A Primer on Whisky

All drams, no drama

I once had a boss from Aberdeen, Scotland, whose dialect of English, in which the vowels pitched and rolled like a ship on a stormy sea, left me struggling to decipher exactly what he wanted me to do. Whisky, one of Scotland’s most famous exports, often leaves people similarly dazed and confused. For starters, there’s the spelling: whisky or whiskey? Then there are the variations on a theme, from scotch to bourbon to rye.

With winter upon us and the nights drawing in, now’s the perfect time to curl up with a wee dram—the Scottish term for a measure of whisky—and read on as we sort our malts from our mashes.

HOW TO SPELL IT

Whisky or whiskey? The spelling generally depends on the country that’s making it. A cheat sheet is that countries with an “e” in their name, like Ireland and the United States, favor including the “e.” Countries without an “e”—Scotland, Japan and Canada—spell it whisky, whiskies for plural. (In this article, I use whisky to refer to the general category of drink and place-specific spellings when writing about such variations.)

SCOTCH, BOURBON AND RYE, OH MY

Finding a single organizing principle for the world of whisky is hard. Although always made from grain, the raw materials vary, as does the place of origin, the process, even the type of glass—snifters, tulips and tumblers to name a few—from which it’s drunk. Understanding whisky is the terrain of flowcharts and Venn diagrams, but let’s start where we began: in Scotland.

Scotch whisky is, as the name implies, from Scotland. Therefore, all Scotch is whisky, but not all whisky is Scotch. Like wine, there are well-known regions for Scotch whisky, including Lowlands, Highlands/Islands, Speyside, Islay and Campbeltown.

Daniel Kelly, whisky aficionado and managing partner at The Amendment in Camarillo, is a fan of single-malts from the Highlands, which he describes as “just a hint of smoke with a kiss of sea salt from the raging oceans that far north.”

Place-related distinctions aside, many of the variations in Scotch whisky are also relevant to the whiskeys we know in the U.S. Both Scotch whisky and U.S. whiskey encompass malt whiskies, the common denominator of which is malted barley. In Scotland, a malt whisky is required to be made from all malted barley, while in the U.S. only a majority of the grain is required for the designation. Single-malt Scotch whiskies come from a single distillery. As with wine, the term blended operates on two different vectors when it comes to whisky, meaning a blend of grains or distilleries.

Like Scotch, U.S. whiskey has some variants that are place-specific. Bourbon can only be produced in the U.S., and Tennessee whiskey only in Tennessee. Both are made from at least 51% corn, and Tennessee whiskey is filtered through maple charcoal. Rye whiskey, made from at least 51% rye, is another popular type of U.S. whiskey, although not exclusively made here. Many U.S. ryes hail from Indiana; Canada also excels in this category.