What is scotch?

It’s a type of whisky. That may seem obvious, but a whisky is simply a spirit distilled from a grain. Which means that bourbon, and rye are also whiskies. There are also Irish, Japanese, and the broader ‘world whiskies.’ What a whisky is called actually gives you a clue as to how it was made. Whisky making and selling is a business, and as such there are regulations involved. One of the benefits of this is standardization. Though varied, when you have a scotch there are certain components that signal it as such, the same is true for a bourbon or rye. 

So, what is scotch? A type of whisky. Like chocolate cake is a type of cake. What makes it a scotch whisky? There are very specific rules that make it a scotch rather than another type of whisky. 

What else? It has to meet these other criteria:

• Made in a single distillery
  • Processed into a mash at that distillery
  • Fermented at that distillery
  • Matured at that distillery in excise warehouse (the tax man needs their cut) for at least 3 years
• The ingredients allowed are water, barley, and yeast (note other whole cereal grains can be used, more on that on a later post)
• It must be distilled to no more than 98.8% ABV
• It’s bottled at least a 40% ABV
• Only water, caramel coloring, and a combo of both can be added

 That’s it, those are the scotch rules. Later we’ll get into the different types of scotch. Remember my comparing scotch to chocolate cake, well there’s more than one kind of chocolate cake.