At one time, all whisky was spelled without the extra "e", as "whisky". In around 1870, the reputation of Scottish whisky was very poor as Scottish distilleries flooded the market with cheaper spirits produced using the Coffey still. The Irish and American distilleries adopted the spelling "whiskey", with the extra "e", to distinguish their higher quality product.[2] Today, the spelling whisky (plural whiskies) is generally used for whiskies distilled in Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, and Japan, while whiskey is used for the spirits distilled in Ireland and the United States.
Although it was similar to Scotch whisky in many ways—principally in that it was distilled primarily from barley—traditional Irish whiskey was distilled from a mash of mixed malted and unmalted grains (referred to as "pure pot-still" whiskey, see below) whereas Scotch is either distilled exclusively from malted grain (hence "single malt") or from unmalted grain (which is generally then mixed with malt whisky to create "blended whisky"). Today, most Irish whiskey is blended from a mixture of pot still whiskey and cheaper grain whiskey. Bushmills, however, is an exception in that it produces no Irish-style pot-still whiskey.
