Eastern malts A classification occasionally used for those whiskies from the eastern area of the ⇒Highland whisky region. As Daiches writes, 'I have in fact seen Highland malt whisky classified simply as Eastern Malts and Western Malts'. (SW1)
excise Can be any toll or tax, but specifically, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica it is 'A duty charged on home goods, either in the process of their manufacture or before their sale to the home consumers'. Dr Johnson in his Dictionary recorded that The taxes levied under the name of Excise by the Ordnance of 1643 included certain duties imposed, in addition to the customs, on various foreign products, it was not until the present century that the actual use of the word became strictly conformed to the preceding definitions.'
The Dutch apparently first had the courage to tax alcohol, but the parliamentarians of England rapidly took up the idea - actually to finance the army in 1643. Scotland followed the next year and levied a duty of 37.5p per English gallon of aqua vitae, the strength, however, not being specified. For a period the tax on Scotch whisky appears to have lapsed but it was re- imposed in 1693. The Board of Excise was set up in 1707 and has levied duty ever since. (WoS)
McDowall's assertion that Holland was the first country to tax alcohol is not quite accurate, as the imposition of duty on spirits for the high moral purpose of controlling excessive consumption whilst conveniently raising revenue dates back to 14th-century Europe, where immoderate brandy- drinking in Germany led to heavy taxation in 1360.
The word excise apparently comes from the Middle Dutch excijs or exziis (1406), which in turn is probably an adaptation of the 12th-century Old French acceis. In its specific sense of referring to an imposition of duty on domestic products, excise is first used regarding the Dutch in 1596, by Edmund Spenser, and in respect of the British situation in 1642: 'Aspersions are by malignant persons cast upon this House that they intend to ... lay excizes upon ... commodities'.
In the United States, Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789, 'Excise is a duty ... paid in the hands of the consumer or retailer ... But in Massachusetts they have perverted the word excise to mean a tax on all liquors, whether paid in the moment of importation or at a later moment, and on nothing else.' A. Delmar in Johnson's New Universal Encyclopaedia (1875) says, 'Excise ... in the US ... is confined to the tax on the production or sale of spiritous or fermented liquors, or the productive capacity of liquor stills, revenue from liquor stamps, etc.'
Once excise duty was imposed on whisky, there were people who chose to evade it for various reasons, particularly in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands where families had distilled as they liked for generations. Not that illicit distillation was restricted to Ireland and Scotland. The art was certainly practised in parts of Wales and rural Lancashire, and legal production of whisky now occurs in Brecon and Wigan respectively. ⇒Moonshining also occurred in areas close to the Scottish border such as Cumberland, Westmorland, and Northumberland, where the product of illegal stills was known as ⇒innocent.
After the Act of Union in 1707, the Scots perceived excise impositions as English in origin, and avoidance became something of a point of honour. The not unreasonable argument ran along the lines: 'If a southern English farmer can make cider from his own apples without paying duty on it, why should a Scottish farmer not distil whisky from the barley he has grown in the same manner?'
Dr John Mackenzie (Highland Memories) makes the following observation about the Highland perception of excise laws relating to illicit whisky in the 1820s. ('Smuggling' usually refers to the whole business of producing and distributing illegal spirits, rather than having the more specific sense it enjoys today.) 'Laws against smuggling are generally disliked. People who if you dropped a shilling would run a mile after you with it, not even expecting thanks, will cheerfully break the law against smuggling. When I was young everyone I met from my father downwards, even our clergy, either made, bought, sold, or drank cheerfully, smuggled liquor'. Excise legislation has done much to shape the economic and social history of whisky production, and the development of major commercial distilling in the Scottish Lowlands followed the passing of the Gin Act in 1736, which imposed heavy excise duty on gin in an effort to curb drunkenness while exempting whisky.
One man who enjoyed a unique position as a legal distiller without any burden of excise duty to pay was Duncan Forbes of ⇒Ferintosh in Ross-shire, who enjoyed this peculiar privilege from 1690 until 1784.
During the 1770s the licensed distillers sought to undermine illicit production by flooding the market with cheap whisky, and in 1781 the government banned private distillation and allowed the excise authorities to seize whisky, whisky-making equipment and later even horses and vehicles used in the transportation of illicit spirit. A premium of one shilling and sixpence was offered to anyone handing in an illicit still to the authorities, though this measure rather backfired in that many shrewd smugglers gave up old, worn-out pieces of equipment and bought new ones with the 'reward' money!
In 1784 the Wash Act reduced duty and simplified regulations regarding the production of legal whisky, as well as establishing a precise geographical line between the⇒ Highland producers and ⇒Lowland producers for excise purposes, as one aim was to stimulate legal distilling in the Highlands and reduce smuggling. Accordingly, lower rates of excise duty were applied to small-scale distilleries north of the line which used locally produced barley, though their product was banned from being exported into the Lowlands a year later in order to protect Lowland distilleries from unfair competition.
A very significant increase in legal distillation in the Lowlands came about as a result of the Wash Act, accompanied by largescale exports of whisky into England, though this was effectively ended by the imposition of prohibitively high levels of duty on spirits crossing the border into England in 1786. This, plus overproduction - not for the last time in the Scotch whisky industry - led to disaster for the major legal concerns, with the five largest Scottish distillers who were responsible for producing almost half the country's whisky going bankrupt. Trebling of duty in 1793 to help pay for war with France hardly improved the situation, and this led to Lowland whisky being produced quickly, the quality of the product suffering significantly as a result.
In the Highlands matters were generally much better, because the small- scale stills produced a comparatively high quality product, and illegally distilled ⇒Glenlivet whisky was even enjoyed by King George IV and his courtiers. The not unreasonable notion that illicit Highland whisky was superior in quality to the legal Lowland spirit dates back to the years following the extension of the English malt tax to include Scotland in 1713. In order to minimise the amount of malt tax which had to be paid, legal distillers used as little malted barley as was feasible with a high percentage of raw grain.
Until 1795 the Highland region of whisky production included ⇒Campbeltown, which by that time had become the centre for the whisky industry in the West, but in that year legislation was introduced which incorporated Campbeltown into the Lowland classification, obliging the district's distillers to pay duty at the higher Lowland rate. This initiative, along with the generally high rates of duty which kept on rising, led to a growth in the illicit trade once again, with the superior Highland product entering the Lowland area in such quantities as to prove a serious threat to the legal Lowland operations.
The government's response was the 1816 Small Stills Act, which abolished the 'Highland Line' for purposes of excise and reduced duty throughout Scotland. The use of stills of less than five hundred gallons' capacity had been outlawed two years previously in an ill-advised move to extend English distilling regulations to Scotland, a move opposed by the Scottish Board of Excise, who realised the obvious implication of increased illicit distilling. The Small Stills Act reduced the minimum still capacity to a much more realistic forty gallons, and as a result forty-five new legal distilleries opened in the Highlands in the first three years following the Act, taking the total to 57.
Highland landowners had tended to turn a blind eye to illicit distilling on their land, as the money made by their tenants through this trade was often the only way they could pay their rents. In 1820, however, a number of Highland lairds, including the Duke of Gordon - whose estates included the great whiskymaking centre of Glenlivet - offered to support increased measures aimed at stamping out the illegal trade in return for a better deal for licensed distillers. The advantages were perceived as being more revenue for the government, despite the lower level of duty, and opportunities for the lairds to make money out of the new distilleries that would surely be built as a result of the proposed legislation.
In 1822 the Illicit Distillation (Scotland) Act was passed, which introduced harsher penalties for anyone involved in making, supplying or drinking illicit whisky. The following year an Excise Act dramatically cut duty to two shillings and threepence per gallon, with a distilling licence costing ten pounds, and the export market to England was made significantly more attractive. The Act also made it compulsory for every distillery to provide accommodation for a resident ⇒exciseman. The complexities of excise legislation relating to Scotland become apparent when it is discovered that between the first imposition of excise duty in the 17th century and the 1822 Act more than thirty changes had been made regarding the production of whisky.
The effects of the two new Acts were very soon obvious. The number of licensed distilleries in Scotland doubled in two years, and production of duty-paid whisky rose from two million gallons to six million gallons per annum. Illicit distillation fell dramatically during the next few years, with an astonishing 14,000 detections being made in 1823 - clearly just the tip of an enormous alcoholic iceberg - but only 692 in 1834, and six in 1874. The 1823 Excise Act was clearly doing its work, and Cooper observes that 'this notable piece of legislation founded the whisky industry as we know it today'. (CCtW).
The history of excise legislation and its effects in Ireland roughly parallels that in Scotland until 1823, with a levy on spirits having first been imposed in 1661, although that and several subsequent pieces of excise legislation were almost universally ignored. As in Scotland, passing an Act was one thing but enforcing it in often wild, remote and inhospitable country, where a vast majority of the local population was openly opposed to the excise officers, was quite another.
The governmental tool of excise duty has continued to be used for various purposes during the 19th and 20th centuries both in Ireland and on the British mainland, including the reason for their first imposition in Britain, that of raising revenue to fight wars. Even in 1939 duty was increased as war with Germany became an inevitability. Lloyd George - no friend of the distillers - increased duty on whisky by a third in his famous 'People's Budget' of 1915 in an attempt to cut alcohol consumption, and from 2s. 6d. (12.5p) for a bottle of standard blended whisky in 1909 the cost had risen to 33s. 4d. (£1.67) for the same article by 1948, with more than three-quarters of the price representing excise duty. As Morrice puts it, 'The trend was established and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the Exchequer had developed a bad habit which it would never be able to kick'. (SGtS)
The Scotch Whisky Association provides statistics which show that whisky fares badly in terms of taxation when compared with sherry, wine and beer. The Association points out that, 'The only reduction in the Excise duty since the last century was made in 1973, when the rate was lowered to compensate for the extra taxation which resulted from the introduction of Value Added Tax. By contrast, during the last few years more than once there have been reductions in the duty on high strength wines such as Sherry and Port, on sparkling wines, on beer and on British wines which are made largely from imported grape juice'. (SWQ&A) Taxation accounts for between 75% and 80% of the selling price of a bottle of whisky, and, according to the Association, 'The Excise Duty paid on mature spirits is the same regardless of whether they are produced in this country or abroad. Scotch whisky is not protected in any way against competition from spirits produced overseas, even those from the countries which themselves discriminate against imports of Scotch whisky'. (ibid.)
It seems that Neil Gunn's declaration in the 1930s that 'this discrimination against whisky is so manifestly unjust that it does have the appearance of being deliberately vindictive' (W&S) can still be said to have some validity.
Writing in 1967, RJS McDowall described the price of whisky as 'a scandal', and lamented the fact that the Scottish national drink had been priced out of the reach of many Scots, though the novelist Martin Amis pointed out in a New Statesman article in 1975 that a bottle of whisky actually cost half of what it did in the 1930s. Derek Cooper seeks to illustrate the same point by comparing the price of whisky with that of Penguin paperbacks. He remarks that when the first five titles were originally published by Penguin in the 1930s, they were priced at 6d. per copy, at a time when a bottle of whisky cost 12/6d. In 1985 Penguin reissued the five books at a total price of £15.90. 'If the whisky industry had decided that it was entitled to a similar rate of inflation a bottle today would cost £75!', he declares. (ToS)
exciseman 'An officer employed to collect excise duties and prevent infringement of the excise laws', according to the OED. The term is first used in 1647, 'the Corruption of Committee Men and Excisemen'. Dr Johnson left no one in any doubt of his opinion of the exciseman and his work with his Dictionary's definition: 'Wretches, hired by those to whom excise is paid'.
Properly called Excise or Revenue Officers, but usually known in Scotland and Ireland as ⇒gaugers, revenue men, and keg-hunters, excisemen performed a difficult, often dangerous and generally fairly thankless job in the days when illicit distillation was a way of life for so many people in Scotland and Ireland.
Preventing 'infringement of the excise laws' was much easier said than done in remote parts of Galway or Glenlivet, and, as Philip Morrice notes,
The exciseman's lot was not a happy one. He was working against a highly motivated, hostile and sometimes desperate section of the population, whose activities were either supported or connived at by a majority of the rest. He was often working in unfamiliar territory and was obliged to do so to a rule-book, whereas his adversary had none. Like all tax collectors in history, he had no natural allies, save the government of the day which left him to execute its unpopular policies. In fact and fiction he was portrayed as heavy-handed, humourless, dim- witted and not always honest.
The other side of the story, that of the exciseman's should not be forgotten. He was expected to make his living from the proceeds of the take which he shared with the exchequer, and from which he had to meet all his expenses, including sometimes costly legal fees. (SGtS)
It was hardly surprising that excisemen sometimes succumbed to bribery to make ends meet, and John Mackenzie (A Hundred Years in the Highlands) recalled that 'Excisemen were planted in central stations as a terror to evildoers, but they seemed to stay for life in the same localities, and report said they and the regular smugglers of liquor were bosom friends, and that they even had their ears and eyes shut by blackmail pensions from the smugglers.'
The totally unsatisfactory nature of their means of remuneration is perhaps most graphically illustrated by the tragic and well documented tale of Malcolm Gillespie, or 'Gillespie the Gauger' as he was more usually known. Gillespie was a Highlander who joined the excise service in 1799, soon proving himself to be one of its most dedicated and successful officers when it came to countering the illegal production and distribution of whisky in Aberdeenshire. Despite his successes - taking and destroying an astonishing 25,000 gallons of spirit during his careerhis financial situation, largely caused by the necessity of paying substantial sums of money for information leading to seizures of whisky, finally drove him to falsify returns for spirit which he had seized, and he was executed for the capital crime of forgery in December 1827. Excisemen sometimes lost their lives on 'active service', and the physical dangers of their job were underlined when Gillespie indicated on the morning of his execution the scars on his body from no fewer than 42 wounds incurred in the line of duty.
The makers and distributors of illicit whisky used their detailed knowledge of local terrain to construct smuggling bothies which were frequently undetectable to even the sharpest exciseman's eye. At least one still was set up in a cave behind a waterfall so that the tell-tale smoke from distilling appeared as spray, and in other cases chimneys were constructed from bothies to nearby cottages where they linked up with domestic fires. At one stage even the clock-tower in the centre of Dufftown on Speyside concealed an illicit still, with smoke travelling up a narrow chimney which resembled a lightning conductor. The local Supervisor of Excise passed the clocktower on his way to and from work every day but never suspected anything. If the smell of whisky seemed strong at times it would obviously appear to come from one or more of the seven stills then operating in the town.
The smugglers could be just as clever and resourceful when it came to outwitting the excisemen. Feigned death was a useful tool for the whisky smuggler, and one famous example recorded by former exciseman Steve Sillett comes from Orkney, concerning Magnus Eunson, a Church Officer who operated an illicit still on the site on the outskirts of Kirkwall where Highland Park Distillery now stands. Eunson often hid his spirit beneath the pulpit, but on one occasion when he discovered that the excisemen were about to raid his church he transferred the whisky to his house, laid a coffin lid and a white cloth over it, and muttered 'smallpox' when the excisemen finally arrived after a futile search of the church. Needless to say, they did not stay long.
Women frequently took on the role of couriers for illicit whisky, hiding bladders of spirit beneath their skirts, and in the government's Fifth Report of Revenue arising in Ireland of 1823 there is the observation that, 'some women have pockets made of tin, and a breast and a half moon that goes before them, and, with a cloak around them they will walk with six gallons and it shall not be perceived'. Caesar Otway (A Tour in Connaught and Sketches in Ireland, 1839) tells of a distiller having a tin vessel made 'with the head and body the shape of a woman which he dressed to resemble his wife'!
Robert Burns is almost certainly the most famous of all excisemen, serving at Dumfries from 1789 until his death in 1796. His celebrated song 'The Deil's Awa' Wi' The Exciseman' may seem at odds with his calling, and is often assumed to have been written before he joined the service. In fact it dates from 1792, and according to Burns's biographer, Lockhart, it was composed when the poet was on duty watching a suspected brig in the Solway Firth. The song was the result of Burns' impatience at having to wait in a salt-marsh for what he considered an unnecessarily long time, and is written in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner. His poem of 1785, 'Scotch Drink', in which he mourns the loss of Ferintosh's tax-free privilege contains the lines:
The curst horse-leeches o' th' Excise,
Wha mak the whisky-stells their prize!
This reference seems to have been intended more in the passionate spirit of his oft-quoted pronouncement from 'The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer'. (1786), 'Freedom and whisky gang thegither'.
If Burns is the most famous exciseman, then Aeneas Coffey must surely rank as the exciseman who was most influential in the history of whisky, as his invention of a ⇒continuous still revolutionised the entire industry. He served as an excise officer from around 1800 until his resignation in 1824, by which time he had risen to become Inspector General of Excise in Ireland.
With the gradual decline of illicit distilling during the 19th century, the exciseman's role changed appreciably. As James Bramwell puts it, 'nowadays the outlaw is tame and the exciseman has become a probation officer camped beside the distillery in a neat office and able to keep an exact check on the amount of whisky distilled'. Bramwell was writing in 1939, and at that time the amount of actual on-site work to be done by the exciseman was not always too onerous. Burns was not the only literary exciseman, as both Neil Gunn and the Irish novelist Maurice Walsh filled the same role for several years. Gunn found time to write six novels and Whisky and Scotland between 1923 and 1937, when he was excise officer at Glen Mhor Distillery in Inverness before leaving the service to write full-time. 'Long experience has created an almost perfect system of supervision, interfering so little with practical operations and producing such figures of liability or accountancy as distillers unhesitatingly accept, that normally the relations between the Excise official and the distiller are pleasant and charged with mutual respect'. (W&S)
When Maurice Walsh was working as an exciseman at Benromach Distillery in Forres on Speyside and took leave, Gunn would sometimes be sent in his role as 'unattached officer' - for a decade from 1911 - to act as his relief. The two became great friends, and Gunn recalled later writing to Walsh in advance of his visits, urging him to get all the necessary paperwork done before his arrival so that the pair could spend Walsh's vacation fishing, hunting and generally having a good time together.
Such experiences were used by Walsh in his first and bestknown novel The Key Above The Door (1926), and the Kerryman recalled later in life that when he and other young excise officers used to gather on Speyside for what was then the distilling 'season' from October to May there was a great deal of friendliness and companionship between the distillery staff and the 'revenue men'.
Writing in 1967, McDowall defined the exciseman's role as 'the watch-dog of the Government': 'it is his job to see that all alcohol made is recorded in order that duty may be paid ... Control begins as soon as the worts go into fermenting vats - the wash backs. From the volume of the contents and its sugar content the amount of whisky which is to be produced can be estimated'. (WoS) At the conclusion of ⇒distilling, 'the exciseman confirms his earlier calculations as to the amount of excisable spirit to be produced from a given quantity of wash', according to Morrice. (SGtS) Supervision continued through the period of warehouse ⇒maturation.
Since McDowall and Morrice described the duties traditionally carried out by the distillery exciseman, liberalisation has taken place using modern computer technology to the extent that since April 1983 the distillery manager has been responsible for measuring all yields and submitting returns to HMRC regarding the amounts of wash and spirit. There is no longer a resident exciseman in each distillery to hold one of the keys previously needed to open the ⇒spirit safe, formerly one of the most tangible examples of the exciseman's position of authority. Padlocks on the safe are still sealed, however, and may only be opened in the presence of the manager or brewer, and the reason for opening them must be recorded. Skipworth writes that 'The role of the Excise is more as auditors, though spot-checks on distilleries are made. Symbolic of the distilleries' new responsibilities is the demise of the Crown Locks. These locks, good and solid, were to be found at the spirit safe and the warehouses where the whisky is matured. The distillers now provide their own locks'. (SWB)
Interviewed in 1993, Iain Henderson, former manager of Laphroaig Distillery on Islay, outlined the practical changes that have occurred since 1983. 'Before the changes there were thirteen excisemen on Islay, and now there are only four, based in an office in Bowmore. We don't call them excisemen anymore, just customs officers, because they also have other duties, including VAT and drugs-related work'.
expression A specific bottling of whisky, usually delineated by distillery, age, maturation cask type or strength. Some distillers use the term as part of formal product titles, eg 'Springbank Marsala Wood Expression'. In 2005 a drinks magazine with a strong whisky content, edited by Gavin D. Smith and Tom Cannavan, was launched under the title Fine Expressions.
'This expression of Hanyu offers a significant contrast to the Karuizawa, reviewed above, but is another excellent example of a beautifully made and skilfully matured Japanese single cask malt whisky'. (www.whisky-pages.com, May 2008).