Whisky

Malted grain, the still and the long sleep in oak

Whisky is malted or unmalted grain, fermented, distilled and — in most traditions — aged in wood. Its history is written in excise ledgers, patents and statutes as much as in legend, and this atlas follows the documents: the first written records in Scotland and Ireland, the pot still and the column still, and the legal definitions that now protect Scotch, Irish, American, Canadian and Japanese whisky.

Where a distillery's founding date is its own claim rather than a documented fact, the page says so.

The history

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Whisky & Whiskey: the storyA history of whiskyWhisky grew out of medieval aqua vitae, appears in Irish and Scottish records from the fifteenth century, and was reshaped by excise law, the continuous still, a royal commission, Prohibition and modern legal definitions. No single inventor or first place can be named.Read the history →

Middle Ages1494-5Friar John Cor's malt, Exchequer Rolls 1494-5
Industrial age1823Excise Act 1823
1830Coffey's continuous still patent
Twentieth centuryJuly 1909Royal Commission on Whiskey: "What is whisky?"
1920-1933US Prohibition
4 May 1964Congress declares bourbon a distinctive product of the United States
Our times23 November 2009Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009

Styles & categories

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Regions

Makers & institutions

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Methods

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Across the atlas

The world map

All markers on the map (75)

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