Whisky: with an appreciation by Ian Buxton

by Aeneas MacDonald

‘The finest whisky book ever’ – Dave Broom

‘If I could take only one whisky book to a desert island it would be Aeneas MacDonald’s Whisky’ – Charles MacLean

‘This is a small volume but there are plenty who will love it. It is airy, witty, full of sound knowledge and practical wisdom’ – The New York Times

This is – in the opinion of many whisky writers and experts – the finest whisky book ever written. It is certainly the first written from the point of view of the consumer and is thus historically significant. But more than that, poetic and polemic in style and with its emphasis on the importance of single malt whisky and its concern to protect and inform the consumer, it remains fresh and relevant to the interests of today’s whisky drinker. It is a remarkably prophetic book, and with Ian Buxton’s shrewd commentary and analysis, combined for the first time with period illustrations, it is brought bang up to date for today’s generations of whisky aficionados.

Genres: History

192 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 20, 2016

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully opinionated tribute by a true champion of whisky
This is a tiny self-published volume written under a pseudonym by Leith-born journalist and writer George Malcolm Thomson. He used a pseudonym possibly to avoid the negative reaction from his teetotaler mother, and due to the many strong and critical opinions perhaps. Either way, it's an absolute gem of a book, a paean to the beauties and subtleties of single malts rather than the brands that dominated the industry, a diatribe against wine snobs, 'drinkers to get drunk', and characterless blends watered down with grain spirit influence. It's far more opinionated and romantic and personal than many modern whisky books that take a more balanced, clinical approach with loads of data, distilling method descriptions, and color photos, etc. This book is just a private tribute to the sublime beauty of usquebaugh (or 'aqua vitae'), and an absolute joy to read. I loved some passages so much the I sat down and typed them down on the PC to save for later reference, so I'll let him speak for himself below.

Wine Snobs (p3):
There has of late come into being a class of persons who have learnt of wine out of books and not out of bottles. They are as a rule to be surprised drinking cheap champagne in secret but their talk is all of vintages and districts and close and chateaux.

These dilettantes of the world of drinking are distinguished by weak stomachs and a plentiful store of snobbery. Wine merchants make of them an easy and legitimate prey. They are apt in quotation and historical anecdote, culling these from the books which honest men have written to advance the arts of civilization and to earn money. They roll great names on their tongues as though they were heralds marshaling the chivalry of France, or toadies numbering the peers they have fawned on.

In finding those qualities of bouquet and body which their textbooks bid them seek, they are infallible, provided the bottle has been correctly labelled. They will, indeed, discover them before they have tasted the wine.

These creatures have the insolence to despise whisky. Fresh from their conducted tour of the vineyards, the smellers of corks and gabblers of names sneer when its name is mentioned. It is, they declare, the drink of barbarians, offensive to the palate and nostrils of persons of taste; above all, it is not modish.

For all that is southern and Mediterranean in is the mode among us. Civilization is a Latin word and culture comes by the Blue Train. Better a rubber beach at Monte Carlo than all the sea-shores of the north. And, of course, we must affect enthusiasm for wine; it is so European, so picturesque and cultivated. It shows one has a certain background. A cellar is like a pedigree and requires less authentication. Nor is actual experience of bibbing necessary; a good memory and the correct books will suffice. If one is actually forced to drink, one can toy for a time with the glass in one’s palm, discuss the merits of the wine, quote from Brilliant-Savarin and tell that anecdote about the Doc de Sully, open a learned debate on the possible incompatibility of temperament between the wine and the food with which it is proposed to wed it, and, when all else fails, confess to a delicacy of palate which the grosser forms of indulgence would outrage. But such stratagems are absurd and unmanly inner weaknesses of the bookish wine snob concealed from the ridicule they deserve.

Drinkers-to-Get-Drunk (p3):
I pass on to another type of enemy, the men who drink whisky. With pain and not without a hope that they may yet be saved, let us number their sins. Foremost among these is the they drink not for the pleasure of drinking nor for any merits of flavour or bouquet which the whisky may possess but simply in order to obtain a certain physical effect. They regard whisky not as a beverage but as a drug, not as an end but as a means to an end. It is, indeed a heresy of the darker sort, doubly to be condemned in that it lends a sad, superficial plausibility to the sneers of the precious. Whisky suffers its worst insults at the hands of the swillers, the drinkers-to-get-drunk who have not organs of taste and smell in them but only gauges of alcohol content, the boozers, the ‘let’s have a spot’ and ‘make-it-a-quick-one’ gentry, and all the rest who dwell in a darkness where are no whiskies but only whisky - and, of course, cola.

Illicit Distilling (p39):
Now dawned the heroic age of whisky, when it was hunted upon the mountains with a price on its head as if it were a Stuart prince, when loyal and courageous men sheltered it in their humble cabins, when its lore was kept alive in secret like the tenets of a proscribed and persecuted religion. If whisky has not degenerated wholly into a vile thing in which no person of taste and discernment can possibly take an interest, it is because its tradition was preserved, by men whose names ungrateful posterity has forgotten, during years when the brutal and jealous Hanoverian government sought to suppress in the Highlands this last relic of the ancient Gaelic civilization. It is an extraordinary thing that, while Jacobite loyalty has found its bars, this loyalty to a thing far more closely linked with Highland history than a Lowland family ever could become, has not yet been sung.

Malt vs grain whisky (p69-79):
It was nothing short of a sin against the light to lump malt whisky with neutral industrial spirit as if it too were something to burn in lamps, to drive engines, or to clean clothes. The evil having been done, however, it is necessary to instruct the whisky public, especially young and inexperienced drinkers, in the true facts of the case so that, so far as possible, ‘whisky be the grace of the Royal Commission’ may be left to those who ask for nothing more from their beverage than a ‘kick’. This, at least, it will guarantee for them. But the children of light will continue to demand of their Scotch whisky that it should be distilled in Scotland by means of pot-stills, from mashing materials consisting of malted barley and nothing else, dried in kilns by peat or other fuel according to the locality; and of their Irish whiskey that it should be pot-still, from malted barley, either alone or with unmalted barley, oats, rye, or other indigenous cereal. By accommodating themselves thus far to modern conditions, they will assure themselves of a whisky which it will be possible to drink without a grimace (with a heroic determination to overlook the means for the sake of the end), and even - granted discrimination - with delight.

Blending (p71-72):
The old single malt whiskies of the Highlands were, on the whole, too powerful and heavy for sedentary town-dwellers. Blending made it possible to make a whisky which would suit different climates and different classes of patrons. For by adding the lighter Lowland malts and the neutral or almost neutral grain whiskies, in greater or lesser degree, a whisky could be evolved of a ‘weight’ and a strength of flavor and bouquet to suit the taste or the commercial requirements of the blender.

Regional styles (p72):
The great export trade in whisky is almost certainly due to the adaptability and elasticity which blending lent to the industry. Even today the aesthetics of whisky have a very definite geographical aspect. London likes a milder, less pronounced whisky than Lancashire. Lancashire in its turn affects a whisky which is lighter and less pungent in taste than that which solaces the east winds of Edinburgh. But Edinburgh is surpassed by Glasgow, where they revel in the ‘denser’ and fuller-bodied joys of the Campbeltown malts. In the Highlands, malt whiskies are still drunk, uncontaminated by the diluting, chilling alliance with grain.

Marriage of vattings (p73-74):
The blended malts are run into a vat and mixed with more or less Lowland malt and more or less grain whisky. The resulting blend is then drawn off and left in the cask to marry for a minimum period of six months…In this manner, a surer and more intimate mixture is obtained and the horrid possibility of a subsequent failure of marriage banished. But no technical device affects the supreme clause in the matrimonial legislation of whisky, that time is of the essence of the contract. Whiskies are capricious, sensitive creatures; they are not to be flung at one another like goats. Rather are they to be compared to fillies which are highly likely to plant iron heels in the belly of the too-forward stallion. They must grow accustomed to one another and, unless they have been carefully chosen, no amount of time will persuade them to live together in amity.

Kentucky rye whisky during prohibition (p120):
It may be presumes that the ingenuity of the American people is finding its own remedies for the perils of Prohibition and bootleg whisky, though, as a matter of fact, having observed the effects on the health of the population of several hard-bitten Scottish cities, of a few ‘dumped’ shiploads of Kentucky rye whisky, I am inclined to doubt whether the present regime can hold much greater terrors than the old. Prohibition has added two more names to the nomenclature of whisky: ’Squirrel’ whisky, so called because it induces in its devotees an irresistible desire to climb trees, and ‘ Rabbit’ whisky which creates an impulse to leap and run.

[Udit Nair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are like a fine single malt—they don’t just hold up with age, they deepen in character. First published in 1930, Aeneas MacDonald’s Whisky is one such work. It’s not a manual, not a distillery catalogue, and certainly not a dry historical record. It’s a passionate, opinionated, and deeply poetic tribute from a genuine whisky drinker to the drink itself. In this annotated edition, Ian Buxton provides invaluable context, historical framing, and commentary, making it both timeless and timely.

What makes this book remarkable is its refusal to talk down to the reader. As MacDonald writes:

"Why any one 'expert' should be relied upon any more than the distiller's puff escapes me. The guiding philosophy should be that the enthusiastic drinker should learn and thus informed, judge whisky for himself with 'his mother-wit, his nose and his palate to guide him.'"

That sentiment alone makes this book feel refreshingly honest in a world of overcomplicated tasting notes and endless marketing speak.

MacDonald’s prose is at once lyrical and fierce, never shying away from grand metaphor:

Whisky is a re-incarnation; it is made by a sublimation of coarse and heavy barley malt; the spirit leaves that earthly body; disappears, and by a lovely metempsychosis returns to the world in the form of a liquid exquisitely pure and impersonal. And thence whisky acquires that lightness and power which is so dangerous to the unwary, so delightful to those who use it with reverence and propriety.

The book isn’t romantic in a soft-focus way—it’s romantic in the way of someone who loves something enough to tell the truth about it. MacDonald has no time for false sentimentality:

We do not find whisky drinkers discovering causes to love mankind which are not apparent to them when they cease to be under the influence of the spirit. They do not indulge in unseasonably optimistic visions of the beauty and perfection of things, nor do they sentimentalise over the supposed gaiety of a departed age. Some say that the whisky is a Protestant drink, but it is rather a rationalistic, metaphysical and dialectical drink.

And in one of my favourite passages, he captures whisky’s intellectual and cultural spirit:

Whisky is the mother's milk of destructive criticism and the begetter of great abstractions. It is disposed to find a meaning—or at least a debate—in arts and letters. It is Socratic because it drives logical conclusions, has a horror of established and useful falsehoods and possesses an acuteness of vision which marshals the complexity and hesitations of life into two opposing hosts. Foolishly regarded as the friend of democracy, it is as much the scorner of democratic fictions of servility, snobbery, plutocratic stupidity and aristocratic arrogance.

Reading Whisky today, you realise it’s less about production methods or tasting notes, and more about whisky as a cultural force—its role in conversation, in criticism, in life. This isn’t a book for collectors chasing rare bottlings; it’s for those who understand that whisky, like literature or art, is something to be lived with, argued over, and loved.

Buxton’s appreciation enriches the text, giving us the benefit of hindsight while preserving the charm of the original voice. The result is a book that has aged perfectly—a dram of history and opinion, as relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.

If you love whisky, not just drinking it but thinking about it, this belongs on your shelf.

[WhiskyDad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prominently displayed on the most recent reissue cover of Whisky, by Aeneas MacDonald, sits a quote from renowned whisky expert Dave Broom, which reads:

"The finest whisky book ever"

That’s quite a bold statement to make but much like the mysterious Aeneas Macdonald himself, it should be considered in context. Whisky, is an odd book; in fact, the original published in 1930 was one of the first books written on the subject, quite surprising considering whisky has been around for much longer than that. The best feature of this 2016 edition is the addition of commentary and annotations by Ian Buxton. I enjoyed Ian’s analysis and what it brings to MacDonald’s book and am glad I bought an annotated edition rather than an unadulterated version, but let me explain why.

Will The Real Aeneas MacDonald Please Stand Up?
Aeneas MacDonald was a pen name, for George Malcolm Thomson, born in 1899 and founder of the Porpoise Press – original publisher Whisky. MacDonald (used from this point on for simplicity) made a conscious decision to keep his real name out of the pages of his book, part of which was to avoid accusations of hubris for self-publishing his own work; something that has less of a stigma these days.

Whisky, is not the kind of book you would find published on the subject today.

It is light on facts and well-research material but rather, is filled with strong opinions that set the conditions for whisky snobbery for decades to come. I recognised many of MacDonald’s sentiments shared by my own father, passed down to him by his father. For example, broad reaching opinions like the superiority of Highland whisky and inferiority of Lowlands whisky in comparison. MacDonald was no whisky expert, although he was clearly a fan and a staunchly patriotic Scott. In writing his book, Macdonald would have drawn on earlier trade publications, his own opinion seemingly formed primarily from those of his old Edinburgh University professor and a splash of myth and legend.

What makes Whisky stand out from other whisky books is its differences, as explained in the Forward by Ian Buxton:

"Too many of today’s whisky books are little more than lists: handsomely produced, well illustrated and comprehensive to a fault but with the soul of a draper’s catalogue. Others might be mistaken for material straight from the distiller’s own well-funded publicity machine, and a third category distributes marks out of a hundred to Glen This, Glen That and Glen The Other with the mechanical certainty of a drab provincial accountant."

Despite its faults, of which there are many, you should be able to appreciate why Broom considers Whisky by Aeneas MacDonald to be such a fine book on the subject.

But What of The Book Itself?
While some of MacDonald’s book may be grossly outdated or simply incorrect, some of it is still true today and at times even contemporary in attitude, such as his views on distillery transparency. MacDonald shares his views on what separates whisky from other alcoholic drinks such as wine, expressing his disdain for ‘the drinkers-to-get-drunk’ who imbibe whisky not for pleasure but ‘simply in order to obtain a certain physical effect.’ MacDonald laments the status of whisky at the time as merely a potent spirit rather than a complex and prestigious drink to be appreciated by connoisseurs and offers readers this delightful definition:

"Whisky is a re-incarnation; it is made by a sublimation of coarse and heavy barely malt; the spirit leaves that earthly body, disappears, and by lovely metempsychosis returns to the world in the form of a liquid exquisitely pure and impersonal."

MacDonald touches on the history and production of whisky in his early chapters making a few generalisations that are simply untrue today, such as a distinguishing factor of Highland whisky being a ‘smokiness’ from the malt being dried in peat-fired kilns; or simply incorrect such as his confident proclamation that the cask the whisky is matured in imparts no additional qualities to the whisky other than colour. Peated whisky is more commonly attributed to the Islands region of Scotland these days, but there are always exceptions and cask maturation does have a significant effect on the flavour and aroma of whisky.

Of interest to me was the short section on Campbeltown at the time of MacDonald writing in 1930. Campbeltown is my favourite Scotch whisky-producing region, although it only contains three active whisky distilleries today. In 1930 there were 122 distilleries in Scotland (there are around 100 now) of which ten operated in Campbeltown, including my namesake Kinloch Distillery. MacDonald describes Campbeltown whiskies as:

"…the double bases of the whisky orchestra. They are potent, full-bodied, pungent whiskies, with a flavour that is not to the liking of everyone."

At the time of writing his book, Campbeltown whisky was in the midst of crisis with most of the local distilleries closing in the 1920s and ‘30s in a geographically small region once home to 28 whisky producing distilleries.

The final chapter in MacDonald’s relatively short book is titled ‘Judging, Purchase, and Care’ and most of the information contained within maintains its relevance to this day.

Whisky by Aeneas MacDonald is a time capsule in Scotch whisky appreciation. Part poetry, part prejudice and very Scottish. The book’s charm is in the differences that distinguish it from modern books on the subject, but it does benefit from the moderation of Ian Buxton, who brings a layer of facts and informed interpretation to many of MacDonald’s more controversial claims.

Recommended, but approach Whisky by Aeneas MacDonald as more of a delightful curio, rather than a modern whisky reference.

Thanks,

Whisky Dad (www.whiskydad.net)

[Wolfe Tone · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far the best book I've ever read on the subject of whisky. Written by a romantic, with much to learn the current generations, so caught up in science, efficiency and marketing strategies. We should heed MacDonalds words:

"For it cannot be maintained seriously that those who make the food and the drink of man are in the same category as mere commercial manufacturers. Theirs is a sacred, almost a priestly responsibility, which they cannot barter away for turnovers and dividends without betraying their trust as custodians of civilization."

Ain't that the truth.

[Stefanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick, enjoyable and poetic tribute to [single malt] whisky and the Scottish tradition of whisky distilling. Written in 1930 it is as readable today as it was then. The introduction by Ian Buxton gives great information about the author and the time he was writing in with great footnotes sprinkled throughout.