On Food and Cooking

from malted barley. It’s distilled twice in pot
stills to about 70% alcohol, and has a strong,
distinctive flavor. Another, grain whisky, is
less flavorful and less costly; it is made in the
lowlands from various cereals and just a small
portion (10–15%) of malted barley to convert
their starches into sugars, and distilled in a
continuous still to a neutral 95% alcohol. The
third and most common is a blend of malt and
grain whiskies, with grain whisky accounting
for 40–70%. Such blending began in the 1860s
for economic reasons, and turned out to
produce a milder, more widely appealing
drink just in time to replace brandy when the
insect scourge phylloxera devastated
European vineyards in the 1870s and 1880s.
This is when Scotch developed its
international reputation. Today, Scotch
connoisseurs prize the distinctive “single-
malt” whiskies produced by the few
remaining small distillers of all-malt whisky.
Whisky makers produce beer, omitting the