On October 25, 2015, I created Bourbonveach.com with the help of Maggie Kimberl. Maggie created the blog and I dictated my first blog to her, “Why is Bourbon over 80% Corn not Corn Whiskey?” and she posted the blog. In the ten years since then I have written 1,386 blogs and have had over 3.2 million views. I publish three blogs a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I created the blog to share my knowledge of Bourbon history so that anyone can read what I know. I have never intended to make money off this knowledge. As a historian, I believe in sharing knowledge freely with the hopes that other people will take that knowledge and expand upon it. I did not plan on doing tastings at first, as I did not want the blog to become another tasting site. However, after several months, I did start tasting whiskey as people started asking me my opinion on particular whiskeys. After several years, I was joined by my nephew, Matt Kohorst, in writing tasting blogs. I thought it would be good to get a younger palate tasting the whiskey and Matt kindly agreed to join me in this venture. In 2020, during Covid, Matt and I started filming YouTube videos together because we were bored during lockdown and wanted something to do. They have also proven to be popular and we continue to film tasting videos.
I write the majority of the blogs. Maggie wrote many blogs in the first couple of years, mainly cocktail and cigar blogs, but as her writing career grew, she became too busy to write for me and quit doing so. However, if she ever finds time to write another blog, I would welcome her doing so. Matt has also written a few blogs for the site. He loves smoking meat and enjoys music, so his blogs have focused upon those subjects. I don’t accept other writers on the blog, even though I get several requests every month. I want the site to remain primarily my site and do not want to lose editorial control on what is found on the site.
My blogs are a combination of historical blogs about American distilling, whiskey book reviews, tasting blogs and blogs about places and events I have visited or attended. I also enjoy writing the occasional cocktail blog, particularly about the wonderful cocktails at the Bar at Fort Nelson. Even the cocktail blogs often are history of the cocktails and what was popular during a certain era of history. The tasting blogs always pair the whiskey with a dried cranberry and a pecan because I want to see how foods will affect the flavor of the whiskey. This is something I learned while I was part of the Woodford Bourbon Academy and I credit Chris Morris and Ouita Michel with introducing me to this concept.
I hope my readers enjoy the site and I plan to continue to write blogs as long as I am healthy and able to do so. I don’t see me quitting anytime soon and I hope people will continue to read and enjoy Bourbonveach.com.
Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller