In March of 2022, while digging for information related to a theory on the origins of the term “straight,” I sought out the expertise of Justin Nathaniel Cherry, an incredible baker, owner of Half Crown Bakehouse, and grain historian at Mount Vernon’s Mill and Distillery in Virginia. I had found, through my research, that the earliest use of the term “straight” wasn’t used for whiskey at all. In fact, the earliest use of the term began in the early 1800s when it was being used by the flour/milling industry. “Straight flour” was consistently showing up as a common term used in commodity market listings and in shipping manifests. So, I asked Justin Cherry about the use of “straight” in flour production in the 18th and 19th centuries. He explained that the flour/milling industry was inventing words to describe the quality of bulk commodity flours being produced by all the new roller mills being built in the 1830s and 40s.
Roller mills were a new technology that millers and distillers were quickly embracing during the mid-19th century. Steam was replacing waterpower in the milling process, making the entire process more consistent, less wasteful, and significantly more productive when it came to output. “Straight flour,” Justin told me, described the “grinding of flour dust and middlings.” Don’t worry about understanding those milling terms- You don’t need to understand the intricacies of a grist mill or the differences between grinds to see that this term “straight flour” was becoming more common within the trade. (The term “straight” is still used to describe flour today, though only within the industry. It doesn’t show up on grocery store shelves.)
Around 1850, early use of the term “straight” was being applied in the western territories by liquor salesmen and liquor shop owners to describe unrectified, barrel-aged whiskeys. Ads were listing straight whiskeys as being whiskeys that were at least a year or older during the 1840s-1850s. This coincides with the completion of the railroads heading west. The western territories were gaining more immediate access to products produced in the eastern markets. Could it be that whiskey salesmen in the early 1800s were applying language to whiskey that was normally reserved for describing grain quality? It seems likely. The term “straight” is connected to the histories of both flour and whiskey, though the connection to flour IS OLDER.
The term “straight flour” implied quality. Of course, straight whiskey, as we think of it, wasn’t applied with any regularity to bourbon or any other whiskey until around the 1870s. Before that, bourbon was simply referred to as “pure bourbon.” Bourbon whiskey makers would embrace the word “straight” while rye makers preferred to stick with the tried-and-true term “pure rye.” Perhaps the stubbornness of Eastern rye makers contributed to their rejection of new terms like “straight.” It certainly helped to differentiate them from bourbon makers in the south.
