Whiskey is a drink made by distilling grains and aging the resulting alcohol in oak casks.It may also be spelled whisky,particularly when describing Scotch whisky,Welsh whisky,or Canadian whisky.Irish whiskey and American whiskey are usually spelled with the added ‘e’.The word whiskey is derived from an Irish Gaelic term,uisge beatha,which is often translated as “the water of life”.
Whiskey,like many grain alcohols,may be made using an assortment of different grains.Common whiskey grains are rye,barley,corn,and wheat.Whiskey is sometimes referred to as the “juice of the barley”,an allusion to the grain used in creating that type of whiskey.Malt whiskey is a type of whiskey made entirely from malted barley as the source grain,and a single-malt whiskey is a whiskey in which all the malt comes from one stilling,rather than blending many different batches together.
