Posted on 11/04/2018 12:35:57 PM PST by ETL
Chocolate is for woosies When the first Scotch?
Wait a sec. these girls been putting their feets in my chocolate?
When the first Scotch?
Are you drunk?
The term ‘whisky’ derives originally from the Gaelic ‘uisge beatha’, or ‘usquebaugh’, meaning ‘water of life’. Gaelic is that branch of Celtic spoken in the Highlands of Scotland.
When was Scotch Whisky first distilled?
Whisky has been distilled in Scotland for hundreds of years. There is some evidence to show that the art of distilling could have been brought to the country by Christian missionary monks, but it has never been proved that Highland farmers did not themselves discover how to distil spirits from their surplus barley.
The earliest historical reference to whisky comes much later, Mr J Marshall Robb, in his book ‘Scotch Whisky’, says: ‘The oldest reference to whisky occurs in the Scottish Exchequer Rolls for 1494, where there is an entry of ‘eight bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aquavitae’. A boll was an old Scottish measure of not more than six bushels. (One bushel is equivalent to 25.4 kilograms)
When King James IV was in Inverness during September 1506, his Treasurer’s Accounts had entries for the 15th and 17th of the month respectively: ‘For aqua vite to the King. . .’ and ‘For ane flacat of aqua vite to the King. . .’. lt is probable that the aquavitae in this case was spirit for drinking.
The earliest reference to a distillery in the Acts of the Scottish Parliament appears to be in 1690, when mention is made of the famous Ferintosh distillery owned by Duncan Forbes of Culloden.
There is also a reference to distilling in a private house in the parish of Gamrie in Banffshire in 1614. This occurs in the Register of the Privy Council, where a man accused of the crime of breaking into a private house, combined with assault, was said to have knocked over some ‘aquavitie’.
One of the earliest references to ‘uiskie’ occurs in the funeral account of a Highland laird about 1618.
An unpublished letter of February 1622, written by Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy to the Earl of Mar, reported that certain officers sent to Glenorchy by the King had been given the best entertainment that the season and the country allowed. It stated: ‘For they wantit not wine nor aquavite.’ This ‘aquavite’ was no doubt locally distilled whisky.
Another writer affirms that aquavitae occasionally formed part of the rent paid for Highland farms, at any rate in Perthshire, but no actual date is given for this practice.
What is the history of charging duty on Scotch Whisky?
The Scots Parliament in 1644 passed an Excise Act fixing the duty at 2/8d (13p) per pint of aquavitae or other strong liquor - the Scots pint being approximately one third of a gallon. For the remainder of the 17th century various alterations were made to the types and amounts of duty collected.
After the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, English revenue staff crossed the border to begin their lengthy attempts to bring whisky production under control. Ninety years later the excise laws were in such a hopeless state of confusion that no two distilleries were taxed at the same rate. Illicit distilling flourished, the smugglers seeing no good reason for paying for the privilege of making their native drink.
After a lengthy Royal Commission, the Act of 1823 sanctioned legal distilling at a duty of 2/3d (12p) per gallon for stills with a capacity of more than 40 gallons. There was a licence fee of £10 annually and no stills under the legal limit were allowed. The first distillery came into ‘official’ existence in the following year and thereafter many of the more far-sighted distillers came over on to the side of the law.
In 1840, the duty was 5d (2.5p) per bottle and by the beginning of the First World War it had risen to 1/81/2d (9p). In 1939, a typical bottle of Scotch whisky cost 14/3d (72p) of which 9/71/2d (48p) was duty. By 1992, after a succession of duty increases, the same bottle was costing around £10.80. The duty on it was £5.55, equivalent to £19.81 per litre of pure alcohol.
In 1995, for the first time in one hundred years, the tax on Scotch whisky was reduced. Duty fell from £5.77 to £5.54 a bottle (70cl). In 1996, the tax on Scotch whisky was again reduced.
Since 1973 the price of a bottle of whisky, including the Excise Duty, has been subject to a Value Added Tax.
https://www.scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk/about-whisky/history
If not for Scotch Whiskey, Scotland would have ruled the world. I think it all turned out for the best :)
Yes, so apparently the Lemurs produce the chocolate (second pic). :)
If the lemurs are stomping on the chocolate, assuming with great suspended disbelief that they are all potty trained, that is ok. I don’t know about those chicks with their bare feet in my food. Lemurs are pretty cute though.
Did you win or lose on the Breeders cup classic yesterday?
Lol! I didn’t have money to risk, so didn’t bet, or even watch. And, since I currently don’t have access to my PC so to post a decent thread on it, with charts and all, I didn’t bother. The various programs and tools I use are stored on the PC which has been in storage for months.
“This has been a public service announcement for Chocolate!”
Thanks ETL, for reminding us that the holidays are coming and for providing us with some possible solutions to gift lists!
(D! Another Chocolate thread!)
Was it made by HERSHEY’S, MARS or NESTLE’S?
I wish I hadn’t bet, or watched, lol. That gives you a clue how I did.
I was worried for a moment that the lemurs were doing to the same thing to the coco beans that Civet cats to to coffee beans.
Now you need to stop this line of thinking right now! I have chocolate for tonight and I am not going to be thinking of lemur pee! I refuse to think of lemurs peeing on my chocolate! No lemur pee! I can’t stop thinking about lemur pee! Arrrggghhhhhh, what have you done???/?
I thought Civet coffee was from beans the cats pooped out?
It’s just too funny not to post:
“Kopi luwak is made from coffee beans plucked from civets’ feces. This is bad news for civets.”
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160429-kopi-luwak-captive-civet-coffee-Indonesia/
What I want to know is what possessed the first person to ever think about picking coffee beans out of a cat’s poop?
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