Single malt what?

[Dustin, October 14, 2025. Click for a larger view.]

Helen’s doing her radio show. The topic is coping with stress. Monday’s caller suggested ice cream. Today’s caller says that he remembers “three simple words.” I hope he’s not talking about Scotch.

From Garner’s Modern English Usage (5th edition, 2022):

whisky; whiskey. If the liquor originated in Scotland, Canada, or Japan, it’s whisky. If it originated in the U.S., it’s whiskey <Kentucky whiskey>. To write *Scotch whiskey is a serious gaffe in the eyes of a Scot. In both AmE and BrE, however, the spelling Irish whiskey has predominated over Irish whisky since about 1950.

I will toot my own horn (softly, with a Harmon mute on) and add that Canada and Japan were two of my smaller suggestions as a member of the panel of critical readers for the 2022 edition of GMEU.

[I think single-malt makes more sense, but the Google Ngram Viewer shows single malt , no hyphen, as eight times more common.]