Its Greek to me!

Or should I say your Scotch is Greek!

And it’s got nothing to do with Stonehenge, that many historians think is a Greco- Roman temple for the Sun god!

Or first, a few questions – how do you get your malt pour ? Like What do you say? Ek Chotta dena? Naw! Not likely. Or is it I’ll have a large? More likely

Nice, nearly there but no, not so Scottish and you’ve got to work on it ole’ boy!

How about as they’d say back home – I’ll have a dram’! Got it! You’ve heard that haven’t you?!

And a splush’ of water please! Right! There you go! Pull out the tartan, blow the bagpipe you’ve arrived!

Dram is the way you go around asking for a drink of malt!

Ever wondered what dram’ is ?

It’s derived from the Greek word Drachm’ which was a weight of 4.37gms! and that’s where a dram gets its name from is – when things were measured in weight, whisky too was sold by it! This was when the avoirdupois system was in vogue – Avoirdupois is a system of measuring weight based on the fact that sixteen ounces are in a pound. A dram is defined as 1/16 of an ounce which is exactly 1.7718451953125 grams – stunning!

Nice, geeky eh! Sorry greeky!

The drachm’ also lent it’s name to the Drachma – the present day Greek currency – which quite like the sterling pound’ is the only other currency which is based on weight!

Now, come –on! Say you didn’t know that either? That the pound’ is called so because it weighed a pound of sterling silver!

Or did you! Anyway! Have a dram on me! Cheers!

Anand Chintamani