Actually, it's a little more complicated than you said.
1. Slave ships out of New England were in the molasses, rum, slaves "trade triangle" & the British Navy's anti-slavery patrols were more interested in stopping the African slave trade than the trade in rum or molasses.
(Stopping the molasses/run 2/3 of the "triangle" was secondary to & almost coincidental to stopping the slavers. - Imo, had there been NO slave trade, the British Navy might well have been FAR less interested in molasses, rum or collecting taxes.)
2. Rye whiskey is more difficult to make & more expensive to make than corn and/or scotch whiskey or any of the common fruit-based brandies.
and
3. GOOD QUALITY corn whiskey is just as good as any rye whiskey, generally cheaper to make & corn, when converted to distilled spirits, was more profitable & cheaper to transport to market than raw corn was.
(In the South & in particular in Eastern Texas, fruit-based liquor was often made in large quantity, too.)
Fwiw, there was/IS some REALLY HARSH/POOR quality homemade rye/scotch/corn/fruit liquors out there. = Some (and maybe the majority) of the "white likker" that is VERY cheaply/poorly made & "sold into Oklahoma" is REALLY AWFUL. = That "slop" is unfit for neither man nor beast & "our crowd" never sold "slop".= What our family made was in the middle-upper quality of what liquor was being made in the MS/AL/TX "market". = GOOD whiskey is NOT that much more expensive or difficult to make than "slop" & QUALITY-made likker brings repeat customers.
(It's NOT what the liquor is made from that is the "determining factor"; it's all about the quality of the still, the care taken in the manufacture & the quality of ingredients that makes or does NOT make decent whiskey/brandy.)
Note: From the early 18th Century to the mid-1950s, our family was IN the moonshine business & the family made a substantial portion of the net family income from GOOD QUALITY "craft-made" (though highly illegal) untaxed liquor.
(My Great-Uncle Amos owned/ran eight 800 gallon "submarine stills" during Prohibition. - By the time that I "came along", we weren't "a big player" in "the business" anymore, though my grandfather still had a 150 gallon "steam-process"/all copper still that he last "fired" about 1956-57. = His "steam-machine" was sold to a friend about 1960 & is now in an East Texas county museum.)
Btw, NONE of "our crowd" ever got arrested, as we always/mostly did business "at the wholesale level" with childhood friends (The family had a FEW "retail customers" by TWBTS era & those were close friends.), were NEVER "too rich looking" (LOOKING "rich" makes people jealous & jealous people "turn you in" to the liquor agents.), tithed to the church, were FIRST "in line" to support every local charity & generally were "respectable outlaws".
A PERSONAL NOTE: Once we get retired to Latin America & to a nation where making liquor is lawful for "small-scale, farm-based, distillers", I plan to get into the brandy business "in a small way".
(A "flat tax" of about 22.ooUSD per year there allows, "those persons who are engaged in agriculture", to legally make up to about 500 gallons of pure alcohol per year "for any otherwise lawful purpose" (i.e., for fuel, family consumption and/or sale), as a "small distiller". = That's nearly 1,000 gallons of 100-proof liquor per year.)
yours, satx
