The whats and whyfores of grain whisky

Grain whisky is a very broad category indeed and, oddly, the simplest way to explain it is to start by defining what it isn’t. In Scotland, malt whisky must be made from 100% malted barley and distilled in a copper pot still. Any other form of whisky in Scotland is grain whisky. Column stills are vastly more efficient than pot stills, and unmalted wheat or maize is cheaper than malted barley, which has led to a reflexive snobbery about the category.

This overlooks exciting new approaches to whisky-making as distillers experiment with hybrid stills, or non-traditional ingredients like malted rye. The world of grain whisky is huge, why cut yourself off from it?

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