In the 18th century, farmers in the mountains of Pennsylvania typically turned any surplus grain remaining after a harvest into barrels of whiskey — not because they wanted to drink it, but because, unlike grain, alcohol doesn’t spoil. Just the opposite — whiskey gets better with age, making it a far better store of value than perishable grain, which only gets worse. It was a much-needed store of value, too, because fiat currency was in short supply in those early days of the US republic — so much so that the medium of exchange for goods and services in the Pennsylvania mountains was more likely to be the whiskey that farmers produced and stored.So, when the US government introduced a tax on distilled spirits in 1791, you can understand why tax collectors venturing into Western Pennsylvania were met with violent resistance. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, mistakenly thinking he was imposing a tax on a discretionary item (alcohol), was in fact imposing a tax on an indispensable one (money).Whiskey was how farmers stored the value of their excess labor and also how they swapped that value for essential goods and services. That made whiskey money and imposing a tax on it threatened farmers’ ability to trade and therefore survive. The rebellion was ultimately suppressed when George Washington sent a force of 13,000 militia into Western Pennsylvania — and whiskey’s central role in the mountain economy gradually faded as banks expanded westward and dollars became less scarce. But, even today, whiskey can still be a great way to store value: A rare bottle of Macallan recently sold at auction for $2.7 million, for example.Source: Byron Gilliam