Scottish whisky once hid under church altars and inside coffins
After the Acts of Union and a hated malt tax of 1725, Scotland's distillers went underground. They stashed casks beneath altars and in coffins to dodge the excisemen, and ran their homemade stills at night so darkness hid the smoke. At one point, more than half of all Scottish whisky was reckoned to be illegal.
Gaelic gave the drink its name. Medieval Latin called distilled alcohol aqua vitae, water of life, which became uisce beatha in Irish and uisge beatha in Scottish Gaelic; English speakers mangled it through forms like usquebaugh in 1610 before settling on whisky. Ireland and the United States usually spell it whiskey, everyone else whisky, though American brands such as Maker's Mark keep the shorter form and US federal regulations use it too.
Alcohol distillation first appears in 13th-century Italy, where wine was distilled, and monasteries spread the practice largely as medicine for ailments like colic. Irish distillers had it within a century or so; Scots took until the 1400s. An Irish chronicle blames a chieftain's death in 1405 on drinking too much aqua vitae at Christmas, and Scotland's Exchequer Rolls for 1495 record malt sent to Friar John Cor, by royal order, to make it. That early spirit went unaged, sharp and fiery. In 1506 Dundee bought a large quantity from the barber-surgeons' guild, which then held the production monopoly.
Legal distilling returned with the Excise Act of 1823, which ended most home production. In 1831 Aeneas Coffey patented a continuous still that made spirit cheaply, and from 1850 Andrew Usher blended it with traditional pot-still whisky, though some Irish distillers insisted the new product was not whisky at all. When phylloxera wrecked French vineyards by the 1880s, brandy faltered and whisky took over many markets. In America, whisky once served as currency; farmers found it easier to ship corn as spirit, and a 1791 excise tax triggered the Whiskey Rebellion. George Washington ran a large distillery at Mount Vernon.
Scotch must legally be distilled and aged in oak in Scotland for at least three years. Its smoky note comes from peat fires used to dry sprouted barley. During American Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, whisky prescribed by doctors could still be bought at licensed pharmacies.
Source: Whisky
