Wednesday, March 3, 2010

My safe word will be whisky.

Or, in this case, "whiskey." Ever wonder why sometimes it's spelled with an e and sometimes not?


I'll fight any man who dares take the "e" out of my whiskey!

Well, back in the day, (late 1800s) it was all called whisky. However, it came to be known that the Scots were apparently cutting corners in ye olde business of malting. Their drink was going downhill fast, and the Irish were like, oh no no no. We won't be takin' the fall for this. We shan't get a bum rap for our blarney brew! (What? No one really said that.) Anyway, the Irish and the Americans got together and added an e to their labels, spelling the name of the drink they so carefully crafted "whiskey" to distinguish it from the alleged swill the Scots were putting out under the name "whisky."

Well, the Scotts have clearly cleaned up their act, BIG TIME, (Anybody try Theo's scotch chocolate 4 pack? Good LORD.) but the dual nomenclature stuck around. So, if you've got some of that Glenlivet headin' down the gullet, you've got yourself one super fine whisky. But, if you're partaking of the Jameson Irish goodness found in our delicious Irish Whiskey Maple cupcake, you, friend, are getting your whiskey on.

That covers the e, but what about the h? Well, speaking of going downhill:



And finally, seeing as we're all hot on the topic of linguistics, the answer to yesterday's trivia question! What are the origins of the word whiskey (or whisky)? It's an Anglicization of an old Gaelic term, uiscebeatha (Irish) or uisgebeatha (Scottish). It means "water of life."

Cheers!

1 comment:

  1. I learn something really cool every day. I never expected to get a whiskey lesson on a cupcake blog.

    ReplyDelete