We currently don't offer basic information about whiskey history, distillation, regions, and the like -- there are already tons of great resources on the web for such information.  Check out Whisky 101 at MaltAdvocate.com for a general, easy-to-understand rundown on all things whiskey, or Andy's great "Beginner's Guide" page over at LAscotchclub.com.  You can also visit scotchwhisky.net to find accurate and well-organized scotch-specific information.  For details on bourbon, visit straightbourbon.com.

With that said, the answer to the #1 question we get is:  All Scotch is whiskey.  All bourbon is whiskey.  But not all whiskey is Scotch, nor bourbon, and so forth.  In general, whiskey/whisky is an alcoholic beverage distilled from grain and aged in oak casks.  For answers to some other questions, see the FAQ.

When this website is not referring to a specific product, you’ll see “whisky” spelled both ways at random, and sometimes listed as “whisky/whiskey.”  This often depends on the whim of whomever wrote the selection you’re reading, but another reason is that search engines don’t index “whisk(e)y” in a way that’s optimal to searchers or searchees.

For the record, the word is spelled “whisky” everywhere in the world except for the USA and Ireland, where the “e” is typically but not always inserted.