Читать книгу The Speyside Way. A Scottish Great Trail, includes the Dava Way and Moray Coast trails онлайн

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Whisky production

Speyside has been inextricably linked with whisky production, both illicit and legal, for several hundred years. The first written reference to its production in Scotland appears in the 1494 Exchequer Rolls, which record the granting ‘To Friar John Cor, by order of the King to make aqua vitae, VIII bols of malt’. Friar John was based at Lindores Abbey in north-west Fife; as eight bols is equivalent to over 94 stone in weight, it would suggest that the abbey was involved in large-scale distilling. Aqua vitae in Latin translates as ‘water of life’, which became uisge beatha in the Gaelic, which was eventually anglicised to ‘whisky’. The raw spirit produced from early stills was probably very rough, and so would have been flavoured with berries and herbs. The earliest records show that malt has always been a key ingredient in Scottish whisky.

In 1644 the first duty on whisky was introduced by an act of the Scottish Parliament, and this drove ‘underground’ much whisky production which, at that time, was predominantly a cottage industry. In 1823 the licensing of distilleries was introduced, which ensured both the quality and safety of the whisky produced; much of the illegally produced spirit may well have been poisonous! George Smith, founder of the Glenlivet Distillery, was the first to take out a licence under the 1823 act of Parliament, and so started the legal production of whisky on Speyside, where today nearly half of the distilleries in Scotland are located. The export of whisky is an important source of revenue for the Scottish economy, contributing over £2.5 billion per annum and providing over 40,000 jobs.