Whisky

Whisky here is broader by country than most Australian ranges and narrower by brand, because it leans on independent bottlers and smaller distilleries rather than the names on a supermarket shelf.

France carries the country tag on more bottles than anywhere else, which reflects both whisky distilled in France and the French independent bottlers and maturers who appear on this page, Michel Couvreur, Jean Boyer and Celtic Whisky Compagnie among them. Independent bottling matters because it is where single cask and cask strength releases come from, and where a distillery's spirit turns up under someone else's label.

Australia comes next, with Bakery Hill, Archie Rose, Starward, Lark and Spring Bay Distillery. Scotland brings Raasay, Old Perth and Eden Mill. The United States runs from Willett in Kentucky through Virginia Distillery and its Courage and Conviction single malt to FEW and Evan Williams. Japan is Togouchi and Yamazakura, Germany is Slyrs, Wales is Penderyn and Canada is Sortilege.

Styles cover single malt, blended malt, blended whisky, bourbon and rye. Peated bottlings are here but they are a minority, and cask strength releases sit in the forties and above rather than at the usual forty per cent.

Two things are worth checking on any label before you buy: whether a number is an age statement or a vintage year, and whether the strength is a house standard or the strength the cask came out at.

Ten bottles are tasted and ranked in our whisky picks, a decent shortlist when the range feels large. For the categories behind them, see the types of bourbon and Australian whisky explained.

History

Distilled grain spirit appears in the Scottish and Irish records from the late fifteenth century, and the word itself comes from uisge beatha, water of life. For its first two centuries it was a farm product, made from the same barley that fed the household.

Tax shaped everything that followed. Excise duty on spirits from the seventeenth century pushed a great deal of Scottish distilling into the hills and out of the records, and the Excise Act of 1823 brought it back by making a licence affordable. Most of the famous Scottish distilleries date their legal existence from that decade.

The 1830s brought the continuous still, which produced light grain spirit in volume. Blending that grain whisky with heavier malt whisky made a consistent, cheaper product that travelled, and the blended houses built the global trade. Single malt as a category sold on its own name is a twentieth century idea and largely a late twentieth century one.

American whiskey ran on a separate track, with rye in Pennsylvania and Maryland and corn based bourbon in Kentucky, and its rules were written into federal standards that still define what bourbon and straight rye must be.

The newest part of the story is everywhere else. Japan began distilling in the 1920s. France, Germany, Wales, Sweden, India and Australia have all built or rebuilt industries since, most of them within living memory, and several of the bottles on this page come from distilleries younger than the drinkers buying them.

How to drink it

Use a glass that narrows at the top. A Glencairn, a copita or any small tulip will gather the aroma; a straight tumbler lets it escape. Pour a modest measure, about 30ml, and give it a minute in the glass before you go near it.

Water is a tool, not a compromise. A few drops in a cask strength bottling drops the alcohol enough to let the fruit and the malt through, and the higher the strength the more obvious the effect. Add it a little at a time, and stop when the whisky smells sweeter rather than sharper.

Ice is a different decision. It mutes aroma and it dilutes as it melts, which is fine in a long drink and a waste in a single cask malt. One large cube is easier to control than several small ones.

Peated whisky rewards patience more than most. The smoke sits on top at first and moves aside after a few minutes, and a peated malt straight from the bottle into a cold glass will show you the smoke and little else.

Bourbon and rye take a splash of water too, and they are the two styles here that genuinely improve in a stirred cocktail: an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan uses the sweetness rather than hiding it.

An open bottle is stable for a long time, but once it drops below about a quarter full the air above the spirit will slowly flatten it, so finish the last of a good bottle rather than saving it indefinitely.