The imbibing of alcoholic spirits is nearly as old as humanity itself, but the first solid historical evidence of the practice of distillation can be found in the Mesopotamia of 2000 BC when it was employed as a means to transform seawater into potable drinking water. It didn’t take long to figure out that if some flavouring was added to it you could come up with a fine tipple that was much more potent than beer or wine!
Distillation techniques eventually made their way northward into Scotland and Ireland, with both lands still claiming to be the original inventors of whisky, a dispute that will likely never be settled! The rest of Europe was using wine as a base to distil into spirits, but it being too cold to grow grapes well in those chill northern isles, the Scots and Irish used fermented grains.
The early whisky-like alcoholic beverages they distilled were called uisge beatha in the Celtic dialect of Gaelic spoken across that region. The first known use of the term “whisky” was in Ireland in 1405. An ancient Irish tome of history called the Annals of Clonmacnoise refers to a local clan member passing away from “imbibing a surfeit of whisky”! He would sadly not be the last to succumb to the potent liquid’s siren’s call and fatally overindulge, but thankfully, most people know when it’s time to quit and go home to bed!
By the mid-1400s 1400s whisky production in Ireland and Scotland was in full swing, and the heady brown beverage was being bought, sold, and drunk by the gallons. The high-ranking lords of the time often furnished supplies and financially supported those who were involved with the distillation of whiskey, the enjoyment of which had evolved into a popular pastime! In 1494, King James IV was stated in the Exchequer Rolls to have bequeathed Friar John Cor with a substantial amount of malt for the purpose!
The first-ever official whisky maker, the Old Bushmills Distillery, was licensed in Northern Ireland in 1608. Meanwhile, the 1600s saw thousands of European colonists journey across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, and the Irish and Scots among them brought their knowledge of whisky distillation with them to the New World.
It didn’t take long for whisky to gain great popularity in the newly minted American colonies, and the production and consumption grew along with their populations. Whisky was so popular in the young United States that distillers used their wares as currency during the American Revolution. The venerable George Washington, the youthful nation’s first president, distilled whisky on his Mt. Vernon plantation, churning out as many as 300,000 barrels of rye whisky a year!
Once the Revolutionary War had come to a close, whisky continued to play a part in American history and politics. The United States’ first official commercial distillery was founded in Louisville, Kentucky by Evan Williams, his famous brand of whisky is still in production today!
And so, the humble grain-based alcoholic beverage of Europe’s northwestern isles stands today as one of the most successful and sought-after spirits in the world!
