World Whisky Day

Guinnog / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

World Whisky Day is on the third Saturday in May.

This day celebrates whisky, an alcoholic drink made from fermented grain mash. It is a distilled drink and there are many different ways to make it, with different grains such as barley, corn, rye and wheat which may or may not be malted. Whisky may be distilled more than once and after distillation it is usually aged in wooden casks; the longer a whisky is aged, the better it is.

There are a lot of different types of whisky. One of the most famous is, of course, Scotch whisky, which naturally comes from Scotland. Irish whisky is another well-known type and that of course comes from Ireland. Bourbon whiskey is one of the most famous American types.

Even within the different types there can be a lot of variation. Whiskies can be single, which is distilled at a single distillery, or blended, which is distilled at more than one then blended together. There are malt whiskies and unmalted, different lengths of aging, different types of grain used and a lot of regulations as to just what particular name can be applied to a whisky depending on how it was made, what with, where it was made and how long it was aged.