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Sure us Yanks get an earful in the pages of Think Magazine, but there's one thing we can be proud of, and that's Bourbon.

Sure, over the years, bourbon has suffered some shabby treatment too:

North of Kentucky and west of the Mississippi, it was confined to biker bars, pig roasts, and shameful three-day binges.

Amateurs diluted it with soft drinks, and grannies used it to make pecan pie or Christmas cookies.

Scotch was what you drank once you made your fortune; bourbon was what you shoved in your Lee Jeans as the bank foreclosed on the trailer. But with the resurgence of single-barrel and small-batch bourbons, all that has changed, and American hooch is enjoying the renewed stature of a shit-kickin' prodigal son.

This truly native elixir is as much a part of America's brazen and bumbling history as the Monroe Doctrine or the birth of jazz. Ulysses S. Grant drank it during and after the Civil War; Mark Twain appeared in ads for Old Crow; the novels of William Faulkner are almost inconceivable without the fuel of bourbon; and H.L. Mencken wrote of its charms.

Bourbon was almost always welcome in the White House, too: Although Abraham Lincoln claimed to be a teetotaler, he grew up in Knob Creek, Kentucky; Truman drank it in the Oval Office; and Lyndon Johnson purportedly enjoyed generous doses. (Does that explain Vietnam?).

And of course Tom Waits, Keith Richards, and Frank Sinatra have all sung the praises of American whiskey. Bourbon is as American as Hell's Angels and rockabilly - even if it took a bunch of Europeans to show us how to make it.

Before Scotch-Irish immigrants carried their whiskey expertise (and their collective thirst) through the Cumberland Gap in the eighteenth century, booze making in the colonies was a hit-or-miss affair.

Instead of barley, the grain used in Scotch and Irish whiskeys, the newcomers used plentiful crops like rye and corn. Not surprisingly, they used rye to make rye, and they used corn to distill both bourbon and Tennessee whiskey.

Though these last two are close relatives, the three Tennessee whiskeys (Jack Daniel's, George Dickel. and Gentleman Jack) are filtered through ten feet of sugar-maple charcoal.

With the exception of one that's made in Virginia and a kosher bourbon that's distilled in Brooklyn, bourbon is largely the product of the nine or so distilling families (many of whom over the years have been conjoined through marriage or business) in central Kentucky.

And while other whiskey makers have allowed rye to fall woefully out of favor with anyone who was too young to enlist in World War I, bourbon distillers haven't let us abandon the other American whiskey.

In the process, they've reminded us less of what bourbon does (get us powerfully drunk) than how it tastes (better than we remembered). These specialty whiskeys combine the polish and depth of cognac with the spirit of Rebel Yell.

Once you've tried fiery gems like Knob Creek, Basil Hayden's, and Booker's, you'll think twice before ordering another unpronounceable single-malt. One thing that sets these premium whiskeys apart from the mass-produced stuff is time.

By law, bourbon must spend no fewer than two years in the barrel, though single-barrel and small-batch bourbons sit in their charred white-oak barrels for as many as six to ten years, which infuses them with a grace and complexity of flavors their common cousins lack.

So while Jim Beam always (fortunately) tastes like Jim Beam, the small distillery hooches hits a variety of notes - hints of hickory, pepper, even cinnamon - with authentic Southern warmth and a subtle swagger.

Though single-barrel and small-batch bourbons differ from one another only slightly in quality and price, there's one notable, if not noticeable, distinction: A single-barrel bourbon is, as its name suggests, bottled from one barrel of distilled whiskey, whereas a small batch derives from a combination of a number of barrels.

And since no two barrels age at quite the same rate, by combining (or not combining) different barrels, distillers can produce an excellent handmade whiskey. Whether poured over rocks, mixed in Manhattans or Old-Fashioneds, or simply served neat, the high-end hooch is worth the price. Just be sure to keep the soda pop at a distance.