Whisky Mythbusters – Debunking the whisky myths

There are plenty of articles and videos online that purport to address so-called myths about whisky. What many of them actually discuss are just misconceptions, and the content is aimed chiefly at novices and newcomers to the category. Well-worn examples include “older whisky is better whisky”, or “the smokiness in whisky comes from the charred barrels”, or “you should add water to your dram”. While such content does have value, that’s not what this article is about.   What’s more interesting is to look at some of the myths and stories that are so deeply entrenched in whisky’s culture, they’re even believed by seasoned whisky drinkers and enthusiasts. Worse still are those that continue to be reinforced by some well-meaning but misled brand ambassadors. And let’s not get started on the misinformation spread by influ…oops….content creators who are more interested in getting clicks than researching their topic. So let’s knuckle down and tear into some of the deeper myths about whisky that continue to endure…      

1. Scotch whisky is made with soft water

When brand ambassadors talk about what factors contribute to the whisky’s quality, or what makes Scotch whisky unique, they’ll invariably wax lyrical about the Scottish water and how pure it is. Many will go further and state that Scotch whisky has the quality it’s renowned for because they only use soft water.  

It’s true that many of Scotland’s more famous whisky distilleries indeed use soft water. Glenfiddich, Glen Grant, and Macallan are three good examples, and perhaps it was their early market dominance and the message spread by their ambassadors and the early (modern) writers in the 1980’s and 90’s that helped establish the myth about soft water. Perhaps it was also the success and visibility of these brands that led further to a commonly-believed myth that soft water produced better whisky?

The problem, unfortunately, is that neither assertion is true.   There are plenty of distilleries across Scotland that use hard water, and you can count some pretty famous and award-winning names amongst them – Glenmorangie, Glenlivet, and Highland Park for starters.

Is hard water bad? From a consumer’s point of view, no, not at all. By the time you take into account all the other variables (i.e. the malt, peat, yeast, and the influence of the cask), any impact that the water has on the final flavour is minimal (note…not negligible) and, as we’ve already outlined, some of the distilleries that use hard water produce delicious whisky. Where hard water is an issue is simply the maintenance and upkeep of the distillery’s plant. Hard water can lead to calcium/lime deposits and scale building up inside the pipes and other equipment, leading to pipes, plates, and filters needing to be monitored and replaced on a far more frequent basis.

 

2. You can discern and taste the variety of barley in your dram.

Let’s say someone poured out three different, unidentified whiskies for you. You’re given a blindfold; the glasses get mixed around, and you’re simply told that one is a Glenfiddich, one is a Glenlivet, and one is a Cardhu. Do you think you could successfully pick which is which? The exercise is then repeated with three new, different whiskies. This time, you’re told that one was made using Optic barley, one was made using Concerto barley, and one was made using Laureate barley. How do you think you’d go?  

The vast, vast majority of us wouldn’t even know where to begin, much less even care. So it’s always amusing when a brand ambassador stands up at the front of the room at a tasting event and champions the variety of barley that their distillery uses. Is there anything in this, or is it just marketing? Or is it simply just another whisky myth? To address this fully, let’s wind the clock back a few years…

In the industry’s “quieter” years in the 1980’s, 1990’s, and even into the early 2000’s when there were less single malt brands around (note – brands, not distilleries), there was one brand that had a higher profile and a louder voice than many. That brand was The Macallan, and one of the foundations of their marketing was Macallan’s championing of Golden Promise barley.   Macallan made great whisky; Macallan used Golden Promise barley; influential writers like Michael Jackson sung the praises of Macallan and their specific use of Golden Promise….and so the subconscious connection many people made was that Golden Promise was the key to good whisky. Anything else was, ipso facto, less good!

However, the problem is that things were never that clear cut. Prior to 2004, all commercially available Macallan was matured exclusively in 100% ex-sherry casks, and the oak played a very significant role in Macallan’s celebrated flavour profile and reputation. Could you really taste the Golden Promise in the spirit after 12 years in a 1^st-Fill ex-Oloroso cask? Macallan claimed, “Yes.” Well…maybe not after 12 years in wood, but certainly with their newmake spirit. Trials and tests conducted by the distillery with other barleys in the 1990’s concluded that the resulting distillates lacked Macallan’s usual oiliness. As a result, Macallan moved forward for a few years with a minimum of 25% Golden Promise in their mashbill. Other distilleries – Glengoyne, for example – were also vocal about their use of Golden Promise.

The problem for Golden Promise was that, even if it did offer a superior flavour or produced a spirit with a particular character, it was usurped by new and more advanced barley varieties that were more disease-resistant in the field, and offered greater yield to both the farmers and the distillers.   Higher yielding varieties such as Optic, Chariot, and Concerto came along, offering distillers yields of over 410 litres of alcohol per tonne of malt. Golden Promise – stuck in the high 300’s on a good day – couldn’t compete financially. There was also nothing in it for the farmers: Golden Promise typically delivered around five tonnes of grain per hectare; the more modern barley varieties yielded closer to 7.5 tonnes per hectare. In an era where the distillery’s accountant has a more powerful voice than the brewer, economics will usually trump flavour.

The preceding three paragraphs outline some historical background and merely lay the foundation to explore and discuss this myth: Can you actually taste – much less discern or identify – the different varieties of barley used in whisky? Can you taste the difference after the grain has been malted and the starches converted into sugar? After the yeast has done its job of converting the sugar into alcohol? After the wash has been distilled two or three times? After the spirit has matured in an oak cask for 10 years? And particularly if that oak cask previously held a wine, or if the malt was heavily peated?

There’s no denying there’s a difference in the wash (beer) that different barleys can produce. (The entire beer industry would collapse if this was not the case!) And there’s no denying there are subtle differences in the new make spirit subsequently distilled. The likes of Bruichladdich and Springbank have long championed “local barley” distinctions, and Mark Reynier’s Waterford distillery in Ireland takes it to the next level again. Glenmorangie also released some limited-edition expressions over the years that celebrated using different barley varieties. Indeed, Glenmorangie now even has a separate product line, the so-called Cadboll Estate range, which uses Cadboll barley.

However, we respectfully maintain that it’s a myth to assert that the average whisky drinker will discern or be able to identify a specific barley-type once the spirit has been transformed after 10 years or more in a cask – and particularly if it’s spent time in a sherry, port, or wine cask.  

 

3. The Scots invented whisky

You’ve probably read the headline above and already blurted out, “No, it was the Irish”.  Well….yes and no.

For most of the 20^th century and certainly the 21^st century thus far, Scotch whisky has enjoyed a more pronounced profile and reputation over its Irish counterpart.   This wasn’t always the case, and there’s ample literature, production figures, and sales & export figures demonstrating that Irish whiskey once dominated the global whisky market. In the late 19^th century, sales figures in London noted that bottles of Irish whiskey outsold Scotch two to one. Irish whiskey exports to the USA were significantly higher than that of Scotch. At a grassroots level, the largest distillery in Ireland was producing eight times more spirit in a year than Scotland’s largest distillery!

However, the Irish whiskey industry commenced a huge decline in the early 20^th century, due to a series of unfortunate external events and some disastrous internal decision making. Irish independence and the republic’s departure from the British Empire / the Commonwealth was a huge body blow for the industry, as was the introduction of Prohibition in the USA. And the Irish distillers’ stubborn resistance to and rejection of column still distillation, grain whisky, and blending did them no favours. By the 1970’s, the Irish whiskey industry was on its death bed and almost gasping its last breaths. But we digress…

So, despite the modern industry and current state of affairs, Irish whiskey once outpunched Scotch whisky. But did the Irish actually invent whisk(e)y?   Did they beat Scotland to the punch? The answer lies somewhere within hypothesis, conjecture, speculation, and probability. The first written reference to whisky in Scotland we have today dates back to 1494; the oldest documented record of whiskey in Ireland is a bit older and dates from 1405. While it stands to reason that whisk(e)y was being made in both countries for at least a century or two before these dates, there’s just nothing definitive to hang our hat on.

What we do know is that neither country invented distillation per se. The art of boiling a fermented liquid, capturing the vapours, and collecting the condensed spirit is widely believed to have originated in the middle east. An alchemist by the name of Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan is credited with having invented the alembic still in the mid-8^th century, which facilitated distillation in this manner to occur. Roughly a century a later, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi, a widely celebrated scientist and physician, had perfected the art of distilling to concentrate and capture ethanol, writing numerous books on his thoughts and practices. By the 12th century, his teachings and methods were being studied and applied in both Spain and Italy. It’s known that by 1200, the Spanish were distilling alcohol with the intention of drinking it and had already coined the term aqua-vini….the water of life!  The Latin for this was aqua-vitae, and the Gaelic for this was uisge beatha, from where we get the anglicised word whisky.  

Likely accelerated by the Crusades (1095 – 1291), the knowledge and practice of distillation spread from the Islamic world to the western Christian church, and popular wisdom has it that it found its way to Irish monks first before subsequently crossing the Irish sea into Scotland. It’s only a theory, but it’s a good one. So have we busted the myth? As the legendary, late Dennis Hendry used to tell visitors at Aberlour Distillery: “If the Irish invented whisky, it was the Scots who perfected it!”     

If you’d like a quick and amusing refresher on the history of Scotch whisky, you might like to check out our entertaining music video here. 

 

4. Irish whiskey is triple distilled

There’s an old industry joke that asks why the Irish triple distill.  The answer goes, “To be sure, to be sure, to be sure!”  There are several things that define Irish whiskey and distinguish its point of difference from Scotch whisky. Despite what many Irish whiskey brand ambassadors would have you believe, triple distillation is not one of them!

As we’ve already discussed in our brief foray into Irish whiskey’s history in Whisky Myth No. 3 above, the Irish whiskey industry was in massive decline in the mid-to-late 20th century. With just two distilleries left operating and the industry’s marketing department needing to sell a tangible point of difference, Irish whiskey was pitted against Scotch with the tag of it being “smoother and easier to drink”.   This enhanced smoothness and approachability – something still touted by the marketing departments today – was bolted on as a function of the whiskey being triple distilled, and this came to define the product.  The problem is that, historically and currently, it’s simply not true.

Triple distillation was adopted by some distillers in Ireland as a consequence or function of them attempting to reduce their tax bill!  In 1785, a tax was introduced on the use of malted barley. To circumvent or reduce the financial burden of this tax, some Irish distillers started to use a mixed mashbill that used both malted and unmalted barley. The resulting wash and the subsequent low wines produced by these mashbills were lower in alcohol, and many found that a third distillation was necessary to get the spirit to the desired strength and quality. Hence triple distillation. The malt tax was abolished roughly 40 years later in favour of a more sensible (?) taxation system, but by then the practice and the style of whiskey it subsequently produced had its champions, and the practice endured.   (Fun fact: A similar situation of catalysts, outcomes, and resulting flavour preferences is what led to triple distillation being adopted by many Lowland distilleries in the Glasgow-Edinburgh belt, which by the late 1990’s – when there were so few of them left – led to a myth that all Lowland whisky was triple distilled).  It is this style of whisky – a mashbill of both malted and unmalted barley – that defines what we call “Irish Pot Still Whiskey”.  It is very different to, say, Bushmills, which is a single malt, or Jamesons, which is a blended whiskey that contains both Irish Pot Still and grain whiskey made from corn.

It’s worth noting that when Alfred Barnard visited the distilleries of Ireland in the 1880’s, he recorded that eight of the 28 distilleries he toured practiced a conventional double distillation (roughly a quarter), so it certainly wasn’t true back then that all Irish whiskey was triple distilled. By the 1970’s, there were only two distilleries left in operation in Ireland and both of them triple distilled, and perhaps this is where the modern myth has its foundations – particularly by the time Pernod Ricard’s marketing arm took Jamesons to the world. Today, there are plenty of Irish distilleries practicing conventional double distillation – Cooley and Waterford being good examples. (And noting that Cooley’s spirit has been double distilled since it was established in 1987!)

 

5. The classic myths

We’ve explored four deeper myths about whisk(e)y above…let’s use this fifth and final point to slay the classic myths that you’re probably already familiar with, but we’ll address and debunk here for completeness…

• Whisky gets all its colour from the oak cask in which it’s matured. Well, yes and no. Yes, whisky is actually as clear as water when it comes off the stills and, yes, it takes on colour from the wood in which it sits.  The amount of colour it takes from the cask is a function of the level of the cask’s toasting and charring, how many times it’s been filled, and also the oak species and any previous fillings the cask previously held (e.g. sherry).  However, many distilleries, producers, and bottlers also add artificial colouring – spirit caramel, aka E150 – to their whisky, and so what you see isn’t always the real deal.  Fortunately for us, some countries have strict labelling laws where artificial additives have to be declared. Germany is one such country. If you want to check if your favourite whisky has been artificially coloured or not, try and find a bottle of it that’s been labelled for the German market. If the label has the words “Mit farbstoff” (translates as with colouring), you’ll know the colour ain’t natural.   For more information on how the cask influences whisky, you might like to read our article, “The complete guide to oak, casks, and whisky maturation.”

• Whisky gets better as it gets older. Well, strictly speaking, the answer is “it depends”. But as a universal, absolute statement, the assertion is flawed and the myth is nonsense. Generally speaking, whisky will improve with age up to a point. As a generalisation, the majority of Scotch whiskies hit their peak at around 10 to 15 years of age.  Of course, there are many, many celebrated examples where some whiskies and casks will age and improve well beyond this, but the percentage of “winners” starts to rapidly diminish. There are many variables here: The size of the cask, how many times the cask has been used, the climate/environment, and so on. Regardless, there comes a time when the spirit in every cask peaks, and any more time spent in the wood after that has a deleterious (negative) effect. The whisky can become drying, tannic, bitter, or over-oaked. It can lose its balance; it can be overpowered by the wood; and it can lose all the character and flavours that the spirit had in the first place.

• Whisky matures in the bottle. The immediate response to this myth is no.  If a whisky is bottled and labelled as a 10 Year Old in 2024, it’s still a 10 year old whisky in 2034.   Unlike wine or “bottle conditioned” beer, once the whisky is in the glass, it no longer ages or matures. However, there’s also a more nuanced response: No, whisky doesn’t mature in the bottle but, contrary to common wisdom, it can change in the bottle. The whisky community now has terms for this, such as old bottle effect or old bottle syndrome. Slow and long-term evaporation through corks and stoppers can also create change in the bottle. Whisky & Wisdom has explored this in great detail in our feature article, “Oxidation – does whisky go off in the bottle?”

• Whisky comes from Scotland, whiskey comes from Ireland or the USA. Well, mostly. Traditionally and conventionally, the above statement had some truth to it, but traditions and conventions do not equal law nor fact. The inclusion or exclusion of the “e” perhaps used to be a general indicator of the spirit’s origin, but there are too many exceptions to the rule these days. Makers Mark, a Kentucky bourbon, has long spelled its product whisky, as has George Dickel in Tennessee. Similarly, Waterford in Ireland has adopted the spelling of whisky. Other countries are mixing and matching; Australia being a good example. The majority of Australian distilleries – certainly those making a traditional single malt – adopt whisky; whereas the many distilleries making a mixed-grain or bourbon-style spirit have opted for whiskey.

• Scotch whisky is the best. No, this is not a whisky myth. It’s a fact. 😉 

Cheers,
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PS…got any other whisky myths you’d like to add, ask about, or see debunked?  Add them in the comments section below.