Vicksburg’s connection to bourbon is to be featured on an internationally broadcast series, portions of which were taped during the weekend.

A film and sound crew from the television series “The Thirsty Traveler” is tracking the trail of America’s only native distilled spirit.

A four-man crew and host Kevin Brauch were in town for two of the eight days they are spending on an episode to be shown this fall or early next year, said the show’s director, Jim Ripley of the Calgary, Alberta, Canada, company Grasslands Entertainment Inc.

The show airs on networks including Fine Living, a digital TV channel based in Canada and available here by satellite. It is shown in more than 70 countries and has been translated into two other languages, Ripley said.

Brauch said he and the crew were in Borrello’s Restaurant, 1306 Washington St., and were told by another customer that the show was available locally by satellite.

“What we’re doing here is following the bourbon trail,” Ripley said, adding that the beginning segment of the half-hour episode would include Vicksburg.

“It’s fast-paced,” Ripley said of the show.

The crew was finishing its filming for the episode here and had already visited New Orleans and Houma, La., Ripley said.

“Bourbon is the only indigenous spirit to America,” Ripley explained, adding that Vicksburg’s 1863 fall during the Civil War was key to reopening commerce on the Mississippi River. Such commerce in turn allowed the resumption of trade in whiskey that yielded a significant share of the United States government’s tax receipts for at least the decade or so following the war, Ripley added.

In the 18th and 19th century, settlers in what became Kentucky – Bourbon County to be precise – took locally grown corn, rye, wheat and barley and distilled it in iron-free pure water. Bourbon must be aged a minimum of two years in American oak barrels.

Among the places or events the Grasslands crew filmed were the Mississippi River bridges and a Saturday Civil War re-enactment at the McRaven tour home, 1445 Harrison St. Brauch dressed as a Union soldier and participated in the re-enactment, an immersal in local culture he said was typical for the show. The episode will also discuss the trade of whiskey between Union and Confederate soldiers during the siege of Vicksburg, Brauch said.

The episode, The Thirsty Traveler’s 40th, will not be its first to focus on bourbon. An episode that ran during its first season focused on bourbon’s Kentucky origins.

As a bonus, the Vicksburg-Warren Community Alliance will get access to the tape for potential use in promoting the city. The footage will not be used for any project that competes with the show, said Charlotte Koestler Duffey of the Alliance. The group has produced two different commercials for the city that have been broadcast to more than 1 million people in markets such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, Duffey added.

“You have to be careful,” she said of the need for up-to-date footage, adding that if pictures have cars or people’s clothes in them they can quickly become dated.

“We’re always looking for good footage,” Duffey said.