History
Wales has a long history of alcohol creation; but distillation came in the Middle Ages. 'The Great Welsh Warrior' Reaullt Hir is said to have distilled 'chwisgi' from braggot brewed by the monks of Bardsey Island in 356 AD. These monks then allegedly developed the art of distilling further.
However the name "Reaullt" is a High Mediaeval loanword from Anglo-Norman French; and "chwisgi" comes from either the Scottish Gaelic uisge beatha or Irish uisce beatha (both meaning "water "), themselves calques from Mediaeval Latin aqua vitae. The Mabinogion refers to fermentation but not distillation; and the end of the "Mead Song" in a 16th century manuscript of the Tales of Taliesin mentions distillation, although mead is a fermented beverage.
Read more about this topic: Welsh Whisky
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)