aqua vitæ

The first known documented mention of a batch of Scotch Whisky occurred on this day in 1495 as a Latin ledger entry in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (Rotuli scaccarii regum scotorum, a collection of records from the twelfth to the eighteenth century of accounts, receipts and vouchers of the office of the comptroller) with Brother John Cor, a friar of the Court of James IV and likely apothecary, directed to make the libation from eight bolls of malt—about five hundred kilograms and enough to distill some four hundred bottles, a multitude of drams. The Latin for ‘water of life’ translates as uisage beatha in Scots Gaelic and over the centuries became the word whisky.