Can Pennsylvania Become the Kentucky of Rye Whiskey?

Whiskey rebels tar-and-feather a tax collector during the Whiskey Rebellion
(1791-1794)

What is creativity?

Some say it is the act of combining two or more things that haven’t been combined before, or combining them in a new way, thereby making something beneficial and new.

Somebody put peanut butter and jelly together for the first time.

Alcoholic beverages often are combined with other things, food obviously, but also history and culture.

That is the set-up for what the recently launched Whiskey Rebellion Trail is trying to accomplish. It is ambitious and risky, and a conceptual stretch, but they just might pull it off, as we consider in the new issue of The Bourbon Country Reader.

The Whiskey Rebellion Trail has three main parts: the Rebellion itself, the region’s rye whiskey heritage, and its booming craft distillery movement.

The Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794) was, of course, a historic event of great importance to the early life of the American republic. Seemingly unrelated is the modern craft distillery movement. The thread that pulls all the pieces together is Pennsylvania’s historic importance as a producer of rye whiskey, produced there then and produced there now. As the popularity of rye whiskey has surged in the last few years, Pennsylvania distillers have tried to help Pennsylvania own rye whiskey the way Kentucky owns bourbon. That’s a high bar but worthy.

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