Asked to create a book on malt whisky and its ways, Ralph Steadman embraced the subject with the same bacchic zeal that characterizes his delightful paean to wine, The Grapes of Ralph. As he embarked on the whisky trail, Steadman quickly became fascinated by the industry, rich in folklore and mysteries as dark as peat -- and even more so by the magical liquid it produces. Here is his unique look at this venerable art.

Steadman traveled throughout Scotland and its islands, visiting distilleries and the landscapes so crucial to the whiskys they produce. We meet distillers whose nose for nuance brings them "as close as a human being will ever get to emulating the homing instinct of a salmon". He looks at the art of blending and the craft of cooperage, at the skill required to decide how much peat to use to fire a kiln, and the cunning needed to smuggle an illicit dram in a pair of Wellingtons past a watchman. He also charts the wild days of smuggling and the indelible mark they left on whisky distilling. And in a jaunt through prehistory, Steadman takes us back to the origins of distilling and the influence of alchemy that persists even today.