Why Spirits Are So Tied to Place | The Story of Whisky & Regional Identity

Why are spirits so deeply connected to place? From Islay’s smoky malts to the Highland character of Dalwhinnie, whisky isn’t just about flavour—it’s about history, tradition, and the land it comes from.

Here we explore why spirits—unlike many other food and drink products—are tied to geography and craftsmanship. Is it about local ingredients? The people who make it? Or the need to ensure quality and safety?

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  Gareth Roberts:
  Mystified trying to work out why spirits spirits businesses are so linked to place and that's our interest our area of interest isn't it yeah and so you know Ardnamurchan is a place and Oban is a place all of these distilleries are linked to a location and possibly before that they were linked to the person that made that spirit in that place but it it's unique. in spirits businesses I mean you can think of like limoncello you kind of know where that comes from vodka or all these different things they come from a play mezcal comes from a region comes from a place and and yet say short, Another Scottish product. It doesn't come from a place, it's just a general product of an area. And isn't the reason for that because you're dealing with something that if you get alcohol wrong, it'll kill you. It'll either give you a belting headache, it could blind you if you get your cut points wrong, or literally kill you.

  
  And so there's a guarantee of quality in each of those places. Like you might have known that whiskey from Dalwhinnie, it was always drinkable, it was always good. And it could be that simple. I can't think of another reason why. There are no other products that are, like apart from, of course you've got DOPs, you've got your Parmesan and Parma ham and you know.

  Bari Reid:
  Yeah, Stornoway Black Pudding

  GR;
  Milton Mowbray Pies and those sorts of things.

  BR:
  But I mean the thing like... With spirits and whisky, you're taking something from the local, you're taking local grown stuff, and then you're preparing it, all of that, it's totally tied into what's being made in that place. Yeah. And then, you know, the further you develop, it's like, you know, you've got like Islay malts being kind of that peated, because that was just what was used as part of the process. It's not, you know, nobody was deliberately doing that. It was like, we need, you need heat to malt your grain. So they happen to have that fuel source there.

  GR:
  Well, that gives the character to that particular product. But again, then remember the human side of things, the folk on Islay running all those distilleries. will have been extremely well qualified. they knew what they were doing to produce that product. It's reputational, isn't it.

  BR:
  the more manual the process the more it relies on the people you know so. like there's a real skill and that's what I think that's what makes whisky what it is is like that, people buy that story like they really understand that it's kind of crafted by people it's not just it's not just a kind of factory made product which is maybe you know like there is there's something kind of about that kind of the craft and the artisan nature of it yeah that even even like big distilleries like they don't they don't, you know that are big malt distilleries anyway don't necessarily produce like a huge huge volume that kind of takes away from that.

  GR:
  no, no, I mean even the biggest like for your Johnny Walker there's a hundred different components in Johnny Walker right yeah you know so it's lots of small distilleries down a wee glen somewhere, They survived the excise man and here we are.