Pour Me a Whisky – Scotch That Is

by Spence Cooper on 19/10/09 at 7:15 am

How do you like it?

How many times have you seen a cowboy in a movie stroll up to a bar and say, “Pour me a whisky”? A good bartender would ask what kind, because there are several different types of whisky — the two most popular being scotch and bourbon. Bourbon is an American whisky, a type of distilled spirit made primarily from corn and named for Bourbon County, Kentucky. Scotch whisky is whisky made in Scotland and it cannot be produced anywhere but Scotland, not England, Wales, Ireland, or America. In fact Scotland has what you could call a patent on the term “Scotch”, which is internationally protected.

Gaelic is the branch of Celtic spoken in the Scottish Highlands, and the term “whisky” is derived from the Gaelic “uisge beatha”, which means “water of life”. Some say the Ancient Celts produced the first scotch whisky long before the 1400s, and some say the it was made in the 17th century, but according to the Scotch Whisky Association, no one knows exactly when scotch was first distilled.

There’s an old Scottish proverb that says, “There are two things a Highlander likes naked, and one of them is malt whisky.”

Malt whisky refers to the malting process of germinating the barley by steeping the barley in water. Malting releases enzymes that break down starches in the grain and help convert them into sugars. After germination takes place, the malted barley is dried using smoke. Distilleries order malt from these specialized maltsters. The dried malt is then ground and mixed with hot water in a large mash barrel and allowed to steep. Yeast is added, and the mixture is allowed to ferment. A still is used to to distill the contents which is then placed into oak casks to age for no less than three years and a day.

Scotch whisky is divided into four categories: single malt, pure malt, blended and single grain. Single malt is malted barley whisky from one distillery; pure malt is a blend of single malt whiskies from more than one distillery; blended whisky means grain whiskies from more than one distillery; and single grain whisky is the product of one grain distillery and is usually made from wheat, corn or unmalted barley.

Today there are more than 2,500 Scotch whisky brands sold to more than 200 countries worldwide, and according to The Adams Liquor Handbook, over 990,000 cases of scotch whisky are sold in the U.S. per year. The most popular brands of single malt scotch whisky are Macallan, Laphroaig, Glen Morangie, Glenfiddich, and Glenlivet. The most widely known blended scotch whisky is Chivas Regal, Johnnie Walker, Dewars, Cutty Sark, and J&B.

Frankly, no one in their right mind would drink a good scotch whisky other than straight or over ice, with at the most a splash of water. As Winston Churchill once said, “The water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable, we had to add whisky. By diligent effort, I learnt to like it.”

But there are those who enjoy cocktails made with scotch. A few of the most popular are a “Rusty Nail“, made with scotch and Drambuie — a honey and herb-flavored scotch whisky liqueur.; a “Rob Roy” which is a Manhattan made with scotch instead of bourbon, and a “Godfather“, made with scotch and Ameretto.

Through the years, scotch whisky has had many notable fans — among them were George Burns, Dylan Thomas, Errol Flynn, Mark Twain, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, and W.C. Fields. Fields was undoubtedly a man who drank his scotch straight. “I can’t stand water,” he said, “because of the things fish do in it.”