Today is Saturday, May 16 – World Whisky Day. Started in 2012 by Blair Bowman, a University of Aberdeen student, it has been endorsed by the Scottish Parliament as a day of world wide celebration. In honour of this illustrious occasion, here are a few (non-illustrious) whisky facts;
– there are currently 20 million casks of scotch whisky maturing in Scotland. That’s 4 casks for every resident.
– whiskey is the official drink of – – – – – Alabama.
– there is a bottle of Arbeg scotch on the international space station.
– one large oak tree will yield 3 whisky casks.
– a bottle of whisky was found, unfrozen, near the south pole in 2006. It had apparently been left behind by Ernest Shackleton during an 1896 expedition.
– George Washington ran a whiskey distillery prior to becoming President.
– Canadian whisky was once called ‘brown vodka’.
– India consumes 1.5 Billion (with a B) bottles of whisky each year.
– there are 5000 different kinds of single malt whisky.
While you’re committing all that to memory, please take a moment to pour a dram of your favorite whisky and raise a toast to this special day. I’ll think that I’ll pop the cork on a Mortlach. Maybe the 14 or the 16. Or perhaps the Rare Old….. Enjoy!
Whisky Love 
A question. Given the importance distillers have placed in differentiating their products from one another on the basis of taste with great emphasis on the water, the malt, the mix, the aging and other factors is there any difference in the alcohol content of different whiskys? Without being able make the comparisons that you can with your wide stock of drinkables it seems to me that most, if not all of the products available, at least locally are the same proof. With other spirits this seems to not always to be the case, even leaving aside the notable “over-proof” exceptions. While it may be bizarre to think of a “whisky lite” is that even possible? So… is there a range of alcohol content in various whiskys? If so it this a requirement of governments? If not, why not?
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Good question. All whisky, regardless of country of origin, must be minimum 40% alcohol by volume (ATV) . The upper range, that I have seen, is about 60%. When whisky is distilled, the app is adjusted, by adding water, to between 50-60% as it is put into casks for aging. Cask strength whisky, as the name suggests, is bottled directly without further dilution. Most whisky, however, is further diluted at the time of bottling to 40-46%.
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