Sly grog: A brief history of distilling in Australia

摘要

The year: 1788. A chilly December night in the Scottish village of Auldgirth. Outside the Ellisland Farm residence of Scottish poet and lyricist, Robert Burns, snow fell on the banks of the River Nith. Burns sat in front of an open fireplace which filled the cottage with warmth and permeated the air with the reek of peat smoke. For Burns and his visiting neighbours, the fire gave relief from the elements outside, but the whisky in the cask he just broken open would do a better job of warming their insides. The following day, he would write to Mr. John Tennant, farmer and family friend from whom he had acquired the cask, to thank him and to remark that: "The whisky of this country is a most rascally liquor; and, by consequence only drunk by the most rascally part of the inhabitants." Robert Burns, letter to Mr. John Tennant, Dec 22nd, 1788.