War and whisky: How Conflict Shaped the Spirit in Your Glass

In Times of War: How Conflict Shaped the Spirit in Your Glass

A Historical Journey- and a Practical Guide to Hosting a Tasting with a Story

This article does two things at once, and I want to be upfront about that from the beginning.

The first is historical. It tells the story of how conflict - two world wars, an American prohibition, a Pacific trade blockade - shaped the whisky we drink today in ways that are rarely discussed and almost never told as a single coherent narrative. The three-year minimum maturation that defines Scotch, the first-fill bourbon barrel that gives a Speyside its vanilla and caramel, the mizunara character in premium Japanese whisky, Plymouth Gin’s navy strength: all of them were products of war, legislation, and necessity rather than the deliberate choices of master distillers.

The second is practical. Across the Devon Drams series, we have written about the science of taste, the aesthetics of glassware and light, the genetics of the palate, the art of hosting, and the pairing of whisky with food. All of those articles have been building toward something: the idea that a truly memorable whisky evening is not simply a collection of well-chosen bottles. It is a designed experience, in which every element - the light, the sound, the surface, the aroma before the first pour, the question on the tasting card - is working together to serve a single coherent idea.

The wartime tasting is the most vivid illustration of that principle I can imagine. History is the theme that gives the flight its meaning. The meaning is what changes the flavour. And the flavour, as we established in our article on the genetics and epigenetics of taste, is genuinely different when the brain brings prior knowledge and context to the glass. ¹

So this article is for anyone who loves whisky history. And it is equally for anyone - anywhere, hosting any kind of tasting - who wants to think more deliberately about how to build an evening that goes beyond the liquid in the glass.

At Devon Drams, this is what we are increasingly thinking about. Not just which bottles to pour, but what surrounds them: the room, the narrative, the sensory environment, the pacing, the questions that keep the conversation honest. The wartime tasting is one expression of that thinking. The principles behind it apply to every themed evening we design - and to every thoughtful host who wants their guests to leave having experienced something, not merely having drunk something.

There is a warehouse somewhere in Scotland - perhaps in Speyside, perhaps on Islay - that has been standing since before the First World War. The casks inside it are dark and quiet. The angels are taking their share, as they always have. Outside, over the course of the twentieth century, two world wars were fought, a prohibition was imposed and repealed, empires rose and fell, and the political map of the world was redrawn several times over. The whisky kept maturing.

But the whisky that emerged from those warehouses - and the whisky we drink today - was shaped by every one of those disruptions in ways that are rarely discussed and almost never told as a single coherent story. The three-year minimum maturation that defines Scotch was not the considered judgement of master distillers. The first-fill bourbon barrel that gives your Speyside single malt its vanilla and caramel was mandated by a political lobbying campaign. The mizunara character in premium Japanese whisky was discovered because a world war cut off Japan’s cask imports. Plymouth Gin’s navy-strength expression exists because Royal Navy regulations specified that gunpowder must remain ignitable if doused in spirits.

These are not footnotes to the history of whisky. They are the flavour.

This article draws on threads from several previous pieces in the Devon Drams series - the Wood Series, the Japanese whisky article, our profile of Devon’s own distilleries, and the articles on aesthetics, hosting, and the science of taste - and tries to tell them together, in the order in which history actually happened, and in the order in which a thoughtful host might bring them to life.

The First World War: How a Chancellor Almost Killed Scotch - and Accidentally Improved It

In January 1915, David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, addressed a delegation of shipbuilding employers in a state of barely contained fury. The war was six months old. The front needed shells. The munitions factories in Glasgow, Clydeside, and the Midlands needed workers who could be relied upon to show up. And the workers, Lloyd George had been told, were spending their newly increased wartime wages in the pubs. His conclusion, delivered with characteristic force, was unambiguous: “We are fighting Germany, Austria and Drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is Drink.”

The legislative response was swift and comprehensive. The Defence of the Realm Act intervened in British drinking habits directly: by the spring of 1915, pub opening hours were severely limited, people were banned from buying rounds of drinks for others, and the strength of spirits was reduced. The campaign to persuade King George V to take the pledge was successful - the Palace issued a statement that no wines, spirits, or beer would be consumed in any of His Majesty’s houses for the duration.

Then came the measure that would define Scotch whisky for the next century.

In May 1915, the Immature Spirits (Restriction) Act was introduced in Parliament. Its stated purpose was to reduce drunkenness by preventing the sale of newly distilled spirit straight from the still. The ban on selling spirits aged for less than two years - initially two, later extended to three - reflected the temperance movement’s contention that immature spirits caused more drunkenness than those left to age for longer, and also the concern within the Scotch whisky industry that irresponsible distillers were padding out cheap blends with large quantities of unaged grain spirit.

The debate in Parliament was illuminating. Opposition speakers pointed out, accurately, that there was no scientific evidence that aged whisky was less harmful than new make - the argument was essentially temperance politics dressed in a quality rationale. One MP noted that “It was not established before us that any material change in the toxicant quality of whisky is effected by age, but it is generally agreed that with old age a great improvement in the flavour of whisky is developed.” In other words: the older the whisky, the nicer it tasted, which arguably made it more rather than less dangerous as an object of desire.

The three-year minimum was a wartime austerity measure. It became permanent. And the quality standard it created - which ensured that every bottle of Scotch anyone had ever drunk had spent at least three years in contact with wood - became the foundation on which the premium positioning of Scotch was built for the following century. The 40% ABV standard for Scotch was also established during the war, set in 1917, and has remained the industry benchmark ever since.

The human cost of the First World War to the Scotch industry was severe. Before the war, there were around 150 working distilleries in Scotland. After Prohibition ended in America, that number had shrunk to just 15. The closures were not caused by bombs but by economics: four years of restricted production, soaring duty, the diversion of grain to food, the loss of skilled workers to the front, and post-war depression conspired to reduce the industry to a fraction of its pre-war scale. The distilleries that survived were, almost without exception, those with the reserves and the institutional strength to weather a long crisis.

The smaller, more vulnerable operations simply disappeared. The paradox - and it is a genuine one - is that the legislation designed to suppress whisky inadvertently elevated it. The three-year minimum, the standardised bottling strength, the forced improvement in quality standards: all of these emerged from a government trying to reduce consumption and produced an industry whose product was genuinely better than before.

Prohibition: How America Made Scotch Famous by Trying to Abolish Drinking

The relationship between American Prohibition and the global dominance of Scotch whisky is one of the great unintended consequences in commercial history.

When the 18th Amendment took effect on 17 January 1920, it did not stop Americans drinking. It redirected where they drank, what they drank, and - most consequentially - who provided it. “During Prohibition, the demand for Scotch was undiminished, and indeed increased,” the Scottish whisky specialist and historian Charles Maclean has said. “Unlike bourbon, which was stamped on, and so-called ‘bathtub’ gin, Scotch was renowned for its quality.”

The problem was getting it across the border. The solution was rum-running - the organised smuggling of spirits from ports in Canada, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and the French Atlantic islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which became, despite a combined population of around 6,000, a staging post of extraordinary importance. Scotch exports to the Bahamas rose from 914 gallons in 1918 to 386,000 gallons by 1920 - an increase of over 40,000%. Bermuda saw a 4,000% jump, while Canada and the West Indies experienced a 400% rise.

The most celebrated of the rum-runners was William “Bill” McCoy, a former merchant sailor who transported name-brand Scotch and other spirits with such consistent quality that bootleggers developed their own vocabulary for it. His determination to offer his customers only the best illegal liquor, such as authentic whisky imported directly from Great Britain, led his patron-bootleggers to tell customers that rather than fake booze, they were getting “the real McCoy.” The phrase entered the English language, and it did so because of Scotch.

The family that built the most consequential empire on this trade was the Bronfmans, whose Distillers Corporation - later Seagram - operated supply chains that were, as Sam Bronfman himself later acknowledged, understood by everyone involved to be supplying the American bootlegging market. “Of course we knew where it went,” he told an interviewer years later. What Bronfman understood, and what distinguished him from many of his contemporaries, was that this was not simply a crisis to be survived. It was an opportunity to be built upon. He anticipated the end of Prohibition and stockpiled aged whisky - so that by 1933, Seagram held the largest private stock of aged whisky in existence, allowing the company to expand and effectively monopolise the post-Repeal market.

The premium positioning that Prohibition created did not evaporate when the law changed. By 1938, exports of Scotch whisky from the United Kingdom had overtaken domestic sales, with the formerly “dry” United States accounting for over 60% of the overseas market. A law designed to prevent Americans drinking had turned Scotch into a symbol of sophistication, quality, and a certain pleasurable defiance of authority - a brand identity so powerful that it survived for the rest of the century.

The Second World War: Survival, Sacrifice, and Churchill’s Memo

The Second World War hit the Scotch industry harder than the First, and it did so more quickly.

With the declaration of war in 1939 came immediate government-imposed restrictions. Barley stocks normally used for distilling spirits were diverted to help feed the population, resulting in a rapid decrease in malt whisky production. From 1940 to almost the end of 1944, legislation prevented grain distilleries from distilling whisky to the point that almost no Scottish whisky was made. The total amount of whisky distilled for the entire duration of the war was approximately the amount distilled in pre-war 1939 alone.

Forty-five distilleries were converted into grain storage facilities. Bombing by the Luftwaffe destroyed approximately 4.5 million proof gallons of whisky - the equivalent of one year’s entire wartime production. The smaller distilleries, unable to afford the inflated prices of rationed barley or to survive years without production income, were acquired by larger operators primarily for their maturing stock. The consolidation of the industry into fewer, larger hands - which defines its structure to this day - accelerated dramatically during these years.

In America, the situation was similarly acute. Whisky distilleries were commandeered for war production. American distilleries were repurposed to produce industrial alcohol for torpedo fuel. The bourbon industry, which had spent the years since Prohibition rebuilding its stock from nothing, found itself once again stripped of its aged reserves and directed toward the war effort.

It fell to Winston Churchill - himself a lifelong and enthusiastic consumer of Scotch - to make the case for the industry’s preservation as a strategic rather than merely cultural asset. His memorandum of May 1945, written as the war in Europe was reaching its conclusion, is one of the most remarkable documents in the history of the drink: “On no account reduce the barley for whisky. This takes years to mature and is an invaluable export… Having regard to all our other difficulties about export, it would be most improvident not to preserve this characteristic British element of ascendancy.”

Churchill was not arguing for whisky on sentimental grounds. He was arguing for it as a dollar-earner in a Britain that desperately needed hard currency. The argument worked - limited supplies of grain were made available to distillers from 1944. But the post-war recovery was slow. It was not until 1949 that distilling on the pre-war scale was permitted, and grain rationing was not fully lifted until 1953. All wartime restrictions were finally removed in 1954.

The fifteen years from 1939 to 1954 - during which barely any Scotch was distilled - created the scarcity that defined the industry’s premium character in the post-war boom. The whisky available in the 1950s and early 1960s was largely pre-war stock. Its age, its quality, and its rarity were all consequences of conflict. The generation of consumers who discovered Scotch in post-war prosperity were drinking liquid that the war had aged for them.

Japan: The Most Productive Accident in Whisky History

We told the story of mizunara’s origin in our Wood Series Part Two, and touched on it again in the Japanese whisky article. But its wartime context deserves to stand alongside the other stories in this piece, because it is the clearest illustration of a principle I keep returning to in my work with leaders: constraint, not comfort, tends to be the true mother of innovation.

When Japan entered the Second World War in 1941, the supply routes that had provided its distilleries with American bourbon casks and European sherry butts were severed. Suntory and Nikka had both been building their whisky production on imported vessels. There were no imported vessels now. There was, however, a forest.

Mizunara oak - Quercus mongolica var. crispula - grows on Hokkaido, in the north of Japan. It is difficult to work with, prone to leaking, and requires years of seasoning. The first whiskies matured in mizunara were disappointing - too tannic, too assertive, too strange. The master blenders of wartime Japan considered it a compromise forced upon them by circumstances they had not chosen.

They were wrong. They simply had to wait to find out.

When the casks filled during the war years were eventually assessed decades later, their contents revealed something extraordinary: sandalwood, oriental incense - the specific kara note of the ceremonial incense burned in Shinto temples - a complexity and depth that no European or American wood produced. The wartime necessity had created Japanese whisky’s most distinctive and most coveted contribution to the world of spirits. Had the supply routes remained open, it would never have happened.

As we explored in the Wood Series, a single mizunara cask now costs more than £5,000, and the world’s supply flows from a single cooperage in Kyoto. The character it imparts - entirely unreplicable, entirely Japanese - was born in a warehouse in 1941 when there was simply nothing else available.

Devon’s Own Wartime Story

This is a Devon Drams article, and it would be incomplete without acknowledging the wartime connection closest to home.

The Black Friars Distillery on the Barbican in Plymouth - England’s oldest working gin distillery, whose extraordinary history we explored in our Devon distilleries article - has been producing gin for the Royal Navy since before Napoleon. Its navy-strength expression, bottled at 57% ABV, traces its character directly to a military specification: Royal Navy regulations required that any spirit stored aboard ship must not prevent gunpowder from igniting if the two came into contact. At 57% ABV, the spirit passes the test. At 40%, it does not.

The navy-strength convention survived because it encoded something genuinely useful: higher ABV carries more flavour per measure, dilutes better in a punch, and functions, in extremis, as a medical antiseptic. The British military found all of these properties valuable. The tradition of navy-strength gin is the Plymouth Barbican’s most direct line to its wartime history - a heritage that runs from the age of sail through two world wars and into the glass of anyone who pours it today.

What This Means When You Taste

I want to connect this history to something practical and scientifically grounded: the observation we made in our article on the genetics and epigenetics of taste that context genuinely alters flavour perception at a neurological level. Knowing the story of what is in the glass changes what the brain does with the sensory information the glass provides.

When you know that the three-year minimum maturation was a wartime rationing measure - that it was designed not to improve whisky but to reduce how much of it could be sold - the complexity of a long-aged Scotch takes on a different resonance. When you know that the vanilla and caramel of a bourbon-cask expression traces back through congressional lobbying and bootlegger supply chains to the rum-runners of Prohibition, the flavour becomes documentary evidence of a history. When you know that the sandalwood and incense of a mizunara finish was discovered not through innovation but through the loss of everything Japan had planned to use instead, the glass becomes something almost philosophical: an accident made extraordinary by patience.

This is not romanticism. It is neuroscience. As we established in our epigenetics article, the meaning you bring to a sensory experience is processed by the same neural systems that process the sensory signals themselves. ¹ The flavour is different when you know the story. Not because the chemistry has changed, but because you have.

Designing the Evening: Making History Tangible

Before describing the wartime flight itself, I want to address something that applies to any themed whisky tasting - not only a historical one. The principles here are general. The wartime evening is one application of them.

The science we explored in our article on the aesthetics of whisky established that everything surrounding a dram - the light, the colour, the surface it rests on, the sounds in the room - shapes what is experienced before a single molecule of flavour reaches the nose. ² A host who understands this is not decorating an evening. They are building one. Every element of the environment is communicating something to the brain before the glass arrives, and that communication either reinforces or undermines the story the tasting is trying to tell.

For an evening built around a theme - history, geography, a specific production technique, a cultural tradition - this principle becomes an extraordinary creative opportunity. The theme gives you a direction. The design challenge is to ensure that everything in the room points the same way.

Light

Candlelight is not a romantic affectation. It is the neurologically correct choice for almost any serious whisky tasting. Candles produce light at approximately 1800 Kelvin - the warmest, most physiologically calming light available. Warm light suppresses the prefrontal cortex’s tendency toward self-monitoring and analytical over-thinking, and allows the more instinctive, associative parts of perception to operate more freely. ³ The practical effect is that people in candlelit rooms are more open, more relaxed, and more likely to say what they actually perceive rather than what they think they should perceive.

Avoid pure white LED lighting entirely. It mimics midday sun, signals productivity, and is the enemy of contemplative attention. The target colour temperature for any thoughtful tasting is 2200–3000 Kelvin - the range of firelight, incandescent bulbs, and good candlelight.

For a wartime evening specifically, candlelight carries additional resonance: these are whiskies that were made, matured, and in many cases consumed by people who had no reliable access to electric light. The sensory register of the evening and the sensory register of the history it is exploring are the same.

Colour and Surface

The surface against which glasses are seen matters more than most hosts realise. Dark, rich materials - walnut, slate, aged oak - make amber whisky glow. Light surfaces flatten it. The amber of whisky in a Glencairn against dark wood is one of the most beautiful things in the drinks world, and positioning a directional light source to catch it is a choice that shapes how every person in the room feels about what they are about to taste before it has touched their lips. As our aesthetics article explored, colour primes flavour expectations automatically and unconsciously. ⁴

For a wartime evening, the palette should be warm, muted, and serious. High-saturation colours anywhere on the table create physiological arousal that is antithetical to contemplative attention. For a Japanese whisky evening, a more minimalist aesthetic - negative space, simple surfaces, absence of decoration as its own statement - is entirely appropriate. For a Devon terroir tasting, local slate and seasonal foliage from the landscape tells a different story. The principle is the same whatever the theme: the visual environment should be saying the same thing as what is in the glass.

Glassware

The Glencairn glass concentrates aromatics and is designed to be cradled - the warmth of the palm gently opening the spirit as the tasting progresses. ⁵ For any serious themed tasting, it is the right choice, and it should be consistent and unadorned. The glass should disappear into the experience. The glassware is not the subject of the evening. What it holds is.

For high-ABV or cask-strength expressions, note that a few drops of water before nosing releases aromatic compounds that would otherwise remain bound in the ethanol matrix - the chemistry we explored in the water and whisky article. ⁶ The act of adding water, watching the liquid bloom, and nosing again is itself a form of education that the glass performs without the host needing to explain it.

Aroma Before the Pour

One of the most underused tools in a host’s armoury is the isolated aroma - a small vial of a single compound that will reappear in the whiskies being tasted, offered to guests before the first glass is poured. I have been developing this at the Athenaeum tastings, where an aroma kit sits on the table as guests arrive. The honest observation, as I noted in the genetics and epigenetics article, is that most people do not instinctively use it without context. ⁷ But with a brief explanation - that the compounds in these vials will reappear in the glasses that follow, and that nosing them now is orientation rather than training - the conversation it generates is immediate and genuinely revealing.

For any themed evening, select two or three compounds that correspond to the dominant aromatic threads of the flight being tasted. For a wartime evening: guaiacol (the primary phenolic marker of peat smoke), vanillin (the vanilla compound of American oak), and a woody resinous note - sandalwood or cedar oil - as an approximate guide to the mizunara register of the final glass. For a Japanese whisky evening, a different set entirely. For a Speyside evening, a fruity ester alongside vanillin. The specific compounds matter less than the principle: give the nose a preview of where it is going.

The variation in response across the table - one person finding a compound vivid and another barely registering it - will be among the most honest conversations of the evening, because it demonstrates, before anything has been formally explained, that the people in the room are not tasting from the same biological position. As we established in the genetics article, this observation is the foundation of every interesting tasting discussion that follows.

Sound

Sound shapes flavour perception measurably, and almost nobody thinks about it deliberately. Charles Spence’s crossmodal research at Oxford has shown that low, bass-frequency sounds are associated with bitter and heavy flavours, while higher-frequency sounds prime sweeter and lighter perceptions. ⁸ The ambient sound of a room is an ingredient in what people taste.

For most whisky tastings, the correct approach to sound is not to choose music but to manage noise. Background music that competes with conversation is working against the evening’s purpose. The human voice sharing a sensory experience is what a tasting runs on -anything that makes that harder is a cost.

For a wartime evening specifically, there is an option worth considering: a very quiet recording of period radio - BBC wartime broadcasts are available through public archives - played at barely audible volume as guests arrive, then faded to silence before the first glass is poured. Sound used this way is scene-setting rather than accompaniment. It places the gathering in a temporal register before the history is spoken aloud. The silence that follows, as the broadcast fades and the first dram arrives, carries meaning that no introduction can quite replicate. For other themes, the ambient sonic question is worth asking explicitly: what should this room sound like? A Japanese whisky evening might warrant near-silence and the occasional sound of water. A Devon terroir tasting might use a very quiet recording of coastal or moorland ambience. Restraint is almost always correct. Silence, handled well, is never wrong.

Tasting Cards

Provide a simple card for each glass - not an elaborate scoring sheet, but a small card with the contextual background for each dram at the top and space below for nose, palate, finish, and one specific question. The question should connect the flavour to the theme: for a wartime tasting, what does time taste like in this glass? What does political necessity taste like? What does an accident taste like? For any other theme, the question should be equivalently specific to the evening’s argument.

These are not questions with right answers. They are designed to keep the theme in conversation with the sensory experience - to prevent the history and the flavour from drifting apart into parallel discussions that never quite meet. The card also gives each person a private moment of reflection before the conversation opens, which is particularly valuable for quieter guests whose best observations, as we noted in the introvert’s guide, often come from exactly this kind of undisturbed internal attention. ⁹

Pacing

The single most common error in hosting a whisky tasting is moving too quickly. Five to eight minutes per glass is the minimum for a flight where genuine conversation is the goal. The host’s role is to read the room - to sense when a discussion has genuinely exhausted itself and when it still has somewhere to go - and to move forward only when the first condition is met.

Water should be present throughout, offered as a tool rather than an afterthought. A carafe of still, room-temperature mineral water alongside each glass, with an explicit invitation to add a few drops to any expression where the burn is competing with the flavour. The act of noticing what changes when water is added and sharing that observation is one of the most reliably generative moments in any tasting, and it is enabled by a host who has made the water available and the invitation explicit.

Food

As we explored in our food pairing article, food belongs after the formal tasting rather than during it. ¹⁰ Strong accompaniments alter palate chemistry and compete with subtler expressions. A well-chosen board, brought out once the formal flight is complete, signals that the structured part of the evening has given way to something more relaxed - and that signal, itself, changes the quality of what follows.

The Wartime Flight: Five Drams with a History

The most distinctive Devon Drams event we could offer around this material is a flight in which each glass is chosen not for its tasting profile but for its historical connection - a whisky as document rather than simply as drink. What follows are descriptions of five roles, each historically grounded, with the specific expression left to the host’s curatorial judgement.

Glass One:

A long-aged Scotch from a distillery that survived both world wars Choose something with genuine age from a house that has been producing continuously since before 1939. This glass represents what Scotch looked like before the rationing, the closures, and the post-war reconstruction of stocks. Discussion: does age taste different when you know the warehouse it came from was sitting dark and locked while the world was at war? The three-year minimum that made this ageing possible was designed to reduce consumption - not to create complexity. What has time done with a regulatory accident?

Glass Two:

An Irish whiskey - representing the neutral advantage Any well-regarded Irish single pot still or single malt will serve this purpose. The specific expression matters less than the national origin. Ireland’s neutrality during the Emergency meant that some distilleries continued trading with both Allied and other markets - a flexibility that Scottish producers did not enjoy, and that shaped the Irish and Scotch industries’ very different post-war trajectories. Discussion: how does a political decision about sovereignty end up in a glass?

Glass Three:

A navy-strength spirit at 57% ABV - Devon’s own wartime story This need not be whisky. A navy-strength gin - and Plymouth, forty miles from Sidmouth, has produced one since before the Napoleonic Wars - is the most locally resonant choice Devon Drams can make. Context: the gunpowder test, the Royal Navy specification, the way military utility hardened into commercial convention and then into cultural heritage. Discussion: what does it mean that the ABV of a drink was set by the flammability requirements of a warship’s powder magazine?

Glass Four:

A Scotch matured in first-fill American oak - representing the American connection Any well-regarded expression primarily matured in a first-fill bourbon barrel. The vanilla and caramel in this glass are the flavour consequence of Prohibition’s bootlegger networks and the subsequent congressional legislation that mandated new charred oak for bourbon - as we explored in the Wood Series Part Three. Discussion: this flavour was built not by the distiller but by a law designed to stop people drinking, and by the supply chains that circumvented it.

Glass Five:

A spirit finished in Japanese oak - the most productive accident A Japanese single malt or a Scottish expression finished in mizunara. The sandalwood, incense, and kara spice in this glass exist because the Pacific War cut off Japan’s cask imports in 1941. Nobody planned it. Nobody wanted it. Constraint produced it, and patience revealed it. Discussion: can you taste an accident? Can you taste the patience that turned a compromise into something irreplaceable?

After the flight: a broader conversation about what history is legible in a glass of whisky, and whether knowing the story changes what you taste. The wartime tasting is not simply historical education. It is a live demonstration of something the science confirms: meaning shapes experience, and the meaning of these five glasses is richer for knowing where they came from.

A Final Reflection

I spend a great deal of my professional life thinking about how institutions survive crisis - how organisations, teams, and industries weather disruption, adapt to constraints they did not choose, and occasionally discover, through the pressure of necessity, something they would never have found in comfortable conditions.

The whisky industry’s relationship with war is the most compressed and vivid case study I know of that process in action. Lloyd George’s temperance campaign produced better Scotch. Prohibition built its global market. The Second World War’s rationing created its post-war scarcity and prestige. Japan’s wartime supply failures produced mizunara. Plymouth’s naval obligations produced navy strength.

None of it was planned. All of it was consequential.

The next time someone asks what makes whisky interesting, you might try this answer: it is one of the only things you can drink whose character was substantially shaped by history rather than design - by governments under pressure, by soldiers at war, by legislators trying to solve problems that had nothing to do with what was in the barrel. The history is in the glass. You just need to know where to look.

At Devon Drams, we believe that knowing where to look is half the pleasure. Come and explore these drams with us.

devondrams.com/events | community@devondrams.com

Devon Drams articles referenced in this piece

·       Your Palate Is Your Biography: The Genetics and Epigenetics of Taste - on how context and meaning alter sensory perception at a neurological level; on the aroma kit and individual variation ¹ ⁷

·       Everything Around the Glass: The Aesthetics of Whisky - on light, colour, surface, and how the visual environment shapes taste perception ² ⁴

·       The Whisky Tasting: A Better Kind of Dinner Party - on hosting principles, pacing, and the structure of a shared sensory experience

·       The Glencairn Glass - on glassware design, aromatic concentration, and why the choice of vessel matters ⁵

·       Water and Whisky: What Happens Inside You When You Drink - on dilution, aromatic release, and why adding water is a tool rather than a concession ⁶

·       The Introvert’s Guide to Whisky Tastings - on private reflection, the value of tasting cards, and why quieter guests often have the most to say ⁹

·       The Art and Science of Pairing - on crossmodal perception, sound, and the full sensory environment of a tasting ⁸

·       Whisky and Food: Where to Start - on timing, palate management, and when to bring out accompaniments ¹⁰

·       The Wood Series, Part Two: Beyond Oak - on mizunara’s wartime origin and the science of alternative cask maturation

·       The Wood Series, Part Three: The Guilds and the Coopers - on the bourbon first-fill barrel legislation and its congressional history

·       Japanese Whisky: Why It Took the World by Storm - on the founding of Suntory and Nikka, and Japan’s wartime whisky production

·       Devon’s Own Drams: What’s Being Made on Our Doorstep - on Plymouth Gin, the Black Friars Distillery, and its naval heritage

·       What Does “Single Malt” Actually Mean? - on the regulatory frameworks that govern Scotch, and their historical origins

Sources

1.          Devon Drams. Your Palate Is Your Biography: The Genetics and Epigenetics of Taste. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

2.          Devon Drams. Everything Around the Glass: The Aesthetics of Whisky. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

3.          Ibid. - on colour temperature, warm light, and neurological effects of lighting on social and sensory behaviour

4.          Ibid. - on colour psychology and how visual cues prime flavour expectations

5.          Devon Drams. The Glencairn Glass. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

6.          Devon Drams. Water and Whisky: What Happens Inside You When You Drink. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

7.          Devon Drams. Your Palate Is Your Biography: The Genetics and Epigenetics of Taste. Ibid. - on the aroma kit, individual olfactory variation, and pre-tasting orientation

8.          Spence, C. - crossmodal research on sound and flavour perception, as referenced in Devon Drams. The Art and Science of Pairing. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

9.          Devon Drams. The Introvert’s Guide to Whisky Tastings. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

10.    Devon Drams. Whisky and Food: Where to Start. devondrams.com/news (Accessed: June 2026)

11.    Spartacus Educational. Alcohol and the First World War. Available at: https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWalcohol.htm (Accessed: June 2026)

12.    The Gazette. World War 1: Defence of the Realm Act. Available at: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/217 (Accessed: June 2026)

13.    Scotch Whisky.com. Whisky and Maturity: Why Three Years? Available at: https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/ask-the-professor/8033/whisky-and-maturity-why-three-years/ (Accessed: June 2026)

14.    Scotch Authority. Scotch Whisky History. Available at: https://scotchauthority.com/scotch-whisky-history (Accessed: June 2026)

15.    Hansard. Immature Spirits (Restriction) Bill. 11 May 1915. Available at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1915-05-11/debates/ad080e94-0f62-482c-b0be-164ef5f47828/ImmatureSpirits(Restriction)Bill (Accessed: June 2026)

16.    SMWS Unfiltered. Whisky History: Minimum Age. Available at: https://unfiltered.smws.com/unfiltered-07-2023/whisky-history-minimum-age (Accessed: June 2026)

17.    Great Drams. A Brief History of Scotch. Available at: https://greatdrams.com/a-brief-history-of-scotch/ (Accessed: June 2026)

18.    VinePair. The Unlikely Tale of How Scotch Survived (and Thrived) During Prohibition. Available at: https://vinepair.com/articles/scotch-whisky-history-prohibition/ (Accessed: June 2026)

19.    Really Good Whisky Company. How Whisky Survived Prohibition in the USA. Available at: https://reallygoodwhisky.com/en-us/blogs/the-really-good-whisky-blog/how-whisky-survived-prohibition-in-the-usa (Accessed: June 2026)

20.    The Mob Museum. Rum Running. Available at: https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-rise-of-organized-crime/rum-running/ (Accessed: June 2026)

21.    The Canadian Encyclopedia. Seagram Company Limited. Available at: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/seagram-company-limited (Accessed: June 2026)

22.    Scotch Whisky.com. Whisky Heroes: Sam Bronfman, Seagram. Available at: https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/whisky-heroes/24781/sam-bronfman-seagram/ (Accessed: June 2026)

23.    The Macallan. Perseverance Under Pressure: The Scotch Whisky Industry During World War II. Available at: https://www.themacallan.com/en-us/inside-the-macallan/our-history/perseverance-under-pressure-the-scotch-whisky-industry-during-world (Accessed: June 2026)

24.    Scotch Whisky.com. Famous Whisky Drinkers: Sir Winston Churchill. Available at: https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/famous-whisky-drinkers/9866/sir-winston-churchill/ (Accessed: June 2026)

25.    Malt Maniacs. Whisky Development During 2 World Wars. Available at: http://www.maltmaniacs.net/e-pistles/e-pistle-2007014-whisky-development-during-2-world-wars/ (Accessed: June 2026)

26.    Great Drams. Whisky During the Wars. Available at: https://greatdrams.com/whisky-during-the-wars-the-impact-of-two-world-wars-on-the-scotch-whisky-industry/ (Accessed: June 2026)

27.    War on the Rocks. A Farewell to Sobriety, Part Two: Drinking During World War II. Available at: https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/a-farewell-to-sobriety-part-two-drinking-during-world-war-ii/ (Accessed: June 2026)