Let One of the Greatest Writers of the 20th Century Teach You How to Drink Scotch

From the archives

In September 1980, the legendary author Kingsley Amis wrote an essay for Food & Wine called "Scotch: The Water of Life." Obviously, some information about the availability and popularity of Scotch is of the time, but for historical value, this story is being presented as it originally ran.

The origins of Scotch are unknown. During his invasion of Ireland in the year 1170, Richard Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, is said to have noticed that the inhabitants were drinking whiskey as well as being killed by his troops. So the Irish would have had plenty of time to teach the Scots the process of distilling in the three-plus centuries that elapsed before the first authenticated mention of what sounds like Scotch. But did they? Were they in a position to? Who could have taught the Irish in the first place? And if they did not teach the Scots, could the English have passed along the discovery without making any use of it themselves till they started producing gin four or five centuries later? Or did the Scots learn from the French, distillers of brandy since roughly the time of Strongbow and allies of Scotland against aggressive England through the same period?

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One or another of these theories is regularly put forward without, as far as I know, the least hard evidence. The apparent reluctance to accept the obvious and give the Scots full credit is strange. For a long time they have been notably energetic and creative, the very kind of people who invent things. I see no reason to suppose their forebears were much different. Like the domestication of fire, a comparably important step in human history, distilling must surely have originated in more than one place.

The possible history of Scottish whisky

Whatever the truth of this may be, I have it on the best authority that the Scottish Exchequer Roll of 1494-1495 recorded the supply of "eight bolls of malt [equivalent to about 1,500 U.S. gallons] to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae," i.e., "water of life," i.e., spirituous liquor. The name soon started appearing in its Scotish Gaelic form, uisgebeatha, later iskiebae, later whisky. (The French had similarly translated aqua vitae as eau-de-vie, meaning what is known to us as brandy.)

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By modern standards the good friar's product must have been unduly weak as well as harsh, and also richly productive of hangovers, though doubtless acceptable enough as a means of eking out a diet of porridge and occasionally haggis — a subtle affair of sheep's innards boiled in its stomach with suet and oatmeal in a Scottish winter. But his method of manufacture, while greatly refined in detail, remains in use today. The reader will now stand by for some science. I have compressed it as much as I dare.

How Scotch is made

Scotch is made from barley, the harvested grain or seed of the cereal. The distiller converts a load of it into malt by steeping it in local water, thus inducing it to germinate. To stop the sprouting at the proper point, he heats it — "cures" — it in a peat-fired kiln. Then he grinds the malt, which is rich in enzymes, sugars, and protein, and makes a mash of it in hot water. The liquid part (wort) is drawn off and caused to ferment-to convert sugar to alcohol by adding yeast.

Distillation follows: the liquid, now called "beer," alcohol, because of its lower boiling point, is readily separated (as vapor) from the water and condensed again into liquid. The distilled alcohol, now whisky, is piped into oak casks, together with a proportion of water, and the process of aging begins. The period from mashing to distillation is about a week.

At every stage of production there are variables which will affect the flavor of the whisky. First, obviously, the water. The geology and climate of Scotland have produced a terrain well supplied with small and not-so-small watercourses of differing chemistries. These differences are so abrupt that two distilleries in the Highlands, owned by the same family, situated only a quarter of a mile apart and using the same manufacturing methods but not the same water, produce two quite distinct whiskies. Multiply this by the size of the whisky-producing area — nearly 300 miles from north to south and not far short of 200 miles from west to east and you already have a good reason why Scotch whiskies are, as Dr. R. J. S. McDowall has put it, "almost as varied as the wines of France."

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The character of the barley also matters. Not nearly enough of it is produced in the Scottish Highlands to meet the world demand for Scotch, and the present-day distiller must go to the Lowlands, England, and, for small  amounts, North America: Highlands barley is relatively poor in starch and is therefore low in alcoholic yield, but it is relatively rich in protein and other substances that contribute to flavor. Dr. McDowall, apologizing for the contemporary Scotsman's appalling habit of cutting his whisky with fizzy lemonade, suggests that Scotch is not what it was in the days before the extensive use of "better." barleys. Well, some things really ain't what they used to be, and the curious law whereby you seem to need bad soil to make good wine, and bad wine from which to distill good brandy, may have been at work here too. Even so, present-day Scotch is quite good enough for me. It is my desert-island drink but I will save that for the moment.

The peat used in kilning — the heating that checks the germination of the barley — is a third strong influence on the finished product. The smoke flavor from the slow-burning peat survives in the flavor of the mature spirit, slightly or strongly according to the amount and type of peat involved. Islay peat has a lot of seaweed in it, which somể say they can taste in Laphroaig and other whiskies from that island.

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The shape of the still, the method of heating it, and the size and type of cask used for aging also have their effect. Nobody knows why aging improves a whisky; it is a remarkable fact that a fifteen-year-old Scotch contains exactly the same ingredients, in exactly the same proportions, as the raw spirit did.

Some aspects of whisky-making are less mysterious. The distinctive flavor and general character of a whisky depend largely on the relative amounts and total quantity of congeners it contains. These substances are technically impurities; for the most part "higher alcohols" of much more complex chemical structure than ethyl alcohol, the primary whisky constituent. Here the distiller has rough overall control, though again he has no idea how the congeners- there are more than 200 of them-do what they evidently do.

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How Scotland got its stills

Friar John used — and some of his successors use — a pot still to make whisky. Its distinguishing feature is that its working is intermittent, the chamber being cooled and cleaned after each round. For over three centuries. (and probably much longer) all Scotch came out of a pot still. Then, in 1831, a certain Aeneas Coffey, once Inspector-General of Irish Excise, patented a new type of still that came to be known as the "patent still" or "Coffey still." Turned down by the conservative Irish, the invention was put into service in Scotland and a great change in world drinking habits was set in motion.

The working of the patent still is continuous, which makes it much more efficient than the pot still in two senses. It produces a purer spirit, virtually free of congeners, and it is much quicker — by a factor of something like 40 to 1  — and cheaper to operate. Its raw material is not malt alone but a mixture of malt (whose function it is to convert the starches in the grains to a soluble state), barley in the unmalted state, and grain (nowadays what is called maize in the United Kingdom and corn in the United States). And its product is called "grain whisky" to distinguish it from the "malt whisky" made by the pot still. In the 1850s, an enterprising Lowlander found that something very drinkable emerged when you blended the (expensive) malt whisky with the (inexpensive) grain whisky, and the second great step was take Nearly all of the Scotch that now surrounds us is a blend: Johnnie Walker, Haig & Haig, Black & White, Dewars, to name some of the most successful.

What does grain whisky taste like? Not an easy question, since none is sold commercially on any scale — it goes for blending. One might reason from the method of manufacture that it must be a neutral or "silent" spirit similar to vodka, also a patent-still product. The few which have managed to find it tell a different story. Not "sile" at all, says one witness; grain whisky is rather noisy, in fact, chemical and sharp. This may be an academic point but not one the inquisitive Scotch-drinker will readily dismiss. What is certain is that whiskies with a lot of malt in them. like Teacher's and Bell's are easier on the palate than grain-dominated supermarket Scotches like … you name them. The price will guide you.

Back to Scotch history

Back to history: The patent still and the practice of blending created a mighty river of Scotch with nowhere to go until, almost immediately, a mysterious coincidence saw to it that phylloxera, the grape aphid, virtually laid waste the French vineyards and so deprived the well-off Englishman of the Cognac that had been his staple spirit. Scotch, which hitherto he had come across only in Highland shooting lodges, or perhaps when visiting Queen Victoria at Balmoral Castle, flowed into the gap and stayed there. Rather later, Prohibition in the United States opened a similar gap. The promotional activities of the Lowland Scot, a much harder fellow than. his Highland countryman till it comes to an actual fight, secured a lasting share of that market.

The greatest expansion by far has taken place since World War II. In 1947, U.K. exports of Scotch totaled 8 million U.S. proof gallons, a proof gallon being equivalent to a gallon of liquor at 100 proof, in 1977 the figure was 113 million. The latest figures available indicate that Scotch had the biggest share of the world whisky market with 34.5 percent. (Irish which is spelled "whiskey" —  had 0.8 percent. I wonder if they ever regret turning turning Aeneas Coffey down.)  The United States took one-third of U.K. exports of Scotch, much more than any other of the 190 countries which import it. There is a clear trend toward malt whisky, which Londoners are beginning to offer as an alternative to Cognac after meals:

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This is not surprising, as many consider a fine malt to be the equal of a fine brandy. For drinking in any quantity, however, I myself find even the driest and most pungent of malts a little on the smooth side; I miss the bite of the grain. So I roll my own. I have a small barrel, holding perhaps a gallon, which I keep topped up with (ideally) one part of a heavy, peaty malt like Laphroaig, one part of a light, fragrant, almost sweet malt like Glenmorangie, and two parts of a good blend like Teacher's Highland Cream. When purist friends exclaim in affected horror at such impiety, or even perhaps in real horror, my retort is that by mixing malts and grains I am only doing what every professional blender does. Most people who drink Scotch are, I suspect, either indifferent or positively hostile to its taste. If not, why do they deaden that taste with ice, mask it with ginger ale, change it out of recognition with vermouth in that atrocity, the Scotch Manhattan?

True, some of the cheaper blends deserve this treatment, and it seems rather prim to disapprove of a Scotch-and-Soda on a hot evening, but I have not gone even that far for years. I take my house Scotch, and will take any malt and any good blend, with bottled water, about half as much as the quantity of whisky. Real Scotch-drinkers often prefer it altogether straight, which sends my taste buds into overload. I am influenced, too, by the belief that spirits distilled out at 80 proof (American) and above are too strong when undiluted to be wholly absorbed into the blood. I hate the thought of any of it getting away.

I have no objection to mixes in principle-indeed, I am a great Bloody Mary man and, more to the point, regard the Bourbon Old-Fashioned as second only to the Dry Martini among cocktails. Bourbon is a pliant, adaptable drink; Scotch is ruggedly independent. It deigns to lend a hand, however, in two acceptable concoctions, both of them a bit off-track, as follows:

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Lemon Toddy

Put 2 Tablespoons of honey into a jug, pour 1 cup of boiling water over it, and stir until dissolved. Add 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice and 2 to 3 ounces of Scotch and stir till thoroughly mixed. Pour into a preheated tumbler and dust the surface with freshly grated nutmeg. An excellent warmer, reviver, and nightcap. Taken with a couple of aspirin tablets at bedtime, it is said to reduce the severity of a cold or chill. Perhaps you just mind it less for a while.

Atholl Brose

Put 1/2  pound (about 2½ cups) fine-ground oatmeal (preferably Scotch) into a shallow bowl and pour 1 cup of boiling water evenly over it. Leave it for twenty-four hours, covered, at room temperature. Pour into a cheesecloth-lined strainer and press out the white liquor into a warmed jug. Throw away the oatmeal. Add 1/4 cup honey and a fifth of Scotch and stir till thoroughly mixed. Serve in small warmed glasses. Very fortifying. Remember that the oatmeal juice and honey have food value, so use of Brose as an apéritif is best avoided. (Atholl is a dukedom in mid-Scotland, and "brose" is linguistically connected with "broth.")

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