ARTICLES

RYE WHISKEY

By: Sam Halliday [2021]

Let's start with 'whiskey'. Like Vodka, Whiskey derives from the Proto-Indo-European *wódr̥ (water). PIE *wedor (collective nominative of wódr̥) became 'wando' (water) in Proto-Balto-Slavic, and voda (water). Vodka was a diminutive of voda, so 'little water', meaning roughly watering down, as in 'vodka of grain wine (distillate)'. Grain wine was the old term for vodka, but 'vodka' became shorthand for the finished product in a process called ellipsis.

On the other hand, whiskey comes from the PIE *uden (genitive singular of wódr̥) which became Proto-Celtic uden+sk+yos (water), with the suffixes making it a noun. And udenskyos gave rise to Irish uisce and Scottish Gaelic uisge, both still meaning water. When Irish and Scottish distillation began in the late middle ages, they were borrowing from French and Italian alchemists. 

Bonaventura da Iseo coined the term aqua vite (water of vite) in reference to an alcohol he produced which supposedly had medicinal properties. While later Franciscans like Jean de Roquetaillade would render it aqua vitae (water of life), it is possible da Iseo meant an inflection of vitis (grapevine), which would make aqua vite = water of wine, in the same way 'water of grain wine' represented vodka. Regardless, aqua vitae took, slowly replacing aqua ardens (burning water).

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