Hacker News Reader

Comment by oscar9926 | Hacker News Reader

Only USA, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland call it Whiskey. Any other country not mentioned that distills and bottles Whisky does not use the 'e'.

View on HN

But not all American whiskys are spelt "whiskey", e.g., Maker's Mark: https://www.makersmark.com/

Buy those all have "e"s in them (assuming you expand USA). And hey, Canada and Japan don't have "e"s either. I think we're onto something.

I thought it was Scotland that got exclusive use of whisky without the "e" in the same way that only French get to use champagne.

Japan also drop the e. Japanese whisky is quite interesting though, some of the stuff is completely out there (eg using seaweed as flavouring) and other stuff could be mistaken for being a scotch. I seem to recall reading that a lot of Japanese distilleries were trained in Scotland.

Last year I had a bottle of whisky from India which I’m pretty sure also dropped the e. That too was a lovely drink and could easily have been mistaken for scotch.

A lot of Japanese Whisky isn't even from Japan.

https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/features/19680/not-all-jap...

I hear this said a lot, but is there an example you can think of of a mainstream Japanese whiskey --- a Nikka or Suntory, for instance --- that isn't 100% Japanese spirit? There's Akashi, but the controversy there is that it's not 100% whiskey, not that it isn't 100% Japanese.

I think the trouble lies in the quantity of aged whisky Japan is exporting. They did not have a lot of whisky production 25+ years and so it is simply not possible for them to be bottling this much whisky from 25 year old Japanese casks.

I hate to link to Bloomberg but this article is pretty good:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/that-expe...

That was really interesting thanks, did not know that. I like a glass of Yamazaki on the rocks but to me Japanese whiskies have always been a little too smooth and balanced to enjoy neat anyway, compared to a lot of Scotch whiskys which have more character and more rough edges.

Whisky is not a region of Scotland. The use of Champagne is protected because it's a region of France.

There is also EU law for the protection of spirits, which have not been typically named after specific regions. For example, ouzo can only be produced in Greece. Not sure what the status of whisk(e)y is on this.

The difference in spelling is due to the fact the word for Uisce Beatha was brought into the English language twice. Once from Irish Gaelic before the Great Vowel shift in English and a second time from Scots Gaelic after the shift.

Scotch whisky has to actually be Scotch—i.e. from Scotland. Whisk(e)y can be from anywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com