"The drink of angels and hairy Scotsmen"

I couldn't resist making that quote the title of this blog post. It's from an article in the Guardian that provides a great deal of information as to how whisky is made. Here's a brief extract.

If you are lucky enough to be reading this with a glass of whisky in your hand then take a second to regard the contents of your glass. Is it a pale golden or dark ruby colour? Does it greet your nose with memories of heather moorland or salty coastlines? Is your mouth filled with a honey sweetness or a dark acrid smokiness? All of these and many more are possible from the most multifaceted of spirits known variously as whisk(e)y, liquid sunshine, and the water of life.

Whisky is the liquid gold that emerges from the distillation of base beer. It is "the separation of the gross from the subtle and the subtle from the gross ... to make the spiritual lighter by its subtlety" (Hieronymus Brunschwig, 15th century doctor and distiller). Almost all spirits are produced by distillation: a liquid with a low alcohol content such as wine or beer can be taken and from it a spirit produced. Alchemists believed that through repeated distillation they could extract the essence or spirit of a material and that from wine they could extract the aqua vītae or water of life. The word itself, whisky, is an Anglicised version of the Gaelic for water of life: uisge beatha or usquebaugh is what Irish and Scots monks called their distilled barley beer.

Scotland's mild, maritime climates, with long hours of daylight in summer, was ideal for growing barley for making beer. Thus, the Scots distilled beer not wine, and so made whisky not brandy. The first evidence of whisky production in Scotland comes from an entry in the Exchequer Rolls for 1494: malt is sent " ... to Friar John Cor, by order of the King, wherewith to make aqua vitae". Since then whisky has been as intimately associated with Scotland as the kilt and Tunnock's caramel. However, it is not thought to be a Scottish invention. Whisky making is most likely to have developed in Ireland and have been carried across to Scotland by monks some time between 1100 and 1300.

There's more at the link. Highly recommended reading for those interested in this sort of thing.

Peter