History of whisky - part 3

By 1777 there were only 8 licensed stills in Edinburgh yet some 400 illicit stills, and by the 1820’s approximately 14,000 stills were being confiscated a year. The violence this brought about between the illegal distillers, the legal distillers and the Excise men was extreme. The Duke of Gordon thought this was madness and started to lobby parliament for sensible taxation.

In 1822 King George IV visited Edinburgh and requested a bottle of Glenlivet, a banned whisky at that time, as it was recognised to be of the best quality of its type. This greatly embarrassed the government of the day which then set-up a royal commission to come up with a sensible way to fix the problem. This led to the Excise Act and commercially viable legal distilling.

In 1823 the “The Excise Act” was introduced requiring £10/gallon licence for proof spirit. This eventually, and very slowly, started to close down the illegal stills, as it was now not as profitable as the used to be in the face of the new legal industry.

The next major event was in 1831 with the invention of the “Coffey still” allowing continuous production of grain whisky, which eventually led to the first blended whisky being produced in the 1860’s.

Whisky received an immense boost in the 1880’s when Phylloxera hit France devastating vineyards and ultimately brandy production, this got the French drinking whisky instead which eventually took over from brandy as the main spirit of choice.

However it wasn’t until the 19th century that whisky really came into its’ own. As prior to this most whisky was still a cottage industry and probably not to the quality we now experience.