What is the difference between grain whisky and vodka?

The law determines the difference, not the raw material: whisky must mature on wood and be distilled at below 94.8 percent vol, vodka needs neither.

Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2019/787 sets the two side by side. Category 2 is whisky or whiskey, category 15 is vodka. Both start from grain fermented with yeast, and both can be distilled in a column still.

After that the requirements diverge. Whisky gets an upper limit on distillation strength, mandatory maturation in wood and a higher minimum alcohol content. Vodka, by contrast, gets the room to remove the taste of the raw material as much as possible. The same pot can therefore make both drinks. What happens next decides which name may appear on the label.

Whisky may be distilled to less than 94.8 percent vol, so that the distillate retains aroma and flavour of the raw materials used.

That limit of 94.8 percent is the heart of the distinction. Anyone who distils higher strips out the grain character and is left with neutral alcohol. For vodka that is no objection. Annex I in fact prescribes that the organoleptic characteristics of the raw materials used are selectively reduced, if desired with a treatment over activated carbon.

Grain whisky is usually distilled in a column still and therefore comes closer to that upper limit than whisky from a pot still. It remains whisky, because the distillate stays below the limit and then goes into wood.

Whisky matures for at least three years in wooden casks of at most 700 litres, and Scotch grain whisky matures those three years in Scotland in oak.

Annex I sets no maturation requirement for vodka. Vodka can be bottled in the same week it was distilled. An age statement on a vodka bottle therefore does not come from a legal obligation.

The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 go further than the European category. Scotch must mature in Scotland in an excise warehouse or another permitted location, exclusively in oak casks of no more than 700 litres, and for at least three years. A three-year-old Scottish grain whisky is therefore only just permitted. Anything younger may not carry the name Scotch Whisky on the bottle.

No alcohol, sweetener or flavouring may be added to whisky. Only caramel E 150a is permitted to adjust the colour.

Vodka may not be coloured according to Annex I. Natural flavouring substances or flavouring preparations that are present in the distillate are allowed, and at most 8 grams of sweetening products per litre.

For Scotch the shortest list of all applies: water and plain caramel, nothing else. The colour of a grain whisky therefore comes mainly from the cask and not from a little bottle. If you want to know whether caramel is added, that is rarely visible from the bottle itself; just ask us at the counter.

Single grain Scotch whisky comes from a single distillery and is neither a single malt nor a blended Scotch, as laid down by the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009.

Blended grain Scotch is a blend of two or more single grain whiskies from more than one distillery. Grain whisky thus forms the base of many blends, but is also sold as a single bottling.

The store at Brink 2 in Bathmen stocks 3,900 bottles of whisky and 223 bottles of vodka. Of these, 25 bottles have single grain in the name, with alcohol percentages from 40 to 54.8 percent. Fifteen come from Scotland, seven from Ireland, and then one bottle each from Belgium, South Africa and Japan. The names that occur most often are Strathcolm with three bottles, Teeling with three, and Loch Lomond and The Busker with two each.