WHISKY HISTORY
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The oldest recollection from Scotch whisky comes from a Friar
named John Corr, who "industrialized" the whole process.
This was in the late 1400's.
Like Wine and Tequila , Scotch whisky is identified by the region
made.
Rolls for 1494, where there is an entry of ‘eight bolls of malt to
Friar John Cor wherewith to make aquavitae’. A boll was an old
Scottish measure of not more than six bushels. (One bushel is
equivalent to 25.4 kiIograms)
When King James IV was in Inverness during September 1506, his
Treasurer’s Accounts had entries for the 15th and 17th of the
month respectively: ‘For aqua vite to the King. . .’ and ‘For ane
flacat of aqua vite to the King. . .’. lt is probable that the aquavitae
in this case was spirit for drinking.
The earliest reference to a distillery in the Acts of the Scottish
Parliament appears to be in 1690, when mention is made of the
famous Ferintosh distillery owned by Duncan Forbes of Culloden.
There is also a reference to distilling in a private house in the
parish of Gamrie in Banffshire in 1614. This occurs in the Register
of the Privy Council, where a man accused of the crime of
breaking into a private house, combined with assault, was said to
have knocked over some ‘aquavitie’.
One of the earliest references to ‘uiskie’ occurs in the funeral
account of a Highland laird about 1618.
An unpublished letter of February 1622, written by Sir Duncan
Campbell of Glenorchy to the Earl of Mar, reported that certain
officers sent to Glenorchy by the King had been given the best
entertainment that the season and the country allowed. It stated:
‘For they wantit not wine nor aquavite.’ This ‘aquavite’ was no
doubt locally distilled whisky.
Another writer affirms that aquavitae occasionally formed part of
the rent paid for Highland farms, at any rate in Perthshire, but no
actual date is given for this practice.
What is the history of charging duty on Scotch Whisky?
The Scots Parliament in 1644 passed an Excise Act fixing the duty
at 2/8d (13p) per pint of aquavitae or other strong liquor - the
Scots pint being approximately one third of a gallon. For the
remainder of the 17th century various alterations were made to
the types and amounts of duty collected.
After the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, English revenue staff
crossed the border to begin their lengthy attempts to bring whisky
production under control. Ninety years later the excise laws were
in such a hopeless state of confusion that no two distilleries were
taxed at the same rate. Illicit distilling flourished, the smugglers
seeing no good reason for paying for the privilege of making their
native drink.
After a lengthy Royal Commission, the Act of 1823 sanctioned
legal distilling at a duty of 2/3d (12p) per gallon for stills with a
capacity of more than 40 gallons. There was a licence fee of £10
annually and no stills under the legal limit were allowed. The first
distillery came into ‘official’ existence in the following year and
thereafter many of the more far-sighted distillers came over on to
the side of the law.
In 1840, the duty was 5d (2.5p) per bottle and by the beginning of
the First World War it had risen to 1/81/2d (9p). In 1939, a typical
bottle of Scotch Whisky cost 14/3d (72p) of which 9/71/2d (48p)
was duty. By 1992, after a succession of duty increases, the same
bottle was costing around £10.80. The duty on it was £5.55,
equivalent to £19.81 per litre of pure alcohol.
AMERICAN WHISKEY
The art of distilling and making whiskey was exported to the
Colonies from the British Isles even as the American colonies
themselves were growing. Here the spirit of independence and
rebellion marked the departure of American whiskeys from their
British cousins in both technique and taste.
In the late 18th Century, American farmers who distilled whiskey
rose up against the federal government in the new nation's first
large-scale protest, the Whiskey Rebellion. They opposed the
levying of a tax on spirits merely to raise revenues (although it
was purportedly intended to curb excessive drinking). In 1794,
President George Washington marched into western
Pennsylvania leading an army of 13,000 to quell the rebellion, a
move that many Americans saw as an unnecessary show of force.
In the end, two people were convicted of treason, but later
pardoned by President Washington.
In the beginning, Americans made use of a native crop—corn—in
the production of their brews. If you had offered one of the cask-
aged blends of the modern American whiskey to an 18th century
home-distiller, he'd have had difficulty recognizing it as his favorite
drink. On the other hand, if you offered him some Russian vodka,
his face would break into a smile of recognition. As well it should,
since rye distillation developed in Russia and even though other
grains were available, the rye imported by the Eastern Europeans
to the New World was the grain of choice. Ironically, three hundred
years later, many Irish and Scotch distillers are also using rye as a
grain of choice.
Bourbon and Rye Whiskey
Two of the major American blends are bourbon and rye. The
principal difference between the two is that rye is made almost
exclusively from rye grain while bourbon is made from three
grains—but never combinations of wheat and rye. Use one, or use
the other; that is the tradition. While most of the bourbon comes
from Kentucky, it's not one of the requirements to be labeled a
bourbon.
Tennessee Whiskey
The other major American whiskey type is the distinctive
Tennessee whiskey (which must be made in Tennessee). While
Tennessee whiskey is very similar to bourbon, the Tennessee
whiskey must undergo the "Lincoln County Process," which
requires the whiskey to be filtered through approximately 10 feet
of maple charcoal. This process takes about ten days and gives
the whiskey a unique flavor and aroma. It also tends to mellow the
whiskey.
Two major distillers represent this class: Jack Daniels and George
Dickel. Both of these distillers use a process called "sour mash."
The yeast from previous batches of fermented mash is used in the
new batch much like the way sourdough bread is made, hence the
name sour mash. The corn, barely, and rye mixtures of these sour
mash products give them a unique flavor.