The short answer: In the late 1800s, much of what was sold as whiskey was neutral spirit colored and flavored to look aged. The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, backed by distiller Colonel Edmund H. Taylor Jr. and Treasury Secretary John G. Carlisle, created the first government guarantee of what was in the bottle.
The problem
Rectifiers bought cheap spirit and doctored it with coloring, sweeteners and flavorings, then sold it as aged whiskey. Drinkers had no way to tell real from fake, and honest distillers were undercut.
The fix
Under the 1897 Act, a whiskey could be labeled bottled-in-bond only if it was:
- Made by one distiller, in one distilling season
- Aged at least four years in a government-bonded warehouse
- Bottled at 100 proof
The government's involvement was the guarantee: the whiskey sat under federal supervision until it was bottled. Those rules still apply today, with the label naming the distillery where it was made.
Why it still matters
More than a century later, "bottled-in-bond" is still one of the most trustworthy phrases on a whiskey label, and Colonel Taylor's name is on a line of bonded bourbon today.
Read more: what bourbon label terms actually mean · browse bourbon