Whisky or whiskey: which one Edinburgh sells, and why the e moves

Both words descend from the same place: the Gaelic uisge beatha, water of life, which is itself a translation of the Latin aqua vitae. English shortened it to “usky” and then to whisky.

The e is Irish in origin, and the usual explanation is commercial rather than linguistic: in the nineteenth century Irish distillers wanted to distinguish their product from Scottish output, and the extra letter did the job on a label. American distilling was heavily influenced by Irish immigrants, and the spelling travelled with them.

The convention is now firm enough to be genuinely useful. If a bottle says whisky, it is almost certainly Scottish, Canadian or Japanese. If it says whiskey, it is almost certainly Irish or American. There are famous exceptions in the United States — a few long-established brands use whisky — but the rule holds well enough to be worth knowing.

The plurals follow the same split: whiskies without the e, whiskeys with it.

This is the part that actually changes how you taste. Under the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009, a whisky may only be called Scotch if it meets all of the following.

It is distilled and matured in Scotland. Not partly. Not blended there from spirit made elsewhere.

It has spent at least three years in oak casks of no more than seven hundred litres. Three years is the floor, not the norm; most of what you will taste is considerably older. The cask size limit matters because smaller casks have more wood contact per litre.

It was distilled at less than 94.8 per cent alcohol. Above that you are making neutral spirit, and the character of the grain disappears.

It is bottled at no less than 40 per cent. Below that it is not Scotch, whatever else it may be.

Nothing has been added but water and plain caramel colouring. No flavouring, no sweetening, no anything. E150A is permitted for colour consistency and is the only additive on the list.

Every one of those is enforceable law rather than industry custom, and together they are why a guided tasting works: you are comparing things made under identical constraints, so every difference you can taste came from the barley, the still, the cask or the place.

The earliest surviving written record of distilling in Scotland is not a recipe or a chronicle. It is a line in the Exchequer Rolls, the royal accounts, dated the first of June 1494:

“To Friar John Cor, by order of the King, to make aqua vitae, VIII bolls of malt.”

Eight bolls is a substantial quantity of malt — enough, by modern reckoning, for something in the order of fifteen hundred bottles. Which tells you the important thing about the entry: this was not somebody trying it for the first time. Distilling was already an established practice with a known yield, being ordered in bulk by a king.

Every tour on this page is built, one way or another, on the five hundred and thirty-odd years since that line was written down. It is worth hearing it read out at least once, and the good hosts in this city do.

Once the spelling is settled, the label is the next thing worth being able to read, and almost all of it is defined in law rather than left to marketing.

Single malt Scotch whisky. Malted barley only, from one distillery, in pot stills. “Single” refers to the distillery, not the cask — a single malt is normally a blend of many casks from the same place.

Single grain Scotch whisky. One distillery again, but made from other cereals as well and usually in a continuous still. Lighter, and the backbone of most blends.

Blended Scotch whisky. Malt and grain whisky combined, usually from many distilleries. Around nine in ten bottles sold worldwide.

An age statement. If a bottle says twelve years, every drop in it is at least twelve years old. The youngest component sets the number, always.

Cask strength. Bottled without dilution to a standard strength, so anywhere from the high forties to the sixties. This is the one where adding water changes everything.

Non-chill filtered. Chill filtering removes compounds that make whisky go cloudy with water or ice. Leaving them in is generally held to keep more texture, and bottlers who skip it say so on the label.