whisky is one of the major traditional branches of the family tree of distilled spirits, along with brandy, rum, baijiu, and the like. See spirits. Although there is no global legal definition for whisky, it is agreed that the term refers to a cereal-grain-based, non-neutral spirit which is usually aged in wood. Each whisky-producing country will have its own variations on that theme. The legislation for bourbon and Tennessee whisky, for example, is different from that for Scotch or Irish whisky.
While barley and corn (maize) are the most commonly used grains, wheat and rye are widely used, and in recent years distillers have widened the net further, distilling from grains and pseudo-grains such as spelt, emmer, rice, and quinoa. See cereals. Whisky has been and is still made in pot stills, continuous stills, hybrid stills, and even the now-rare three-chamber stills. See still, types of. Oak is the most commonly used material for casks, but chestnut has on occasion been coopered.
While its origins are obscure, and much debated, whisky’s traditions begin in Scotland and Ireland, and indeed its name is an English mangling of the Gaelic uisce beatha, “water of life,” much like “brandy” is an English mangling of the Dutch brandewijn. See aqua vitae. (The convention by which Scotland and Canada spell it “whisky” and Ireland and the United States “whiskey” is of no great antiquity, dating back to the mid-twentieth century, and there are plenty examples of Scots spelling it “whiskey” and Americans “whisky.”) In any case, the first record of a beer being distilled in the British Isles comes in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1378–1400), where “wort” appears among a list of ingredients used by an alchemist who is being lampooned in “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale.” The first record of grain distillation in Scotland comes a century later, although it is unlikely that it was unknown prior to that date. In Ireland, grain distilling doesn’t make it into the record until 1556, but when it does, it’s in the form of a Parliamentary act acknowledging that it was “now universally throughout the realm made” and banning its traffic and its production to all but the most substantial property owners. That suggests that it was no novelty there either.
It must be borne in mind, though, that this early whisky had little to distinguish itself from the grain spirits that were popping up throughout northern Europe at the time. German distillers had begun distilling from grain by 1507, and German cities were prohibiting it by 1530. By 1551, Russians were beginning their meals with “aqua vitae,” presumably distilled from grain. By 1588, Dutch distillers had moved from using French wine as the base for their genever to making their own from barley and rye. All of these spirits were pot-distilled from malt (at least in part), and if they spent any time in a wooden barrel, it was for transportation and storage, not maturation. Any differences would come from flavoring or slight variations in the process due to local conditions (German distillers, for instance, tended to dry their malt over wood fires, while the Scots used peat fires). See
Early records suggest that the early proto-whiskies were sometimes consumed neat but more commonly compounded with local herbs and roots to make a drink that would become known as “usquebaugh.” This would become a noted specialty of Ireland. Over the centuries recipes would become more elaborate, often involving the use of raisins to soften the spirit and saffron to color it. By the end of the seventeenth century, usquebaugh was being exported to England in considerable quantity and was known on the Continent as well. Meanwhile, as equipment improved and knowledge advanced, the unflavored “whisky” (the term is first recorded in 1715) was becoming more and more popular on its home turf.
Distillation of whisky in Scotland and Ireland was mostly rural, with farmers using surplus grain to supplement their income. From the eighteenth century onward, larger distilleries began to be established in cities: after the gin craze that came to a head in the 1730s, the British government moved to heavily restrict distillation through stiff excise taxes that made it almost impossible for any but the largest-scale distilleries to make a profit. In Scotland some of these “malt distillers” (they did not have to use pure malt, although the Scottish ones tended to) began to supply base spirit for the English gin rectifiers.
At the same time, whisky had taken root in America—or rather, a grain spirit that would become known by that name had. Although there had been experiments with grain distilling in the seventeenth century, they did not produce a marketable spirit until the Germans stepped in: a wave of immigration from Germany’s western borderlands in the first decades of the eighteenth century brought a number of distillers with experience at distilling rye-based korn to Pennsylvania and Maryland, and by the 1740s the “korn dram” they were making was well established. See whisky, rye. Before long their traditions would become inextricably entangled with those brought by another wave of immigrants, Scotch-Irish from Ulster and Scotland driven into exile by the Highland Clearances and the failure of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. At the same time, many of the distillers who had stayed home in Ireland and Scotland, without the capital to become licensed malt distillers, continued to make “small still” whisky, but outside the bounds of the law.
A severe drop in revenue forced the government to change course. In 1823 an Excise Act was passed. Among the measures was an easing on the size of still permitted to be used. The modern whisky era in Scotland and Ireland started at that point. The rural distillers in Scotland began to specialize in pot still whiskies made from malted barley—“malt whisky.” Prior to this, their whiskies included oats and rye and sometimes unmalted barley. See Glenlivet and whisky, scotch.
The larger urban distilleries in the Lowlands of Scotland and the cities of Ireland also prospered, with the Scottish ones adopting the new continuous/column still to make a newer style of whisky that would become known as “grain.” While a wide range of cereals were used, most were wheat-based. See still, continuous; and whisky, grain.
The major Irish distillers adhered to pot still distillation, although the pot stills used were of enormous size. They had the advantage in terms of making a consistent product in volume while their Scots colleagues were struggling. A malt tax then prompted them to distill from a mixed mash of malted and unmalted barley, creating single pot still whisky. This would become hugely popular. See whisky, Irish. The Scots responded in 1853 when Andrew Usher launched a blend of malt and grain whiskies. By the twentieth century, blended scotch would be the world’s pre-eminent style. See whisky, blended.
At the same time, the American and Canadian whisky industries had become established and were making very different styles. Part of this is down to the grains that grew in the New World. The German-style pure-rye distillates still persisted in Pennsylvania and Maryland, as “eastern rye.” West of that, mixed mash bills in the Celtic style prevailed, but with corn (maize) rather than unmalted barley. See mash bill. By the 1820s, American distillers had taken to putting their whisky into new, charred oak barrels, at first because it colored the spirit faster but then because American drinkers had learned to like the tang it imparted.
As in the British Isles, the nineteenth century was a time of new technology being adapted. Column stills and charcoal filtration were both used, but the most common setup until the end of the century was the steam-injected three-chamber still, usually made out of wooden staves, coupled with a doubler. See
The late nineteenth century is also the start of another phenomenon: the brand. Distillers, rectifiers, and blenders began putting their names on bottles or casks of whisky as a guarantee of provenance and quality. Many of the whisky industry’s most famous names started to become commercially renowned at this time: the Beam and Samuels families in Kentucky; Jack Daniel in Tennessee; Hiram Walker and Joseph Seagram in Canada; John Jameson and John Power in Dublin; and John Walker, James Buchanan, John Dewar, and the Chivas brothers in Scotland. See Chivas Regal; Dewar’s; Hiram Walker and Sons; Jack Daniel’s; Jim Beam; and Johnnie Walker. All recognized the need for consistency and quality in the product. By the end of the century these family-owned firms—especially the blenders of Scotland—would also become pioneers in the new art of advertising.
Whisky drinks were beginning to diversify. As well as usquebaugh (or scubac, as it also became known), whisky had formed the base for punch, slings, cocktails, and toddies. The late nineteenth century would see the rise of the Whisky Julep and the advent of new whisky cocktails such as the Manhattan, Old-Fashioned, Sazerac, and Rob Roy. See julep; Manhattan Cocktail; Old-Fashioned Cocktail; Rob Roy; and Sazerac cocktail. The phylloxera-induced collapse of the French brandy industry in the 1870s had also presented scotch and Irish whisky with an opportunity, with whisky replacing brandy in the then popular middle-class mix of brandy and soda. See brandy. It would be the advent of the Whisky Highball that would catapult scotch to dominance. See Highball.
This dominance was also helped by the imposition of Prohibition in the United States in 1920 and the fallout from Ireland gaining independence. While American whisky distilleries closed down, Ireland found itself cut out of the British Empire market, at that point the largest trading bloc in the world. A refusal to deal with bootleggers, high domestic taxes, and an export ban sealed most Irish whisky distilleries’ fate.
One of the consequences of scotch whisky’s commercial success was the rise of would-be imitators, or at least acolytes. By 1900, Germany was making a fair amount of whisky—not that that required much of a departure from the korn it had been making for centuries. Japan’s industry, however, was entirely new, and became quite large. During the twentieth century, India, Mexico, and a handful of other countries also joined the list. See whisky, Japanese.
While the American industry restarted in 1933, it largely shut down again during World War II in a conversion to industrial alcohol production for the war effort. Scotland meanwhile continued to produce whisky, albeit in limited amounts. By 1946, blended scotch was in the dominant position in terms of branding and stocks.
Scotch’s hegemony would continue through the 1960s and into the 1970s. By then the Irish industry (now down to two distilleries) reformulated Jameson and began to promote a new, lighter style. Bourbon, which had tried to compete with scotch and Canadian whisky in the 1960s by going light, had begun to return to its roots and to explore the premium end of the market. It was still, however, selling less on its home market than Canadian whisky. See whisky, Canadian.
The late 1970s saw a global decline in whisky sales as a new generation of consumers turned away from spirits that they deemed to be old fashioned. In Scotland, this resulted in the mass closure of distilleries, and elsewhere it stalled the Irish whisky and bourbon revivals. In Japan a buoyant domestic market was devastated.
The seeds of whisky’s revival were planted at this low point. In Scotland a fall in sales of blends resulted in distillers beginning to promote the more intense, individualistic single malts. By the end of the twentieth century, this emphasis on provenance and flavor resonated with the demands of a premium-oriented consumer. All the established whisky-producing countries began to emphasize the heritage and flavor of their brands. Single pot still re-emerged in Ireland, premium aged bourbon and rye in America, single malt in Scotland and Japan, and rye in Canada.
The craft brewing phenomenon was simultaneously underway in America. In time, a similar model would be applied to a new wave of distillers, small-scale, local, premium, a template that would be taken up by new distillers around the world. Some follow a “Scottish” approach, others a “bourbon” model. All are clear in their intent to make a whisky that speaks of its place by using the cereals native or best adapted to the region or using smoking or brewing techniques using local woods.
Broom, Dave. The World Atlas of Whisky, rev. ed. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2014.
Craig, H. Charles. The Scotch Whisky Industry Record, Dumbarton, UK: Index, 1994.
Crowgey, Henry, Kentucky Bourbon: The Early Years of Whiskeymaking. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971.
Harper, William T. Origins and Rise of the British Distillery. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999.
Tlusty, B. Ann. Bacchus and Civic Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
By: Dave Broom and David Wondrich