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Southern Comfort is an American staple responsible for various and sundry long nights and even longer mornings. It’s got a sweet kick and a little spice, perfect as a shooter for anyone who doesn’t enjoy the bite of traditional whiskeys. But, Southern Comfort is also something of a chameleon, slipping onto the whiskey shelves of liquor stores nationwide with very few of us the wiser. You see, Southern Comfort is no whiskey.

You can’t blame the good people for not knowing — the Southern Comfort marketing team has leaned hard into its fake identity. The back of the bottle describes the origins of Southern Comfort as a mix of whiskey with fruits and spices. While that may be true, it’s a bit misleading. The whole situation was even further complicated in 2016, when Sazerac purchased Southern Comfort from its previous owner, Brown-Forman.

Sazerac announced that Southern Comfort would once again be made using real whiskey starting in 2017. It turns out, the previous company had been using a neutral grain spirit (similar to vodka) as the base for decades. You may be wondering: Now that whiskey is once again the base spirit, is Southern Comfort whiskey? As a matter of fact, no, it’s not — it’s a liqueur.

The delineation within the realm of alcohol isn’t as definite as one might wish, albeit not random. A liqueur employs a fundamental spirit which is then flavored with spices and sugars. This spirit could take forms like vodka, whiskey, a plain grain spirit, rum and much more. Southern Comfort’s actual ingredient list remains a closely guarded secret but it is known that the base spirit is whiskey as announced by Sazerac. To this, sugar is consequently added along with a fruit concentrate that bequeaths Southern Comfort with its characteristic apricot flavor.

While Southern Comfort does contain whiskey, it’s technically a liqueur with a whiskey foundation. For the majority of Southern Comfort consumers, this nuance won’t greatly alter their perception. Be it flavored whiskey, spirit whiskey, or whiskey liqueur, it is recognized as being different from a traditional bourbon or rye.

In terms of fine distinctions, the point of transmutation of a whiskey into something distinct can be perplexing. For instance, scotch is flavored using peat but it’s not directly added to the drink but smoked and enveloped over the barley, yet the difference is hardly vast. Perhaps it can be envisaged this way: a readymade Jack and Coke in a can is certainly not whiskey, notwithstanding the presence of whiskey in it. If we regard Southern Comfort as sharing greater likeness with a premixed cocktail than with a single-barrel bourbon, we are likely on the right path.

Consult the original article on Tasting Table for additional understanding.