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What is the history of scotch?
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Excerpted
And theyha'e ta'en his very heart's blood
And drunk it round and round . . .
Robert Burns
By express command of His Majesty, King James IV of Scotland, anno Domini 1494, it was recorded in the royal Scottish Exchequer Rolls that there be given "eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aquavitae." And since history is defined as the written record of man and his enterprises, in this manner did Scotch
whisky make its debut on the pages of history.
Scotland is famous for many things, from the Highland fling to the Loch Ness monster, but the most famous of its many contributions is Scotch whisky. The malty dram is not only honored as the original nectar, fabled drink of the gods, but also as a romantic symbol of freedom. It is a token of the bygone days when Highlanders feared the Lord but not the English Parliament. "They could not readily and clearly see," wrote one chronicler, "the justice of levying a tax upon
their whisky. They drew a sharp distinction between offences created by English statute and violations of the laws
of God."
"Freedom and whisky gang thegither!" sang Robert Burns, poet of Scotland. And defying English laws, the doughty Caledonians brewed their malt and made their whisky as they saw fit.
Though the good Friar's barley malt is the first written reference to distilled spirits in Scotland, it is certain that whisky was made there for hundreds of years before then. Alcohol was probably first distilled from grain in Ireland, and the art carried thence to the craggy land of the thistle. Where the Irish learned the knack is anybody's guess. The knowledge could have been brought by adventuroias traders from the Orient, or it could have been the Irish themselves who first conjured up the fiery spirit lurking in the fermented mash of barley. One tradition credits it to the noble Saint Pat himself. Be that as it may, when the English first invaded the Emerald Isle in 1170, they found the natives busily extracting the alcoholic essence of grain. And in the sixteenth century one historian commented that "the soile of Ireland is low and waterish and the inhabitants subject to rheums and fluxes for remedy whereof they use the local beverage usquebaugh." Apparently the plea of medicinal use was a standard gambit even in those days.
No matter who discovered whisky, it was the Gaelic-speaking peoples who gave its name to the English language. For the very word whisky is derived directly from usquebaugh, or usquebae, from uisge beatha, water of life. And its Latin name, aqua vitae, means exactly the same thing. Some etymologists suggest
that the term was originally aqua vite, water of the vine, to
denote the wine from which brandy was distilled. But water of life was how alcoholic spirits were regarded, no matter how the name originated or in which language it was spoken.
With golden barley from their fields, soft water from their burns, dark peat from their moors, the Highlanders evoked a spirit that was truly a Highland dew. How did they do it? In Scotland the start is made with the barley. Steeped in water until the kernels are thoroughly soaked, the barley seeds are allowed to sprout. In growing, an enzyme is produced which converts the starch in the kernel to sugar. In this form it is used as food by the growing seedlings. When the enzyme is most active, the seedlings are destroyed by drying and roasting over a peat-fueled fire. Special drying kilns allow the peat smoke to permeate the barley. The
smoky peat reek thus imparted gives Scotch its distinctive taste and aroma, or nose.
The dried seedlings, now termed malt, are ground and again steeped in water, which dissolves the sugar in them. The sugary solution, or wort, is then run off into the fermenting vat. There, yeast is added to the wort to ferment the sugar, and this action forms a weak alcoholic solution, or wash. A given amount of wash is pumped into a pot still, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, leading to a tube, or worm, that coils through a vat of cold water. Heated, the
wash gives off its alcoholic vapors, which pass through the worm, where they cool and condense into a stronger alcoholic solution known as low wines. The low wines are run through a second still. The first part of the distillate, called foreshots, and the last part,
called feints, are added to the next batch of low wines for redistillation. The middle portion is transferred to wooden
casks for aging, and in due time will become Scotch whisky.
The aging of whisky is as important as the actual manufacture of it. New whisky, odoriferous and colorless, is harsh, stingingly raw, and unpalatable. The aging process allows the whisky to absorb the flavoring agents of the wood and the harsh higher alcohols to mellow to aromatic, flavorous compounds. If the whisky is good to start with and the aging goes well, the harsh rawness is replaced by the smoothness and flavor characteristic of Scotch. Whisky used to
be imbibed straight from the still, unaged. Wooden casks, when they were used, were merely storage containers and means of transportation. No one knows by what accident it was discovered that wondrous changes could be wrought by the proper combination of time, wood, and whisky.
The best wood for aging Scotch whisky is the wood of oak casks which have been used to store sherry. The wine which has soaked into the staves not only helps the mellowing process, but it also gives the white new whisky that pleasing golden hue. Plain, new
casks give very little color. When sherry casks are scarce, barrels may be treated with a cheap blending wine or caramel to give them the proper tone. But connoisseurs maintain that only a sherry
barrel can give Scotch the taste and nose it should have.
As skill was acquired in the techniques of whisky-making, the practitioners of the art were better able to control their product. So by 1695 a traveler in Scotland was able to report three types
of whisky: common usquebaugh, the usual dram; also "trestarig," aqua vitae three times distilled and strong and hot; and a third sort, four times distilled, and called by the natives "usquebaughbaul,"
or usquebaugh to us. Two spoonfuls of this last liquor was sufficient to affect all the members of the body, and if any one exceeded this, his breath would probably stop.
Long before this, however, the use of whisky and other alcoholic liquors had been noticed officially by the law. In 1609, the local chiefs of Icolmkill-one of the many islands in the cold Atlantic waters off the Scottish mainland-decided to protect the inhabitants from the debasing influences of the opposite shore. Accordingly, they enacted one of the first prohibition laws in history by forbidding the importation of potent spirits from the mainland. Since the diligent lawmakers belonged to the upper classes, the embargo affected only the commoners. The gentry could still
legally enjoy their imported wines. Realizing, however, that you could only go so far between a Scotsman and his tipple, the lords of the realm allowed their subjects to manufacture usquebae for their
own use. This worked no hardship on the good people of Icolmkill, for rare was the farm that could not brew its own malt and distill a wee drop of usquebae when needed.
Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, seeking revenue for its depleted coffers, the government in London began to dig into the mashing tubs and stills of Scotland. Sometimes the tax was levied directly on the quantity produced, sometimes on the size and capacity of the stills, sometimes on the malt used in the brewing. With rare exceptions something always had to be paid, and as
the years went by, that something kept growing.
Most of the stills were located in remote, inaccessible spots, where only a mountain goat or a Highlander could find secure footing. To facilitate collections Parliament instituted the system of farming the tax. A suitable burgher in each locality-usually the one with the
most political influence-paid the government a fixed annual fee and in turn collected or tried to collect the taxes due in his district for himself.
This system made a fortune for the Forbes clan of Culloden. Duncan Forbes head of the clan, possessed an "ancient Brewary of Aquavity" on his Ferintosh domain. In 1690, involved in a political upheaval, he fled to Holland, and his lands were raided and his Brewary
burned. He returned home when it was safe to do so, and the government compensated him for his losses by giving
him the "tack," or tax-collecting privilege, in return for payment of a small annual fee. For all practical purposes, he was allowed to make whisky tax-free, which he immediately proceeded to do.
For almost one hundred years the Forbes clan made whisky tinder this privilege, and the name Ferintosh became
practically synonymous with whisky. Finally, in 1784, after loud and bitter complaints by other distillers on the unfairness of the exemption, the privilege was withdrawn. An indemnity of twenty-one
thousand pounds was paid to the Forbes family, and the Ferintosh distilleries ceased operating. Robert Burns deplored the event in verse:
Thee, Ferintosh! 0 sadly lost!
Scotland, lament frae coast to coast!
His lament was purely literary. Other pot stills in the highlands were busily turning out good Scotch malt whiskies.
At the battle of Culloden in 1746, according to historical accounts, Scotch whisky as well as blood flowed freely on both sides. It was traditional for Gaelic warriors thus to fortify themselves on going into battle, feeling, as Burns put it, that "wi' usquabae we'll face the devil!" In at least one case a fallen soldier was given the last rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church with "oatcake and whisky, the requisite elements not being attainable."
With the quelling of the Jacobite uprising against English rule at Culloden, better communications were established between the Highlands and the Lowlands, and with England. Highland whisky began finding its way south to be tasted by wine- and ale-drinking Englishmen. English demand for the pungent Highland nectar grew. The English Parliament, not familiar with the character of the Scotian highlander or with the economics of whisky in Scottish life or with the details of collecting taxes, began to pass ill-advised excise laws.
Rather than pay oppressive and exorbitant taxes to the mistrusted Sassenach many Scotsmen continued to distill illegally.
Smuggling, it was called, and included both the making and transporting of illegal whisky as well as other articles in common use. Whisky smuggling was often successful because it had the tacit
approval of the great majority of the people-not only the peasants and lower classes but also the more prosperous and influential elements, including ministers.
Many tales of adventure are told about the smugglers, a hardy lot, daring and resourceful, and sometimes fierce and desperate. As some of the excise men were Highlanders and as canny as the
smugglers, many a battle of wits took place. The smugglers guarded their hideouts zealously, shifting their stills to the most unlikely places, even to churches, and using decoys to misdirect attention. When the whisky was ready for market, bands of twenty or more men would load the kegs on the backs of sturdy, sure-footed Highland ponies and wind down narrow, dangerous trails to the Lowland markets. Sometimes they avoided the excise men by trickery. Sometimes there were pitched battles and men on both
sides were killed.
One ex-smuggler, George Smith, recalled the days of 1825: "The country was in a desperately lawless state at this time. The riding officers of the revenue were the mere sport of the smugglers, and nothing was more common than for them to be shown a still at work and then coolly defied to make a seizure."
One time some excise men confiscated a cask of whisky and took it to a room at an inn for safekeeping. The smugglers, not ready to give up the prize so easily, got the sympathetic chambermaid to tell them the exact position of the cask. From the room below they stealthily bored a hole through the ceiling into the barrel, and drained off the whisky through a pipe into another cask. The
unsuspecting tax collectors were left holding an empty barrel. As proof of this exploit, it is said, the drill hole can still be seen at the inn. There are perhaps as many of these holes at Scottish inns as there are beds in America where George Washington supposedly slept.
The situation at length became so bad that legal distillers complained they were losing their markets, and the government realized it was losing a sizable revenue. The Duke of Gordon, representing a district where smuggling was most flagrant, declared that nothing would stop the Highlander from making his barley bree, his traditional right. But, added the Duke, if Parliament would levy a reasonable excise, he and other delegates from the smuggling regions would use their influence to put down illegal operations. His efforts resulted in the Act of 1823, which reduced the whisky tax. But the smugglers, long used to paying nothing at all, laughed at
the idea that anyone would apply for a license to distill legitimately.
The first of them to take the step was a sturdy young farmer, George Smith of Glenlivet, the most notorious smuggling district in the Highlands. Having had a good formal education to supplement
his native shrewdness, young Smith realized he had no future in flouting the law. In 1824, with encouragement from the Duke of Gordon, he secured a license to distill alcohol. His erstwhile fellow
smugglers were violently opposed. As Smith himself later confided, "The outlook was an ugly one. ... I was warned by my civil neighbours that they meant to burn the new distillery to the ground, and me in the heart of it." Smith, however, was as tough as any of them, and he let it be known that he would not be frightened off. But for years he did not dare go unarmed. Several other distilleries established in the succeeding years were burned, and in one case, recounted Smith, "the distiller had a very narrow escape from being roasted in his own kiln." Inside of a dozen years, however smuggling in the district subsided.
Each district in Scotland developed its own type of whisky. The barley, the peat, the water, the making process, the differences in distilling technique, all contributed to the differences in the
whiskies. Connoisseurs, in the days before blends, could tell from which district a particular sample came, and, in some cases, the particular distillery. Each had its own distinguishing flavor and aroma. For the average uneducated palate they were all probably a bit too strong and heavy-bodied with the characeristic peat reek of Scotch malt.
The single, or unblended, whiskies, with barley as their only grain, are divided into several distinct regional classes. The Highland malts are the most famous and perhaps the most palatable to untrained tastes. The Islay malts, from "Islay's lovely isle" off the west coast of Scotland, are much heavier in body and have a strong peaty flavor.
The Campeltown malts, from western Scotland, are also strong and pungent. The Lowland malts are generally lighter in body than the other types and not quite so pronounced in flavor.
The enterprise of an Irish excise officer resulted, in 1830, in a development that greatly affected the character of Scotch whisky and spread its fame over the world. Using earlier models as his basis, Aeneas Coffey designed and patented a continuous-process still for the distillation of alcohol. The wash, made from anything that contained starch or sugar, was piped into one end of a two-column distilling system, and out of the other end came high-proof alcohol. In this cheap and quick process most of the
higher alcohols and acids were eliminated, producing a more neutral, lighter-bodied spirit. It was called patent whisky
because it came from the patent still, or grain whisky because grains other than barley malt were used, or silent spirit because it was more neutral. The old method of pot-still distillation, which took care of one batch at a time, was slower, more costly, and gave a smaller yield, but retained more of the so-called impurities which on aging gave whisky its characteristic flavor.
In the middle 1800's some alert Scottish businessmen realized that by mixing the pot-still liquors of the Highlands with the cheaper patent whiskies, a comparatively inexpensive whisky might be
obtained that would be light enough for the more delicate palates of England and the rest of the world, yet still retain the distinctive flavor of Highland Scotch. How right they were can be seen in the
popularity of Scotch whisky today. Practically all Scotch now consumed is a blend of patent whisky and single malts.
The Scotch blender dynasties founded their fortunes in the last hundred years. By strong merchandising and by instituting the use of brand names they educated the public to look for a certain standard and continuity of flavor which they maintained in the blends. Beginning first as blenders who purchased the
single malts from the distillers, they now control almost all the distilleries.
Blending, simple in theory, is actually a complicated process which must be carefully controlled to maintain the uniform flavor of each batch of whisky. It grew out of the old practice of vatting by the single-malt distillers. Barrels of whisky from different distillations were dumped into a huge vat, thoroughly mixed and allowed to "marry," and then rebarreled for storage. In blending this
process is carried one step further. After the single whiskies have been married, the process is repeated, this time with patent spirits added to the batch. Usually the proportion of malt whisky to grain spirit is fifty-fifty. As many as twenty to forty different single malts
may be used in a blend, and usually a complete staff of tasters and experimental blenders is maintained to insure uniformity of flavor. Each blender has his own special blending formulas, which in many cases are jealously guarded trade secrets.
THE HAGIS OR WHISKEY ARTICLE OR NEITHER
During the prohibition era, when the principal subject of conversation amongour fellow citizens was how to evade the
law we ourselves had voted, someone
asked Irvin Cobb if he had ever made
moonshine.
"Yes, suh," he replied, "when I was
about eighteen, some of us boys made a
still out of an ol' kettle, an' we produced
two quarts of as fine moonshine as yo'
ever flopped lip over. That whisky was
so good that we drank half of it while
it was still warm from the worm."
"And what did you do with the other
quart?" inquired the questioner.
"Why, naturally, suh, we put it aside
to age."
"And might I inquire how long you
aged it?"
"Well, suh, we aged that whisky . . .
we aged that whisky . . . oh, fully two
hours!"
To the throat-rasping quality of
young whisky the world owes the crea¬
tion of a delicious after-dinner beverage
that is too little known outside the land
of heather. In an effort to smooth down
the rawness of new whisky, a series of
unknown benefactors of humanity grad¬
ually developed a mixture known today
as Athole Brose. There are many recipes
for this beverage, the earliest one con¬
sisting simply of moistening raw oat¬
meal with water, adding whisky, and
later filtering. This, as can easily be seen,
merely took a bit of the fire from the
young spirit but added nothing to its
flavor. Other experiments were made,
until finally Scots folk adopted the compound described below.
Athole Brose
Heather honey being almost unob¬
tainable in the United States, you must
take strained clover honey and beat into
it the smokiest Scotch whisky that you
can find, in the proportion of one part
honey to three of whisky. Many folk
squeeze a bit of lemon peel over the
mixture, on the assumption that nothing
brings out the full flavor of Highland
wine as does a suspicion of oil of lemon.
Athole Brose improves if it is bottled
and kept a few months, but this process
requires an iron will on the part of the
maker. Serve as a liquor in thistle
glasses.
There is a variant that goes by the
same name, but which-while undoubt¬
edly tasty-is a bit too cloying to drink
after a meal. It consists of one part rich
cream beaten into three parts of the
brose, and we hereby warn you that it is
nothing with which to quench thirst.
And now . . . slainte!
Stern, Abraham. 1952November. Heart's Blood of John Barleycorn. Gourmet 12(11): 17
Updated: Friday, March 12, 2004. |
