June 1, 1494: Friar John Cor Gets Eight bolls of Malt

…and the world preps for the perennial argument – is it whisky or whiskey?

The order came from King James IV to John Cor, a monk at Lindores Abbey. The abbey was in Fife, Scotland, on the River Tay, known for its good water.

“To Brother John Cor, by order of the King, to make Aqua Vitae VIII bolls of malt.” — Exchequer Rolls 1494–95, Vol x, p. 487.

Friar Cor’s malt would be used to make Aqua Vitae (Latin for Water of Life). This would have been known throughout much of Scotland (but not Fife in the East) by the crude Gaelic uisge beatha or usquebaugh. Though it looks like the name of an Elf Town invented by J.R.R. Tolkien, it’s pronounced ʌskwɪbɔ (phonetically: uhs-kwi-baw). This, in time, would be denigrated further to usque and then further Anglicized to whisky. Which makes you wonder how anyone could order it when they’d had too much of it.

Though archaeological evidence shows that spirits were distilled at Lindores Abbey, we don’t know if Friar Cor was doing the actual distilling. He may have been a cellarer or the apothecary. We only know his name was on the approval of the order of malt. In any event, I’d like to imagine there was excitement. That Friar Cor scratched his tonsured head and that he tripped in his cowl along the grassy walkways of the Abbey. The man had just been mentioned in a watershed moment in alcohol history, someone was probably going to talk about him in the future. But in the exchequer records there is no denotation “Friar Cor amped AF” or some other indication, so we’ll just have to use our imagination to its fictional fullest.    

To be sure, the alcohol that Friar Cor and his celibate associates would have distilled was a far cry from the scotch whisky we know, love, and pretend to understand how to gauge the quality of. Rather, it was clear and flavored with spices and herbs and maybe honey. Lindores Abbey was known for its pear and plum orchards, so the monks were probably using these in the distilling process. And since before the 18th century, scotch was not aged after distillation, the final product might have been more like brandy wine, a fruit spirit, or gin.   

The exchequer accounts do give us some interesting details. We can guess by the quantity and the fact that the king ordered it that distillation had been going on for a while. Up until this point, distilled alcohols had been used more as a medicine rather than for getting hammered before popping off to catch the Saturday afternoon executions. The volume and the timing of this order suggest that this was not meant as a curative. Eight bolls of malt was about 500 kilos worth of malt, which would have produced (about 400 bottles) of Aqua Vitae. It’s possible that King James IV was ordering Aqua Vitae for refreshments for his army in the upcoming campaign to tame the western isles.

By all accounts, King of Scotland James IV was widely considered wise, educated, and an effective ruler. History has also deemed him so. He was interested in medicine, surgery, and advocated the development of the printing press. He was a polyglot,  a renaissance man who was a patron of science and the arts. Unlike most other medieval royalty, he didn’t drink heavily or overeat (it’s also possible he was too busy impregnating mistresses and, paradoxically, wearing penitentiary iron underwear). Still, he understood the benefits of alcohol in the fields of medicine, recreation, and, possibly, helping soldiers cope with the brutalities of battle, whether it was the Dutch courage needed to do it or the limbs lost during it. And King James IV was also deeply interested in alchemy.

In the story of alcohol, alchemy is that brilliant uncle who also thinks he could fall off the earth if he ran away from the sun. Anyone who has enjoyed videos of elephants getting drunk from fermented fruit knows that beer and wine need only fermentation to get its users tipsy. But the production of spirits needed a very definite process after fermentation. This process would help drinkers throughout history get from “That’s nice” tipsy to “Never again!” drunk. Alchemy is now seen as the absurd pursuit of turning base metals into gold. And while that is true, it shouldn’t be forgotten that alchemy is the forerunner of modern science, the nearest ancestor of the first great scientists like Isaac Newton, noted scientist, genius, and apple enthusiast. At its root, alchemy was interested in learning the true nature of substances. And this leads us to distillation.    

Crude distillation tracks back to Mesopotamia about 8,000 years ago, but it wasn’t until the 15th century that distillation became more refined. The first distilled spirits came from wine, because it was higher in alcohol content and because it was the most prevent alcohol in the middle east and southern Europe. As distilling reached the northern countries where beer was the main drink, then it utilized grain or cereal mash. It was a hit around Europe, particularly in Holland and Germany. Just six years after Friar Cor’s allowance from the King, Hieronymus Brunschwig would write The Virtuous Act of Distilling in Strasbourg. The distillers in each location added local ingredients to make it into different forms of alcohol. The monks in Lindores Abbey used the waters of the River Tay, honey, herbs, and spices. The fruit in France would make their colorless brandy, eau de vie. And the grains, potatoes, and impenetrable sadness of Scandinavia would make aqua vitae into an unpalatable liver shitstorm called akvavit.

So, how to celebrate John Cor’s monumental order? You have options. Lindores Abbey is often called the birthplace of scotch and what a way to celebrate the first mention of distilling there than enjoying your favorite scotch. I would personally suggest Lagavulin or any Scotch prefixed with Glen. Lindores Abbey doesn’t have a scotch out yet, as it’s just opened and its first batch will be out later in 2021. Lindores does have an Aqua Vitae that you might try, which uses spices, dried fruit and herbs such as Douglas fir and sweet cicely. The distillery at the Abbey has recreated the 1494 recipe while putting it out as a spirit tastier than the fire water made by Cor’s associates. This would give you a clearer idea of what booze before booze was like and a good way to comparison shop for generational hangovers. Raise the glass to John Cor, King James IV, and to the alchemists who spent their lives studying spirits so that you could forget where you put your keys last Saturday night.