Bottling Scotland, drinking Scotland: Scotland's future, the whisky industry and leisure, tourism and public-health policy

Single-malt whisky is the product of over one hundred distilleries across Scotland, and is the subject of a number of claims about its status as an ‘authentic’ Scottish drink. The whisky industry in Scotland argues that it creates significant amounts of revenue for Scotland and the United Kingdom – not just in sales of single-malt whiskies and blended whiskies, but also from the contribution of whisky tourism. As such, Scottish policy-makers in tourism and local regeneration have used whisky both as an attraction to market to visitors to the country, and a vehicle for creating jobs. In this paper, the whisky industry and related whisky tourism industry in Scotland is explored alongside an analysis of tourist and local regeneration policies and strategies that explicitly nurture the notion that whisky is a necessary part of Scottish identity. I will then contrast this with policies on leisure that identify alcohol drinking as problematic, and argue that the whisky industry has worked to convince its public sector supporters that drinking single-malt whiskies in distillery visitor centres is harmless, while signing up to campaigns to moderate drinking in the wider Scottish public.