Gone Medieval - Whisky: The Medieval Elixir

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Did you know we have our medieval ancestors to thank for whisky? It wasn’t exactly a medieval invention but the process of making distilled alcohol and the idea that it might be fun to drink was.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega finds out more from whisky journalist Matt Chambers about how we got from desalinating seawater in the Ancient period to enjoying a dram or two today. This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. If you're anything like me, odds are you probably like the odd drink now and again. And if you're even more like me, odds are you are partial to having a whiskey. But did you know we have our medieval ancestors to thank for the water of life? Okay, well, whiskey itself isn't exactly a medieval invention, but the process of making distilled alcohol and the idea that it might be really, really fun to drink it was.

I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and today on Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'm speaking with Matt Chambers, whiskey journalist and part of the team behind Whiskey for Everyone, which aims to demystify the world of whiskey, about the history of alcohol distillation and how we got from desalinating seawater in the ancient period to enjoying a dram or two today.

Matt, thank you so. much for coming on. I finally got you in my nefarious clutches to come talk about whiskey. Amazing. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been taking a while, but we're here. We're here. I'm really excited to talk about this and do the history of distillation, more particularly, because when we start talking about this back in the mists of time, in the ancient period, people first start distilling things. And now I can go drink delicious whiskey whenever I want. Well, actually, no one can drink whiskey whenever I want. Well, actually, no one can drink whiskey whenever I want, but, you know, it wouldn't be healthy. But it's a long and interesting process by which we get to

where we are today. It is. And I think the main thing is I get asked very often, you know, what's the history? And it's quite hard to actually pinpoint a distinct time. Like you say, sort of back in the ancient times, you had people doing simple things like, and I think it's quite an important step. And it's not distillation as we know it today. But it's a step where people realize that sea water evaporated and you ended up with something different. You ended up with fresh water and obviously your salts and rules and everything else was sort of left behind. So I think that's an important first step that people realise that maybe if you heated something up, you could then get a different product. In the early days, it wasn't for drinking like we do today.

It was really for distilling sort of essences and perfumes and for more of a medical use, I would say. up until probably the 13th or 14th century. No, you're bang on there, you know, I think our very, very first records. They're all the way back from 1,200 before the common era. So really, really a long time ago. And our records for this are Babylonian. And they're making perfume, which is a really important commodity. It's very Babylonian, isn't it?

You know, they've always got some incense on the go. They're making some perfume, something like this. And then the process of seawater, you're all. also bang on there because this is something that even Aristotle writes about. So he's got this one book of his The Meteorogica. And he says, I have proved by experiment that saltwater evaporates from fresh and the vapor does not when it condenses and it condenses into seawater again. Which I also love. I love Aristotle being like, I'm the guy. It was me. This is the number one Aristotle thing. It was like, really? It was you? Was it? Right. But of course, that didn't involve

boiling or heating to the temperatures that in modern distillation, as we know it, but I think it's an important step of human understanding that we can extract or purify something from something else by increasing the heat of it. Oh yeah, absolutely. So basically that sets us off on our journey. And one of the big things that we'll notice time and time again, as you said, because there are these medicinal elements to this, right? We see people like physicians or alchemists. People like that are the ones that are really leading the way a lot of the time. And I think it's important to kind of forefront this here. A lot of the time when we say alchemists now, people think that you kind of mean like a crank. And they're like, oh yeah, this is some idiot who's trying to turn lead into gold.

But actually, alchemists are doing chemistry using the laws, quote unquote, of natural philosophy. So the sort of things that Aristotle would be talking about. And we do get some successes. as a result of that. So let's not do down our friends, the alchemists, because there's so much more to it than just gold. And we have them to think for our ability to drink whiskey today. So we're talking about all of these good things that they kind of first inklings of this purification process can do. But let's be honest, this is a booze forward podcast right now. We're looking here for the roots, right? And it kind of seems like in Afro-Eurasia generally, which a lot of the time when we're talking about medieval history, that's what we're talking about because we have the

best written records for it. It seems like everyone sort of gets the point where they're like, oh, hey, we can drink this. And that's a medieval invention where people are like, I think we could drink it. They start doing it. And it's actually China that gets out in front of this, which is not a surprise at all. It's just one of the several many inventions that the Chinese come up with during the medieval period. You've got paper and gunpowder, things of this nature. And also, booze. So, you know, during the Tang done, dynasty. The Chinese longed in their heart for higher ABV drinks, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's this trend, but it almost followed a similar track to what we just talked about,

because it wasn't actually initially achieved through distillation. It was achieved through making wine and taking that wine and then freeze it. And what they then did was remove the ice, therefore removing the water. And what you were left with was this sort of higher alcohol content wine, so to speak. That, of course, then spread around, you know, work gets around and people start doing it in different regions as well. And it was called Dongju, I think is how it's pronounced. And that literally means like frozen wine does what it says on the tin. And what they would have had is this high percentage of wine, but not as high as what then if they had stilled it. So they would have had a high strength, but not the strength of a spirit as we know it today.

I see that as a really important step before we go on. Again, it's these small steps to get to where we get to distillation, how we sort of know it and kind of relate to it today, really. And it's then sort of in the Arabic world in the 9th century where there's almost this true distillation with the use of alembic stills, stills that we visualize in our mind's eye with the pot and the neck and the arm coming off to the side that's then attached to some sort of condenser to bring the vapour back to a liquid. So they seem to be the first way it's sort of documented that they're using this type of equipment. And this was really used for medicinal purposes. And again, it involved wine, but in this case it was the distillation of wine.

So if you put a modern context on it, how you make cognac or amniac, these producers, they make a wine, and then they distill that wine through one of these sort of alembic stills. And they look a lot more ancient in terms of their design rather than maybe you'll see a picture of a Scotch malt whiskey distillery with a lovely copper pot still. So they have this sort of alembic shape where you have the pot and then the neck and then the arm coming off the side. attached to a condenser to then condense your alcohol vapors back to your spirit. So that's really the first time that I'm aware of where people are using that type of equipment. That's such a really good point you make because I think a lot of the time when we think about the distillation process now, we're thinking, oh, you take grains or you take whatever and you go straight into it,

but there are still plenty of distilled alcohols that we get from wine. And the medieval period is a really interesting one for the concept of wine generally, because if we're talking about making alcohol, sometimes, for example, it can be really difficult to see the differences in drinks. Because when they say wine, you know, they kind of just mean anything you've made out of a fruit. So it can be difficult, for example, to pin down when people start making alcoholic cider, because they're like, it's wine, but it's just wine that I made with an apple tree. And that's kind of true. That's how we get like Calvados, right? which is like you make apple cider and then you distill it.

And that is really a lot of what's going on, I think, earlier in the medieval period. And of course, there Islam prevents you from drinking that. So we're still in the time where it's for medical use. And that then spreads a little to, we're looking at the sort of Middle East, North Africa, around the similar time where you have a Christian track where there's various monasteries and convents in what is now serious. Iraq, Egypt, doing a similar thing where they're producing wine, but distilling it as well, to make this stronger version of the same drink, I suppose. Yeah, and this is where we get the term Iraq, which is especially out of Syria around the time.

And some of our great sources for this lovely distilled wine come to us from poets, which I love. There's this poet, for example, Abu Noas, who died in about 8.13. he's having a drinking session with a friend. And so every time that he asks for another drink, he asks the bartender for a better and stronger drink. He starts off with one and then he's like, hit me harder, hit me harder, hit me harder. And the third one he said, he wants a wine that has the color of rainwater but is as hot inside the ribs as a burning firebrand. That's great description, isn't it? you can visualize that. So I love poets. You know, they obviously wax very lyrical and put things

into sort of terms like that, just to almost put you into that situation right there. What I also like is that the name for this kind of wine, and again, you'll have to excuse my pronunciation, but Matt Al Hayat, which translates as Water of Life, this is where you start sort of getting this stream coming through from that point in history up until the modern day, because you have different people calling spirits a water of life. So you have, you know, when it later spreads into Europe from this Arabic, Middle Eastern, African part of the world, it becomes aqua vita, which is water of life. Aqua, water, vita, life spreads up to Scotland, which is particularly where my real interest comes in with the Scotch whiskey industry and over to Ireland as well. And of course you get the Scots Gaelic, Uskibaha, which is water of life.

So you're seeing this right from that time, people referring to it as this sort of rejuvenating liquid that makes you feel vibrant and full of life, the water of life. And I absolutely love that, you know, this idea that this delicious booze is the thing that's going to really preserve you, right? We have another poet who weighs in on this of Arabic extraction that says, I am wondering how those who had pressed it passed away, whereas they have handed down to us, the Ma Al-Hayat, the water of life. Yeah, so what a surprise that people who were drinking alcohol and died, you know? Yeah, because obviously these days you have, can measure everything to the nth degree and there's a little bit of the guesswork taken out of it.

Back in those days, you could be producing anything of any strength and you wouldn't really know how to measure it or what was the correct amount to consider it. consume, let's say, we have the benefits of being able to measure that these days, of course. But similar time, there was things going on in China still, this sort of evolution of the frozen wine that we spoke about as well. And this was the Yuan dynasty in 13th century, where there's quite a lot of literature describing these drinks where the frozen wine has then evolved to become true distillation. And you even have, you know, particularly rice wines in the south of China. And you've even got people like Marco Polo describing this process as well. Yeah, I love this because Marco Polo is so hyped. And you would be, right? Like, you know,

you get to China and you're seeing all these incredible marvels and you're like, what? So Marco Polo is like, immediately, I've got to write this down. Everybody's got to know about it. And he says, most of the people of cathay drink wine of a kind that I shall now describe. It is a liquor which they brew of rice with a quantity of excellent spice. in such fashion that it makes better drink than any other kind of wine. It is not only good, but clear and pleasing to the eye. And being very hot stuff, it makes one drunk sooner than any other wine. Bang, there it is. We have got distilled alcohol.

We're there. As you say, Marco Polo is hyped, let's say. Everyone's heard of Marco Polo, almost like the podcaster blogger of his day, I suppose, you know, recording all of these things to bring it to the world. But there's another thing here, same time, same country, China. But up in the north, you can't grow rice. The climate doesn't really allow it. So basically they began distilling with whatever they could get their hands on and other sort of cereals and grains, you know, things like millet, etc.

I particularly like the idea of whatever you can get your hands on. Because this is then repeated around the world, actually. if you think of people then learning distillation, you know, maybe as part of their like annual farming cycle, etc. And people actually use whatever they can get their hands on in inverted commas to make their spirit. So you have agave plants in Mexico to make tequila and mescal. You have sugar cane in the Caribbean to make your rum. You have barley in Scotland and island to make your whiskey. So it's literally people using what is the raw materials that are indigenous to where they are to work out a way to make alcohol and to make booze. We're getting

away from the medicinal side. This is purely for drinking now where people are making their tequila or their rum or their whiskey, wherever they are in the world using these raw materials. I absolutely love that, this kind of human desire to kind of lean into the pleasurable with whatever they've got on hand. And Europe starts finally catching up at this point, right? So by the 13th century, we've got the earliest description in Italy that distillation is happening. And really unsurprisingly, a lot of this is happening in monasteries. So, you know, monasteries are also hospitals, right? So monks live there, but also if you are really sick, you can show up at a monastery and say, hey, can anybody help me out? And they think in particular

that distilled alcohol can treat colic or smallpox, things like that. So there is this kind of the real desire to get it out in the world still for medicinal purposes. And that's probably come through the Arabic tradition, right? Because there's this huge desire to use the knowledge of the Arabic world. A lot of the Arabic texts that explain how to distill things have been translated into Latin. And so obviously monks are going to be the guys who figure this out, right? Yep. And you have it as part of the farming cycle. So you can grow your grapes or your fruit. You can make your traditional wine or your fruit wine and you can then distill it to then treat all these. I mean, it'd be quite good fun. I mean, it wouldn't be fun having colic or smallpox.

But if that was the remedy, then could make it a bit more interesting. But it's all really still for medicinal purposes, sort of in these monasteries, but it spreads a little bit as well, doesn't it? It's the 14th century, you know, ethanol as a substance, as an alcohol, had been identified using these translated Arabic sources, like you said. This was really the point where people started drinking, I think, because it became more widespread, and we see it sort of spreading to different points of Europe, be it, you know, across to Scotland or in. into Russia. Again, there's a sort of Genoese ambassadors visiting in the late 1300s to Moscow bringing this first sort of aquavita with them, this water of life, and presenting it to

the Grand Prince in Moscow. And then they realized that grapes in particular don't grow in Russia. So they enjoyed it, but they had to evolve it. So it became made from cereals. roughly 30 years later, we have the first records of vodka as we know it today. Yeah, and I love that because our first vodka records, they're like, you know, it's bread wine because they're like, you make it out of grain. So it's kind of a bread wine, right? And everyone's like, oh, yeah, I absolutely get it. And it's like a Moscow thing at first. It's like, oh, yeah, this is something that the monks make for the prince and stuff like that. But it's also this, just going back to people using what works in their environment. Grapes.

or certain fruits wouldn't grow in Russia, so they use grain. And you see this later on in history, particularly when people go to America and start making whiskey. They took things like the barley and the rye from Europe, didn't grow quite so well in the climate that they were settling in. So they started using corn, as in sweet corn or maize. So this is why you have that involved in very traditional whiskeys such as bourbon, for example. So it's another example of people using what's indigenous to them and what's on their doorstep. In terms of Europe at this time, it's really this kind of Moscow vodka boom that leads us into whiskey, right? Because we get missionaries, right? God bless them. Catholics will send a missionary to Russia.

They'll be like, I'm concerned these people up here are not Christian. And Russians will be like, hello, I was being Christian the whole time. But these wonderful monks while they were in Moscow were like, what is this? And they're very excited about the bread wine. And they bring it back to Scotland and Ireland. And that's when we start cooking, right? Yeah. This is where I write a lot about Scotch whiskey and Irish whiskey in particular.

So this is where the real track starts to form. And of course, if you have a Scotsman and an Irishman in the same room, they'll have a big arm wrestle about who came up with whiskey first. But we've already spoken for however long about where they're. this all comes from. Of course, there's a lovely story that comes from the early 14 hundreds where missionary had come back to Ireland. And it's the earliest mention of whiskey as we know it in Ireland. And it comes from these annals where it attributes the death of a chieftain in 1405 to an overindulgence on Acroveta. And I seem like a Christmas sort of celebration or party or something. I just love that.

And that sort of leads on sort of later in that century where, of course, the missionaries are coming back, not just with the physical liquids and the knowledge of them, but also practices and techniques of making them as well. So later in the 1400s towards the end of that century, you have the first mention of whiskey as we know it in Scotland, which is a very important point in the history of this. So you have this evidence from the exchequer rolls of 1494. And this is where a payment is sent to Freire John Cor, who was a monk at Lindor's Abbey in Fife. And by order of the king to make aquavit enough for about 500 bottles. So this is not an insignificant amount or party that was going to happen.

So people knew about whiskey before that. You know, that's King James IV. So people knew about whiskey. It was obviously being made, and Lindor's Abbey obviously had some repute, but this is the first written record of modern Scotch whiskey as we know it. And a sort of modern day, nice aspect to this story, because Lindor's Abbey, the new craft artisan distilleries, built within the grounds of Lindor's Abbey and was founded in 2017. And they actually found an old distillation vessel when they were going through digging up the ruins because part of the building of the distillery was that they had to work with various organisations to excavate the ruins and try and find out the life of what happened. And they actually

found these old distillation vessels. And the second one is that Lindor's Abbey, a very young distillery, they've released several limited edition whiskeys, but they also have one core product, and it's called MCDXIV, Roman numerals for 1494, as like a little hat tip to the fact that this was referred to within their history on the very site where the distillery is. So they actually market themselves as the spiritual home of Scotch Whiskey, which is maybe a little bit pushing it, but that's the first real written evidence of Scotch whiskey was back in 1494. You make such a good point here, where if the king is saying, I want 500 bottles of this, that's evidence that he understands that the monastery is making this whiskey, right? And he knows

that they're capable of making 500 bottles. So there's got to be a pretty significant production capacity at that point. But it's for consumption. It's not for medicinal. They wouldn't have that size of production or the capability to do it. It shows that people are drinking the stuff and that it's out there and has obviously been out there for some time. You're absolutely bang on there. No one wants 500 bottles of ethanol for cleaning wounds. That's not what's happening at court. That's something that you're going to leave to your physician to order, right? The king isn't going to be like, oh yeah, I'm really concerned that the medicinal stocks are running low. The king is here to party. And I think that that is an important part of the story, right? Meanwhile, on the continent, they're

also coming up with other things. We got some Germans. The alchemist, Hieronymus Brunschwig, in 1500 put out a book called The Book of the Art of Distillation out of simple ingredients. And you know, God bless him. Because this is where we get a lot of the continental spirits. You get a lot of the plum brandies or peach brandies and things like that. That, are quite popular in central Europe, your schnapps, things like this, that's really following this particular continental bent. And as you say, it's again, well, what have you got? And they don't have the same sort of ingredients to distill as the Irish and Scottish people do. But they sure do have soft fruit. So they're often running, right? Yeah, maybe some rye, you know,

particularly in Scandinavia, there's evidence of people distilling a sort of rye fogka, whiskey back in the day as well. And of course, just going back to the Lindorz Abbey and those exchequer roles, that almost endorsement by King James IV. Then, of course, led to this huge boom in illicit distilling in Scotland and the same in Ireland as well. And particularly, you know, you think back in the day, not sort of how it is now where you can reach most places, you know, particularly in remote locations, you know, you think the highlands and the Western Niles, the Hebrides, it was particularly strong and a lot of illicit distilling going on. Again, part of the farming cycle, you know, people would make beer.

They would obviously use some of the grains they grew for food, but they would also brew beer. And in Scotland or Ireland, you know, quite damp climate, the beer would actually spoil. So people worked out that, again, using this technology that was available to them, they could distill that beer and then make a spirit, i.e. your whiskey or your usky bar. So that's essentially how you make whiskey now. You make a beer and then you distill it rather than brew it. So, of course, what then happened, it became rife through those following three or four centuries to the point where in the 1800s, the UK government at the time realized they were fighting

a bit of a losing battle, but they also realized that they could make some money out of this. So they brought in a very important act of parliament called the Excise Act in 1823. and then also did a similar act in Ireland as well. But in Scotland, this excise act in 1823 was basically to regulate whiskey distilling, to create a level playing field and of course to generate some income through taxing people. So people had to pay a licence fee of £10 and have a set payment for the amount of alcohol that they produced. And there's a version of that still in place today. So you pay your tax on, firstly, the strength of what you produce and the volume of what you produce, the physical volume, the amount of liquid.

So what you'll have is a little aside to this, you think 1823, 200 years ago. So people started taking out these 10 pound licences to distill. Basically, there was one or two very sort of honorable people who were illegally distilling took out the license. But most of what you'll find is people got. discovered by the authorities. They were already making whiskey illegally and then got discovered. And they basically got given one of two choices. Take out the £10 licence to distill or go to jail. And you had a certain amount of time. And that was it. So this is why you'll see. We're now obviously one year later. We're in 2024. And this is why I'm seeing a lot.

Scotch whiskey distillery is celebrating their 200th anniversary. So you're all. also see it over the next four or five years, you'll see a lot of distilleries celebrating 200 years because this is the point where they either became a legal distillery by paying this fee as part of the Exise Act or they got found. They got discovered by the authorities and the taxmen and were essentially forced to take out the license, otherwise they would end up going to jail. This is so interesting, right? Because one of the things that I'm seeing here is, is this pattern of high-level authorities have a particular interest in whiskey, right? You know, the king is like, well, I want 500 bottles.

Bring me 500 bottles. 300 years later, they're like, well, I mean, I do want whiskey, but I also want tax money. And so there's kind of an interesting imbalance happening here, where obviously the authorities slash the highest up people in the world, they want it, but they seem to be interested in kind of controlling what the commoners can get their paws on a bit. And we also saw it in Ireland as well. Only they did it in a slightly different way where they actually taxed the malted barley. So people worked out, the Irish worked out quite quickly that actually you could make whiskey still by adding unmulted barley in as well.

So you bolted it up with just barley, unmulted barley as it comes from the field. Add it to your malted barley, which you had to pay tax on. But of course, you could end up paying less tax, but making more whiskey because you bulked it up. And that's the roots of what's called single pot still whiskey, which is a unique whiskey to Ireland, which all came out from this need almost. Again, back to the sort of ingenuity of people, like firstly discovering distillation as a process and then sort of how to use it and using the materials that they have locally to them. But just the ingenuity of people to think, well, I'm not going to pay this.

amount of tax. I will pay some tax, but we can just like bulk up our ingredients by using unmoled barley straight from the field, which carries no tax at all. So, you know, that's where a single pot still comes, you know, which is still a very popular style of Irish whiskey. And it came out of that necessity, that need. As you say, this is a real ingenuity story, this idea that normal people are looking at it and they're like, look, what is the way that I can get the maximum place? And I'm for the minimum price and how am I going to be able to store these things, the fruits of my labor? And it's a really interesting process too because, you know, we see in terms of in the middle ages, everyone is making, you know, their own beer, their own ale.

And as you say, it goes off real quick. It goes off very, very quickly. Ail does, which is why we invent beer, because beer lasts a little longer, but it still goes off. And so it's also quite an economic way of holding on to that pleasure for, right? regular people. Like, what can I do with what I have? And also, you know, let's consider this is a real story about peasants doing cool stuff, my favorite people, because they are like, well, I've grown all this barley. And this is the thing that I want to do with it. I'm going to make sure that I've got

just this little bit so that I can do something for me that's cool, which is this making whiskey. And it also kind of shows us the process by which ideas are democratized, right? Because at first, when all of this is introduced, it's in the monastery. which is where you expect special knowledge to be, right? Because monks are all men of learning and they've got their little books. And I love that. Farmers are like, no, I'm going to figure this out. I will learn to read just for this if that's what it takes.

And then everyone just kind of spreads it. And then you get the wonderful number of things that we have today. Is this like one of the big characteristic differences between Irish and Scottish whiskey is this kind of amount of malt or are there other kind of. distinctive things we see. You can get single malt and you can get blends in Ireland and Scotland. And essentially they're made in the same way. The technology hasn't really changed.

It has to follow a certain process to get to your final product. But of course, what has changed is the sort of modern analysis and measurements of this. So you can measure things to the nth degree from the amount of nitrogen or other compounds in your barley in the field now. so you can make your whiskey the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, whereas there would have been fluctuations, and it would have been almost a little bit more seasonal if you think about it as well, because now we can order, whether you're in Scotland or in Ireland or the States or wherever it is,

you can get Bali all year round. You can get it shipped around the world. You can get it from Eastern Europe. Ukraine was a very big supplier, particularly to the Scotch whiskey industry. So there's not that seasonality to it, which you would have had back in the day. So you would have had the whiskey fluctuated rapidly because it was normally one guy that was operating the still, but then somebody else had to take over. So you've got all of these lovely old stories and things which have sort of given us a lead into what we're doing now,

which is, of course, on a very scientific, economic, eco-friendly way as well. to bring it right up to the modern age. But it takes a bit of the sort of rose-tinted glasses affect out of it a little bit because everything is so measured. And that's why there's a lot of the sort of craft distillers and artisan distillers that are popping up all over the world, actually. You know, almost any country you can think of now

has somebody making some whiskey or other spirits. But they're almost taking it back to this hands-on approach that you would have had back in the day. you know, even the 1820s, it would still have been very hands on with your sort of wood or coal-fired stills. I like that that people are going, you know, they're much smaller production, almost back to how it was in the early days of those 1820s, 1830s, or back, you know, even further to the illicit distilling where you would have a small still and it's not because you wanted to make a small amount. It's basically so wherever you were hiding it or making your whiskey, it basically meant

that if you caught winds that the authorities were like down the valley somewhere, you could literally take it to pieces, carry it to the next place and hide it. So there was no point having big pot stills like we see at Scotch Whiskey Distilleries today. But I love that people are going back to this hands-on way of making whiskey or other spirits. It's great. No, I love that. It puts the romance back into it, doesn't it? I mean, I suppose that's silly of me because I want my whiskey and I want it year round and these things. But I don't necessarily mind a bit of fluctuation if we're talking about artisans as opposed to just, I suppose, large commercial enterprises who are cranking things out. Yeah, and the artisans or certain bottlings from big brands in the batch process or it might be like a nice little series that they're doing. bit for the sort of whiskey connoisseurs or the geeks like me, you know, they actually want these batches to be different because people would say, oh, you know, batch number five is my favourite

and someone else will say, oh no, batch number eight is my favourite, but they're deliberately making them difference, you know, be it the sort of cask makeup or the age or something else. But of course, if you're one of the big boys, so you think of like Johnny Walker, Shivers Regal or Jamieson's in Ireland, or. glyphidic 12-year-old or if you're one of these big boys you don't actually want it to have that fluctuation or that batch because this is for a wider audience you know these are big brands and you don't want people to buy it the next time and it to be different because then they might not buy it again you want it to be your bottle of johnny walker black label or whatever whiskey it is

you want it to be the same as the last time you bought it maybe a year or two ago and you want it to be the same the next time you buy it in a year or two's time. You don't want that fluctuation. You know, I bet the same thing is kind of true in these, you know, late medieval monasteries that are first starting it. I bet the monks are prevailed upon by the king to get those 500 bottles out there trying to get them to be 500 bottles as the same, whereas every guy out in the hills with their own still, you know, we're going to see what we see, right? Yeah, I mean, now we're very used to the idea of actually maturing. Scotch whiskey has to be made. matured in oak barrels for a minimum of three years, that wouldn't have happened back in those

times. If they aged it at all, it would have been in whatever type of wood they could find. But a lot of times people are just drinking it literally neat off the still. And it goes back to your sort of danger comments from a little bit earlier. People didn't know the strengths. Obviously, now you can measure those things and there's legal requirements. But, you know, if things are being made illegally or elicitly, then you can just drink it straight. off the still. Then the next year you make another lot to keep you going. And it would be different. And that's it. This is how you end up with dead chieftains at Christmas. That is, yeah. All very happy kings with 500 bottles. Matt, it's been absolutely brilliant to

have you on. Thank you so much for taking me through one of my favorite subjects. I can't get enough of whiskey. Well, thank you so much for inviting me. It's been great. And I hope everyone enjoys listening. Thanks so much to everyone for listening, and thank you to Matt once again for joining me. This has been Gone Medieval from History Hit, and if you liked what you've heard, don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast, and tell your friends about it. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us an email at Gone Medieval at HistoryHit.com. My co-host Matt Lewis will retake the Gone Medieval Throne on Friday, and as always, I'll see you again next Tuesday.

Until next time.