More than just being well-stocked in bars across the country, whiskey has become a sensation that drives many modern men mad. Halfway decent bourbons and ryes fly off of store shelves, while truly great ones entice folks to queue up as though Michael Jordan were coming out of retirement. Fanaticism over the so-called best of the best bottles—your Pappys, BTAC, and other “LEs"—has even led to stores holding lotteries so that both geeks and average Joes can have a shot at obtaining these "unicorn" bottles. Refilling scandals and bottle heists aside, the industry wasn’t always so flush with excitement. In fact, most of whiskey history has been about simple survival, starting from its earliest days in this country.

Americans were still painting on cave walls when whiskey was first emerging in Europe in the early 1000s. And many of the great Irish whiskey and Scotch houses were already up and fully operational by the time some American (maybe named Jacob Spears) finally figured out that throwing corn distillate into charred oak barrels made for a tasty spirit. Eventually, bourbon (and, to a lesser extent, rye) whiskey’s history would go lockstep with this country’s history. It survived colonial rebellions, was encouraged to “go west, young man,” and cheekily managed to exist during prohibition (and the even darker recent era of vodka adoration) before finally becoming something not just as American as apple pie or Quarter Pounders, but something officially tied to the U.S. of A.

To find out more about the history of the world’s greatest spirit, we spoke to Fred Minnick, perhaps this country’s preeminent whiskey writer, who recently wrote Bourbon: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of an American Whiskey. In the process of talking to Minnick, he explained how whiskey has gone through a continuous series of ups and downs, battles and rebellions, surviving setbacks, and ultimately proving victorious—for the time-being.

Here is the illustrated history of American whiskey.

The Whiskey Rebellion and Kentucky Migration