Olivier Poels 5:40 p.m., July 01, 2022
Was he Irish or Scottish?
This is the question that has been debated for centuries.
To go back to the origin of whisky, we must date the arrival of distillation in Europe.
Known in Egypt since Antiquity, the Arabs perfected it in the 10th century and it arrived in Europe in the 12th century.
The Irish claim that this technique would have been brought back by Saint-Patrick in 432 following a trip to Egypt.
At the time, it was essentially the monks who distilled plants or honey to obtain a medicinal drink that had nothing to do with whiskey.
It was not until the 1490s that a product appeared that resembled what we know today, essentially the result of clandestine distillation.
Laws appear, recipes become more precise and, in 1823, the first “pure malt” products are born in Scotland and the official recognition of whiskey.
But until the middle of the 19th century, the Irish dominated the market with their famous Irish Whiskey.
The immigration of populations to the United States will give birth there to Bourbon, a corn-based whiskey born in a county that no longer exists, the county of Bourbon.
Blend: mixture of malts and grains (wheat, corn, oats, rye)
Single malt: pure barley from a single distillery
Peated whiskey: the barley grains are dried over a peat fire, an organic material resulting from the decomposition of plants