Single Malt & Scotch Whisky [antikvár]

ntroductiofu I magine the Scottish Highlands around 500 A.D. A savagely beautiful landscape—rolling heather and peat-covered hills, pure water flowing from burns and springs, fields of ripe, golden barley gently swaying in the summer breeze. A group of Irish monks comes to visit. They bring with them a secret process, perhaps of their own invention, perhaps something they learned from visiting the Far East or India or Greece. "All this that is around you," says one of the monks, "we will turn into the water of life." (Or something to that effect.) The procedure for producing a fermented, low-alcohol beverage was most likely already known by this time. But what a beverage! Unlike the beer of our day, the stuff that Highlanders drank 1,500 years ago must have resembled thin, alcoholic oatmeal. Then someone came along and turned this "beer" into light, pure, flavorful, highly alcohohc stuff. Water of life, indeed.