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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 boundaries that exist within the alcohol universe aren’t always crystal clear, yet they’re not wholly random. A liqueur involves the amplification of a base spirit with various spices and sweeteners. This base could comprise vodka, whiskey, a neutral grain spirit, rum etc. Southern Comfort, whose actual ingredients remain a well-guarded secret, is known to have whiskey as its base spirit, as announced by Sazerac. Following this, sugar and a fruit concentrate are incorporated, which land Southern Comfort its distinctive apricot-taste.

Therefore, although whiskey is one of the ingredients in Southern Comfort, it is more accurately a liqueur based on whiskey. For the regular Southern Comfort consumer, this is an insignificant detail. Whether it’s called flavored whiskey, spirit whiskey, or whiskey liqueur, most individuals acknowledge its difference from traditional bourbons or ryes.

A point of contention arises when we attempt to determine the exact moment whiskey switches over to something else. For instance, scotch has an added flavor from peat. The peat is smoked over the barley, not directly added to the drink, but the difference isn’t substantial. A feasible analogy could be this: a canned premixed Jack and Coke clearly isn’t whiskey, even if it comprises whiskey. If we regard Southern Comfort more as a premixed cocktail and less a single-barrel bourbon, we’re thinking in the right direction.

Check out the original article on Tasting Table.