despite significant pushback. Potatoes were more space efficient, calorie dense, spoiled less, and required less work to prepare.
The same situation plays out as people colonise North America. The same cold winter/poor soil conditions, and a similarly new population that needed to produce enough to support themselves without depleting the soil, and pivot into a growing stable population. Many primarily poor German settlers to the US took rye with them, including the Overholt and Beam families, who arrived in Philadelphia on the Mary Hope in 1710. This led to the adoption of rye as the staple crop in many northern states, including Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Virgina. And since it was easy to produce more grain than could be sent to market for a profit (since grain is heavy, bulky, and can spoil), the easiest way to turn a profit off excess grain was to distill it into liquor. Liquor is denser, compact, and can be stored mostly indefinitely. Many farmers engaged in a barter system, being cash-poor, and rye whiskey was a major part of the barter system and so a major way of life. The growing centres of rye whiskey production were Allegheny Co., and Monongahela.
In 1644, whiskey was taxed in the UK, leading to a divide between legal and illegal distillers. The malt tax of 1725 led to riots, but also led licensed distilleries to move away from traditional malted barley (as in Scotch and Irish whiskey) towards grain whisky. Corn, wheat, rye, and unmalted barley were used instead of malted barley. As Irish and Scottish immigrants brought the idea of whiskey with them to the US, this undercurrent continued. Since rye grew better in American soil than barley, these immigrants were unable to replicate the old style of malted barley anyway, so had to use rye. While this is a continuation of the earlier split in whiskey production, the climate ultimately cemented the change. It was the Scottish and Irish that directed rye-distillation towards whiskey and away from rye beer, which might have seemed more obvious or traditional.
With the tax on distilled spirits in 1791, many farmers lost a major source of economic independence. Since large distillers could produce enough that taking the flat tax cost less than the per gallon tax, the law seemed to favour large companies at the expense of rural distillers. Especially since many smaller or rural distillers, ingrained in the barter system, simply didn't have any money to pay either tax. Many in Western Pennsylvania felt this unfairly favoured Easterners, and the resentment boiled over into the Whiskey rebellion.
Kentucky Co, VA was split into Fayette Co, VA in 1780, and again into Bourbon Co, VA in 1785, named for Louis XVI of the house Bourbon, for his support in the American war of Independence. Bourbon derives from the spa town of Bourbon-l'Archambault, named for a Celtic god of healing and hot springs, Borvo. Borvo means froth, foam, from *brewh (boil), from which bread, brew, and broth also derive. Weird coincidence.
In the following years, Bourbon County would be similarly splintered, but the region encompassing the old county would be referred to as 'Old Bourbon' for some time. While rye grew well up north, down in the Kentucky region the climate favoured corn and couldn't support rye. Corn whiskey had been cultivated in Jamestown in 1620 and spread west as Virginia settlers did. And, the fertile soil of the Ohio river valley could easily create a corn surplus. In a similar way to rye, the only way to turn a profit on surplus corn was to distill it or use it to feed pigs, which could be made into salted pork (which would also keep better than corn). Many distillers moved west and/or down to Kentucky to avoid government control after the Whiskey rebellion. Despite coming from rye-country, they could now only join in on making corn-based whiskey.
It was sold downriver from Limestone, Bourbon Co, VA (Maysville, VA in 1787, split into Mason Co. in 1789). The corn-base earned it a regional identifier to distinguish it from Monongahela rye whiskey down the Ohio river; barrels of whiskey were labelled 'Old Bourbon whiskey'. This would later be interpreted as Old Bourbon-Whiskey rather than Old-Bourbon Whiskey, implying something about the aging process that wasn't originally intended. This style became associated with the new state of Kentucky in 1792, and became something of a point of regional pride. It continued to thrive after the tax was ended in 1802.
Of course, Old Bourbon wasn't the only place to make whiskey in Kentucky. In 1778, George Rogers Clark settled Dunmore's island on the Ohio river and grew so much corn it was renamed Corn island. Settlers moved to the mainland in 1780, naming their settlement Louisville, also after Louis Bourbon. Situated in Jefferson Co. VA (est. 1780), named for the governor, it was situated on a major cataract/portage, the Falls of the Ohio. It was necessary to disembark and re-enter the river downstream. As harbourmaster of Louisville in 1797, local distiller Evan Williams had a significant impact on trade there. Nelson Co. VA split from Jefferson Co. in 1784, and it became a major area for Catholic settlement from Maryland in 1785. Jacob Beam, a Maryland Catholic, moved there in 1792. It seems that the influx of German Catholics was at least partly responsible for the whiskey culture that emerged in Bardstown, as Beam started distilling whiskey in 1795.
Canadian rye is a different case.
Hiram Walker moved to Detroit in 1838. In 1849, he advertised 'wheat whiskey', and experimented with distillation in 1854, but with Michigan enacting prohibition in 1855, he moved to Canada to produce whiskey. Canada, firmly north, used primarily rye (and earlier, wheat) in whiskey. Walker advertised the until-then mostly incidental, unavoidable process of barrel-aging during transport and storage. Advertised as a premium product, it was adopted in gentlemen's clubs and rebranded as Club Whiskey in 1865. When the main whiskey-producing states became a battleground during the American civil war, and the American dollar plummeting, Canadian whiskey was allowed to become a significant export. It became exceptionally popular. Protectionists demanded it be labelled as Canadian through legislation, and it was labelled as such in 1880. This became something of a marketing gimmick, rebranding as 'Canadian Club' in 1889.
In the early 1900s, Canadian whiskey distillers experimented with distilling grains individually, for greater control of the flavour profile and more precise blending options. These processes lowered production costs, allowed greater quality control, and ultimately made Canadian whiskey smoother, lighter, and milder. Increasingly blended, it lost the strong flavours associated with Bourbon or peated Scotch.
Maryland rye whiskey gained something of a reputation for being sweet, and less spicy and bold than Pennsylvania rye. Speculation on what the sweetness was attributed to include corn (being 'between' PA and KY styles), malted barley (in the style of Scotch whisky), and brewer's yeast. The weakening of Maryland rye after the 1906 Pure Food and Drug act seems to imply that sweeteners were simply mixed in. Perhaps the difference was purely imaginary. Maryland whiskey production hit a height in 1911 with 5.6 million gallons, mostly rye. There were 44 distillers, with most in the Baltimore area.
In WW1, the major rye producing regions of the world either became a direct battlefield (Poland) or enacted firm protectionist regulations to stop rye exports to focus on the war effort (Canada, Australia). Neutral US was one of the few countries to allow rye exports, as it was a major foodstuff/feeder crop. But upon entering the war in 1917, the US federal government wanted to send as much rye to the front as possible. This was a crippling blow to PA/MD rye whiskey, with smaller distillers probably already hit hard by the 1906 act, not being able to mask poor quality with sweeteners. Since corn wasn't a major export nor a ration, Bourbon was easier to keep producing. Then Kentucky enacted its prohibition in 1919, with a national prohibition in 1920, ending the official Bourbon establishment.
It seems that the mostly urban, northern rye whiskey industry was kneecapped by 1917 restrictions, unable to afford the high grain prices. During prohibition, smugglers moved to lighter drinks like gin and vodka, so the dominant whiskey of this time was imported Canadian rye, which was similarly mild compared to Pennsylvanian spiced whiskey. This ensured that no underground rye distilleries would continue up north, replaced by Canadian whiskey or sometimes imported Scotch. The rye industry withered away.
Down south, the Bourbon industry did not shift to imported whiskey under prohibition. It hadn't withered; by 1915, 70% of American whiskey was made in Kentucky. These distilleries were robbed in the early 1920s. While the upper class could afford imported or 'medicinal' whiskey, most couldn't. The Appalachians generally turned to moonshining (whiskey produced from corn mash), growing out of an underground Reconstruction tradition, keeping the Bourbon style alive somewhat. At the same time, Bourbon producers kept producing medicinal whiskey. After prohibition Bourbon made a comeback in a way that rye didn't, and after WW2, the sweet and light Bourbon was easily exported to foreign markets, and became the international image of (American) whiskey.
And Canadian 'rye' had, in its process of becoming smoother and lighter, gradually become a blended whiskey as standard. Now it is mostly corn and barley with rye added for flavour. One major exception is Alberta Premium, an 100% rye grain rye whiskey. The blended whiskey style became the standard in the northern states for some time due to the dominance of Canadian whiskey throughout and following prohibition. This association has led 'Canadian whiskey', 'Canadian rye whiskey', 'Canadian rye', and 'Rye Whiskey' to be synonymous in Canada, regardless of rye content. In opposition, a whiskey needs to be at least 51% rye to qualify as rye whiskey in the US.
So American rye is much more distinctly rye whiskey.However, the rye whiskey revival of the 21st century is essentially disconnected from the pre-prohibition industry to the point much of the knowledge of distillation has been lost. This essentially means a three way difference between old American rye, Canadian rye, and new American rye.
And so we come to the difference between whiskey varieties. Bourbon is a regional identifier, like Champagne, for US made 51%+ corn-based whiskey, with Tennessee whiskey being essentially the same as Kentucky whiskey filtered through charcoal, and Jack Daniels technically qualifying as Bourbon. While Rye whiskey is a regulated category in the US, Canadian 'Rye' is also essentially a blended Bourbon, which muddies the water a little. Scotch and Irish whiskey are traditionally malted barley-based. However, in general, all styles have trended towards blended whiskey incorporating some amount of rye, barley, and corn. This creates something of a three-point spectrum, kind of like the soil type spectrum between clay, silt, and sand.
Sources;
Wiktionary, *wodr
Wiktionary, whiskey
Marco Pierini, The Origins of Alcoholic Distillation in the West: The water of life and the Franciscan friars, The Rum Historian, 11 Feb 2019.
Wikipedia, Liquor
Online Etymology Dictionary, whiskey (n.)
Merriam-Webster, 'Whiskey' and 'Whisky' and Alchemy
Wikipedia, Whisky
Wiktionary, rye
Wikipedia, Rye beer
Wikipedia, Reinheitsgebot
Wikipedia, Vavilovian mimicry
(rye replaced by)
Wikipedia, History of the potato
Potato Pro, Big Potatoes: A History of Potatoes in Poland, 1 Jul 2019
David Furer, A History of Rye in the US, Virginia Rye, 12 Aug 2020
Wikipedia, Rye whiskey
Whisky.com, The Origin and Types of Irish Whiskey
Chris Carter, The Malt Tax riots break out across Scotland, MoneyWeek, 23 Jun 2015.
Mount Vernon, Whiskey rebellion
Wikipedia, Bourbon County, Kentucky
Wiktionary, bourbon
Caroline Paulus, Kentucky & Bourbon (Part 1) | Pioneer through Prohibition, Go Bourbon, 15 May 2017
Whiskey University, Jacob Beam
Wikipedia, Hiram Walker
Whiskey University, Canadian Club
Wikipedia, Canadian whisky
Clay Risen, Maryland Rye Whiskey has finally returned, NYT, 14 Feb 2019.
Jim Warren, Revisiting Prohibition: Kentucky was ahead of the times, Lexington Herald Leader, 10 Nov 2015
Lex History, Prohibition comes to Lexington
Bourbon Banter, How George Remus kept prohibition from killing Bourbon, 25 Sep 2013
Jason Sumich, It's all legal until you get caught: Moonshining in the Southern Appalachians, Appalachian State University, 2007
Author:
Sam Halliday
Provided by Council Member:
Brendt Halliday