Blending and diluting whiskies are for the most part done in the bonded warehouses. “All commercial spirit,” says an authority on the subject, “however pure, contains a small proportion of impurities” (which sounds Irish) “or by-products of distillation known as fusel-oil.” It will relieve the minds of some to know that fusel-oil is merely a by-product of distillation, and not the “low-flash” stuff which causes the accidents with the cheap lamps. It used to be thought that during the “maturing,” or “ageing,” of whisky the constituents of fusel-oil underwent decomposition; but my good friend Doctor James Bell, C.B., the chief Government analyst at Somerset House (he retired some three years ago), utterly refuted this theory by analysis.
Whisky is, like brandy, naturally white, and { 81} takes its trade colour, and, to a certain extent, flavour, from the sherry-casks in which it is matured. It is also coloured by the direct addition of caramel (burnt sugar), or a maturing wine.
In America, Rye or Bourbon whisky is made from wheat or maize grown in the Bourbon country, Kentucky, and some of it would kill at forty yards. The chief distillery states on the other side of the Atlantic are Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, New York, and Pennsylvania. At the Cape, and throughout South Africa, there is decent whisky procurable, as also a pernicious compound known as “Square-face” or “Cape smoke,” and in much favour with the dusky races of the country. On the Congo, palm-wine—similar to the fermented toddy of the East Indies—was for centuries the only livener, but with the march of civilization have come the whiskies of Great Britain, more or less adulterated; and whereas in the past death by the sword, or the club, was the only known punishment for the subjects of the native tyrants who are so fond of thinning out the population, a well-fuselled whisky is now freely employed for the same purpose.
Although whisky is now freely partaken of all over Great Britain, it was comparatively speaking despised in England until the first half of the present century had slipped by. This fact is apparent from a perusal of contemporary literature. And in no country has “malt” had such a rise in public estimation as in the great continent of Hindustan, where “John Exshaw” and “John { 82} Collins”—the last named a seductive compound of gin, limes, Curaçoa, and soda-water—have been almost knocked out by John Barleycorn and Jean Pomme-de-terre. Until the visit of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, brandy was almost the sole potation of the heroes who helped to hold the big wonderland, the old-fashioned _brandi-pani_ gradually giving place to the brandy diluted with _Belati pani_, or “Europe water.” Thirty years ago a “peg” meant a brandy-and-soda; but whisky has now usurped the proud position once occupied by the products of John Exshaw, Justerini and Brooks, and others.