Whiskey, you're not the divil

'POUR yourself a glass of any Irish whiskey … it contains 40 per cent pure and clear ethyl alcohol, and almost 60 per cent tasteless water. The 'almost’ is very important, however, for without it you are drinking vodka, and you clearly are not. The spirit in your glass is not clear — it is a nutty amber colour; if you swish it around, it smells of all kinds of wonderful things that you can’t quite put a name to; also, unlike vodka, it tastes of something.”
Unless you are a Pioneer, or have a very jaded palate indeed, that paragraph is calculated to drive you to drink — in the most benign sense.
It comes towards the end of Peter Mulryan’s fascinating and entertaining book on Irish whiskey.