UNSUNG HERO

THE UNITED STATES OWES A HUGE DEBT TO A DEDICATED CHEMIST WHO ADVOCATED FOR PURITY, TRANSPARENCY, AND AUTHENTICITY IN THE WHISKEY INDUSTRY.

- by NOAH ROTHBAUM

ONE OF WHISKEY’S UNSUNG champions was Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1883 to 1912. While his name is largely forgotten now, he is in many ways the father of modern American whiskey, because his beliefs about how it should be produced and labeled are reflected in the regulations that we still follow today.

Wiley insisted that the color of the whiskey should come from aging in a barrel and that the whiskey shouldn't be so distilled or redistilled that it lost all of its innate flavor. He believed above all that whiskey should not be blended with all kinds of additives. One of his chief concerns was keeping as many of the naturally occurring flavor compounds in the whiskey as possible, which at the time was a very contentious opinion.

Essentially, Wiley’s ideal for whiskey was very similar to our current definition of straight whiskey. But in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Wiley’s opinions were not universally supported. He was forced to wage an aggressive campaign against a number of companies that realized if Wiley was successful, they would have to change their production techniques or label their spirits Differently, which would destroy their brands' reputations.

One of Wiley's main adversaries was the National Wholesale Liquor Dealers' Association, which represented many of the rectifiers that wanted the rules around whiskey to be fairly loose.