This week on Culinary Confidential, Christina Cates sits down with Noah Rothbaum, one of the sharpest minds in whiskey and the cultural history behind it. As the author of The Whiskey Bible and Spirits Editor at Men's Journal, Rothbaum has spent years tracing how America's native spirit became a global force.

This conversation goes far beyond the glass. Rothbaum unpacks the people, regions, traditions, and reinventions shaping American whiskey, and why, as the nation approaches its 250th birthday, the story of our spirits is one on identity, craft, and the people that built both.

From bourbon country to the rebirth of classic cocktails, from heritage distillers to the new guard rewriting the rules, this episode explores how whiskey became its own cultural language.

In other words, rich, layered, and unmistakably American.