The term rotgut, when referring to alcohol, has a long history going back more than 400 years to its origins in England when it was specifically associated with bad beer.

The term made the jump to America and by the mid-1800s was connected to whiskey, often bourbon, which at the time was mixed with ingredients like creosote and strychnine.

Before the federal government regulated the liquor industry, especially in the frontier West, unscrupulous businesses claimed that their mixed products were bourbon.

The federal government finally began cracking down on these crooked companies, but the Prohibition years of the ‘20s and ‘30s made the rotgut whiskey deadlier.

When the ban on alcohol was put in place, bootleggers began making rotgut whiskey that included methanol, also known as wood alcohol, with deadly results.

While not all rotgut was deadly, it often tasted so bad that it gave rise to new drinks, including the Dubonnet cocktail, that better masked the taste of the inferior alcohol.

Today, the term rotgut has come to mean any cheap alcohol; however, several bottom-shelf bourbons are worth buying, including selections from Wild Turkey and Jim Beam.