A brief and compelling history of how whisky took over the world

Histories of whisky often start with romantic waffle about Irish monks, misty glens or even Arabic alchemists. I’m not going to include any of that, because the truth is that uisce beatha, the Gaelic for water of life from which we get ‘whisky’, would have been nothing like the complex, golden spirit that is appreciated around the world today.

Whisky’s origins are also neither ancient nor mysterious — they are rooted firmly in the Victorian era. High-alcohol spirits made from cereals have been produced in the British Isles since at least the 15th century. These would have been flavoured with herbs and much closer to herbal liqueurs such as Chartreuse or a rough kind of gin.

Whisky as we know it came about when distillers sold their goods to taverns, merchants or private houses, which kept old barrels that had once contained Port, rum or sherry and used them to store the spirit. People noticed that the wood had a positive effect, softening the fiery liquid and adding sweet and spicy flavours. It would, however, be a long time before ageing in this way became systematic.

Two distinct styles of spirit emerged in Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the Highlands, small-scale distillation using only malted barley was the norm and, most of the time, this was done illicitly to evade the taxman.

In the more urban Lowlands, production was industrial and made use of other cereals, including oats, wheat and rye. Much of the end product was sent south to London to make gin. This was probably the best use for it: Robert Burns described Lowland whisky as a ‘rascally liquor’.

In Ireland, a different tradition developed, based on spirits made from mixed cereals, but produced to a higher standard than the rudimentary Lowland product. When George IV visited Scotland in 1822, he asked to try the fabled — but illegal — Glenlivet. The former Prince Regent, notorious for his gluttony and womanising, proved quite a hit north of the border, parading down Princes Street in Edinburgh in Royal Stuart tartan ‘to the roaring cheers of the loyal Scots,’ according to the historian Sir John Plumb in his 1956 book The First Four Georges.

The following year, 1823, was a momentous one in the development of Scotch whisky: it saw the passing of the Excise Act, which liberalised distilling and provided greater resources and powers to excise officers. Glenlivet, under Capt George Smith, became legal and, in the years that followed, dozens of distilleries were officially founded, among them Macallan in 1824 and Talisker in 1830. They were appreciated by Scots connoisseurs, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who saluted ‘The king o’ drinks, as I conceive it, Talisker, Isla, or Glenlivet!’ in his 1887 poem The Scotsman’s Return From Abroad.

Most, however, encountered whisky in a rather different form: the growth of Scotch whisky was driven not by distillers, but by blenders, who ‘not only created the blended whiskies that still dominate sales around the world, but also shaped the style of the single malts that enthusiasts relish so much,’ says Nick Morgan, author of the Johnnie Walker history A Long Stride.

These blends owed their existence to an invention in 1830 of the Coffey Still, which enabled cheap, reliable alcohol to be produced. Although the results lacked the flavour of the Highland spirit made in a traditional pot still, shopkeepers such as John Walker in Kilmarnock and John Dewar in Perth discovered that blending them with malt whisky created a consistent product. Those plentiful sherry casks had an important role to play, as confirmed in 1864 by William Sanderson, creator of the VAT 69 blend, who wrote that ‘it is well known that whisky stored in sherry casks soon acquires a mellow softness’.

For most of the 19th century, however, the whisky capital of the Empire was not in Scotland — it was in Ireland. The big four Dublin distillers, Roe & Co, Powers, John Jameson and William Jameson, had giant pot stills in which they distilled a mixture of malted barley and other grains. They were ahead of the curve: the Irish were ageing their whiskies in sherry casks at a time when much Scotch was still being drunk unaged. The big distillers did not market their own products directly; instead, they sold to so-called whiskey bonders, who aged and sold it on (it is telling that two of the greatest Irish whiskey brands, Gilbey’s Redbreast and Mitchell & Sons’ Green Spot, were created by wine merchants).

They were also rather dismissive of marketing altogether, explains Irish historian Fionnán O’Connor: ‘John Jameson did not want to advertise at railway stations. Could they not drop off cards at better addresses in London?’ Contrast that with the energy of a firm such as Dewar’s. Founded in Perth in 1846, its White Label whisky was targeted at fashionable London society and designed to be drunk with soda water.

The Scots were cashing in on a gap in the market left by Cognac, which was in short supply following the outbreak of phylloxera in France in the 1870s. The company’s marketing was cutting edge: in 1898, Tommy Dewar commissioned the world’s first cinema advertisement for whisky. It was made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company and featured paintings of Scotsmen in tartan regalia coming to life when the laird of a castle pours himself a wee dram.

Like much of whisky advertising at the time and, indeed, ever since, it plays on romantic stereotypes of Highland culture. Dewar’s London headquarters on the South Bank had an enormous electric sign installed in 1911 depicting a Highlander in a tam o’ shanter raising a glass of White Label; when he drank, his beard and kilt swayed. The Irish were left behind by such high-tech methods.

Even before the War of Independence (1919–21), the industry was in decline; then came Prohibition, which wiped out the American market, and a disastrous trade war with Britain in the 1930s. By the 1970s, Ireland was down to two distilleries: Bushmills in the north and Irish Distillers in Cork, which continued making Powers and Jameson.

It wasn’t all plain sailing for Scotch whisky either. The boom years were interrupted by the collapse of Pattisons in 1898, a whisky blender owing millions of pounds to distillers. The firm had inflated its profits through dodgy book-keeping, like the Enron of whisky.

Many distilleries went bust then or later when the industry was hit hard by the First World War, the Depression and the prohibitionist tendencies of the teetotal Welsh prime minister Lloyd George. However, the government also passed legislation in 1916 stating that Scotch whisky had to be aged for a minimum of three years, which guaranteed quality. The industry consolidated into larger groups, the most dominant of which was the Distillers Company Limited (DCL), which by 1925 owned both Dewar’s and Johnnie Walker.

Whereas Ireland was in decline and the Americans had wrecked their own industry with Prohibition, Scotch was in good shape to conquer the world. Light, fruity whiskies — J&B, Cutty Sark — were developed to appeal to the American palate, which wasn’t used to the bold flavours of heavier blends. Europe and Latin America took to Scotch in a big way, as Johnnie Walker achieved iconic status in India and the Arab world. Indian drinks consultant Ruchira Neotia notes that everyone in India has an opinion on Johnnie Walker the way they do about cricket.

In Japan, an emerging industrial giant, Scotch whisky became the ultimate status symbol in the 1950s and 1960s: younger Japanese were looking to forget the privations of war and embrace Western culture exemplified by American sports such as baseball and, naturally, Scotch whisky. However, the Japanese were not content simply to drink whisky — they imitated it with a domestic industry that dates back to when chemist and businessman Masataka Taketsuru studied in Scotland between 1918 and 1920. He brought that expertise home, first at Suntory, today the dominant force in Japanese whisky (as featured in the Bill Murray film Lost in Translation), and then to his own company, Nikka. Japanese whisky was rarely seen outside of its home country in the 1960s and is treated as a novelty in the 1964 James Bond novel You Only Live Twice.

Blended Scotch still bestrode the world, but change was afoot. Single malts — whiskies from a single distillery — were yet to venture far from Scotland, as they were thought too distinctive for wider tastes. William Grant & Sons believed otherwise and, from 1963, began promoting its Glenfiddich malt, followed by others, such as Glenlivet and Macallan. ‘There was a lot of overproduction [in the 1980s], which led to more availability of aged stock,’ explains Dawn Davies of the Whisky Exchange. ‘Single malts were a way to stand out from the crowd and present a more premium product.’

A rival, however, was being developed closer to home. Whisky-loving Norfolk farmer James Nelstrop noticed how much of his barley was going north to Scotland to be distilled and wondered why he could not do it himself. He duly built a distillery, hired an ex-Laphroaig distiller and released England’s first whisky of modern times. It’s a curious historical footnote that some whisky was made in England during Victorian times, but the last distillery in the Lea Valley in east London closed in 1905, unable to compete with the Scots.

Nelstrop wasn’t the only one. A Cornish company, Hicks & Healey, began distilling in 2003, but didn’t release a whisky until 2011, and in Wales Stephen Davies founded the Penderyn Distillery in 2000. He encountered some difficulties explaining his wares, once encountering a man at a whisky show who kept referring to Penderyn as ‘Scotch’, before asking if Wales was ‘an island off Scotland’.

All over Britain and Ireland, small distilleries sprang up in the 2000s and 2010s, seeking to offer something different from the legacy Irish and Scotch industries. Whisky boomed as never before and the giants such as Jim Beam in America, William Grant & Sons with Glenfiddich and Irish Distillers dramatically increased production. Speculative money flooded in all over the world, driving prices to ludicrous levels, so that, in 2023, a bottle of 1926 Macallan sold at auction for £2.1 million.

Japanese whisky became highly sought after when Jim Murray, author of the influential Whisky Bible, selected a Yamazaki single-malt sherry cask as his World Whisky of the Year in 2015, describing it as ‘near-incredible genius’.

It felt as if the good times would never end. They did, however. Falling demand caused by an ageing clientele, an inability to recruit younger drinkers and stagnating economies in its largest markets were exacerbated by rising interest rates, higher energy costs and global instability. One whisky executive commented bitterly on the Ukraine war that ‘my biggest export market invaded my second biggest’.

The perennial problem with whisky is that because it takes time to mature, a minimum of three years, distillers always have to anticipate future demand, which means the industry is prone to cycles of boom and bust as production over-shoots. We are in a low phase now, with the American industry particularly badly affected. However, as Georgie Bell of The Heart Cut, an independent bottler that buys interesting whiskies to sell under its own brand, observes: ‘We talk about whisky being in dark times, but perhaps we should take a more global approach to that. When you look at certain whisky markets, such as Nigeria, India and China, things are booming.’

Whisky has come a long way from the wild days of illegal stills and smuggling, thanks to the energetic Victorians who marketed their wares with such élan. If it can channel some of their spirit then, despite the current troubles, it will remain the world’s most popular spirit for years to come.

This feature originally appeared in the August 19, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.