Happy 500Th Birthday, Scotch Whisky

TAIN, Scotland - Scotch whisky is the "cup o' kindness" in Robert Burns' New Year's song "Auld Lang Syne." Queen Victoria was accustomed to taking a daily dram in her tea.

The Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg, born 1770, suggested it was the elixir of everlasting life.

"If a body could just find out the exac' proper proportion and quantity that ought to be drunk every day, and keep to that, I verily trow that he might leeve for ever, without dying at a', and that doctors and kirkyards would go oot o' fashion."

Hogg died in 1835, but his drink has not gone out of fashion.

This year, Scotland's 105 distilleries are celebrating a 500th birthday with "Scotch 500."

Murdo Reed tells visitors to the distillery he manages in the Scottish Highlands: "You need three things to make malt whisky: water, malted barley and yeast, and we have been making it the same way for 151 years."

Reed and the other 15 men of Tain produce a single malt whisky called Glenmorangie - which means "glen of tranquillity" in Gaelic - that outsells all other single malts in Scotland. It is part of the very big Scotch-whisky business.

"Scotch outsells every other spirit in world markets," says Tony Tucker, a spokesman for the Scotch Whisky Association in Edinburgh.

Scotch - and it can be called that only if it's distilled and matured in Scotland for at least three years - is exported to 190 countries and generates around $3 billion in overseas sales a year. Exports account for 85 percent of Scotch-whisky production and one-fifth of the total of Scotland's manufactured exports."

Although it is certainly older than 500 years, the first written record of distilling in Scotland is a document in the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh noting that Friar John Cor, a monk near St. Andrews, was permitted in 1494 to take delivery of eight bolls of malt to make aqua vitae, Latin for water of life, meaning a strong spirit.

"Eight bolls was more than 1 ton, enough to make about 1,400 bottles, so the friar must have been in a fair way of business," Tucker says.