- Advice
Bourbon vs Whiskey: What's the Difference?
All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. A quick, clear guide to how they differ, and how to spell it.
- Words By House of Decant
It is one of the most common questions in the drinks world, and the answer is refreshingly simple: all bourbon is whiskey, but only some whiskey is bourbon.
Whiskey (or whisky) is the broad family: any spirit distilled from fermented grain and aged in wood. Scotch, Irish, Japanese, rye and bourbon are all members of it. Bourbon is one specific American style with a strict rulebook.
What Makes a Bourbon
To call itself bourbon, a whiskey must be made in the United States, from a mash of at least fifty-one per cent corn, and aged in brand-new charred oak barrels. Those new barrels are the secret: they give bourbon its signature vanilla, caramel and sweet-spice character, a world away from the savoury, sherried style of much Scotch.
Scotch reuses its barrels for decades. Bourbon insists on new oak every time, and you can taste the sweetness that buys.
And the Spelling?
A neat rule of thumb: the United States and Ireland tend to spell it whiskey with an e, while Scotland, Japan and Canada drop it to whisky. It tells you nothing about quality, only roughly where the bottle was born.
So bourbon is simply whiskey playing by American rules: corn-led, new oak, sweet and warming. Once you know the recipe, the whole category makes sense.
