Whisky

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A brief history of Whisky

The Gaelic ‘usquebaugh’, meaning ‘Water of Life’, phonetically became ‘usky’ and then ‘whisky’ in English. Scotland has internationally protected the term ‘Scotch’. For a whisky to be labelled Scotch it has to be produced in Scotland.

‘Eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae’. The entry above appeared in the Exchequer Rolls as long ago as 1494 and appears to be the earliest documented record of distilling in Scotland. This was sufficient to produce almost 1500 bottles.

Legend would have it that St Patrick introduced distilling to Ireland in the fifth century AD and that the secrets traveled with the Dalriadic Scots when they arrived in Kintyre around AD500.

The spirit was universally termed aqua vitae (‘water of life’) and was
commonly made in monasteries, and chiefly used for medicinal purposes, being prescribed for the preservation of health, the prolongation of life, and for the relief of colic, palsy and even smallpox.

Scotland’s great Renaissance king, James IV (1488-1513) was fond of ‘ardent spirits’. When the king visited Dundee in 1506, the treasury accounts record a payment to the local barber for a supply of aqua vitae for the king’s pleasure. The reference to the barber is not surprising. In 1505, the Guild of Surgeon Barbers in Edinburgh was granted a monopoly over the
manufacture of aqua vitae – a fact that reflects the spirits perceived medicinal properties as well as the medicinal talents of the barbers.

The Scottish parliament introduced the first taxes on malt in the latter part of the 17th century, and consequently smuggling became standard practice for some 150 years. There was no moral stigma attached to it: Ministers of the Kirk often made storage space available under the pulpit, and the illicit spirit was, on occasion, transported by coffin – any effective means was used to escape the watchful eyes of the Excise men.

We have been talking about what we now know as Malt Whisky. But, in 1831 Aeneas Coffey invented the Coffey or Patent Still, which enabled a continuous process of distillation to take place. This led to the production of Grain Whisky, a different, less intense spirit than the Malt Whisky produced in the distinctive copper pot stills. The lighter flavored Grain Whisky, when blended with the more fiery malts, extended the appeal of Scotch Whisky to a considerably wider market.

For a full version of our Whisky Bible click here.