The Evolution of Whisky Through the Centuries

For much of its history whisky was the property of three great traditions: Scottish, Irish and, from the early twentieth century onwards, Japanese. The last several decades have seen this map redrawn. Whisky is now made seriously and skilfully on every inhabited continent, and the international industry is entering a period as inventive as any in its long history.

The North American tradition is the oldest of the new-world lineages. American whiskey traces its formal beginnings to the eighteenth century, when Scottish and Irish settlers in Pennsylvania and Kentucky adapted their inherited practices to the maize and rye that the new continent afforded them. Bourbon, defined by law as an American whiskey made from a mash of at least fifty-one per cent maize and matured in new, charred American oak, remains the principal expression of the tradition. Tennessee whiskey, of which Jack Daniel's is the most famous, adds an additional charcoal-filtering step known as the Lincoln County Process. Rye whiskey, once the pre-eminent American style, has enjoyed a marked revival in the two-thousand-and-tens.

Canadian whisky has a long and distinctive tradition of its own. Made predominantly from a base of corn or rye and often blended, Canadian whisky is typically lighter in body than its American cousins and has for over a century been the leading North American whisky by volume. Crown Royal, Canadian Club and Alberta Premium are among its best-known expressions.

In the tropical warehouses of Kavalan, a whisky may mature in five years to a depth that would take fifteen in a Scottish glen.

In the last quarter-century a genuinely global category has emerged. In India, the Amrut distillery in Bangalore has produced single malt whisky of remarkable quality since the early two-thousands, exploiting the accelerated maturation of a tropical climate. In Taiwan, the Kavalan distillery, founded in 2005, has swiftly become one of the most decorated new-world producers. Australian whisky, led by distilleries such as Sullivans Cove and Lark on Tasmania, has similarly achieved international recognition. The Nordic countries — Sweden, Denmark and Iceland — have all developed serious single malt industries drawing on their own climates and their own oak.

The United Kingdom itself is undergoing a quiet craft revival. Since the middle of the two-thousand-and-tens a wave of small distilleries has opened across England and Wales — regions that had produced almost no whisky at all for the greater part of the twentieth century. The English Whisky Company in Norfolk, opened in 2006, was the pioneer; it has since been joined by a growing number of independent producers pursuing distinctive local styles. Welsh whisky, led by Penderyn in the Brecon Beacons, has similarly re-established a distilling tradition after an interruption of more than a century.

A century after the last English distilleries closed, Norfolk and the Cotswolds are once again quietly making whisky.

The forces driving this expansion are many. The renewed international interest in single malt has created markets that make small-scale production economically viable in a way that would have been impossible a generation ago. Advances in cask management have shortened the time to a first credible release. And a global culture of craft production has encouraged experimentation with grains, casks and climates that a more conservative industry would once have resisted.

What remains constant across all of this is the underlying craft. Grain, water, yeast, copper and oak; patience, judgement and time. From the medieval monasteries of Scotland and Ireland to the tropical warehouses of Kavalan, the fundamentals of the tradition have proved remarkably adaptable — and, in every setting, remarkably enduring.