The lobbyists here can no longer give gifts to the state legislature (at least until the court overturns the recent law, which likely will happen soon) so my tobacco and liquor lobby friends have, let's just say, excess "inventory" to pass around.

From the tobacco people: Gifted a box of DE Liga No9 Toros! Yea!

From the Booze folks: several bottles of Fireball.....um, ok, thanks...

fireball

...errr, thanks

Does not speak well for our state I realize, but according to the Distributors Assn. Fireball is the #1 selling "Whisky" in the state by a long margin...

I had no idea any state had that many billy goats?

Do you really want to call that Whiskey? Also don't call it Whisky. Any Whisky is a Scotch by definition. Heathen.

Fireball? Me? I call it crap. I will set out my free bottles at parties for those that partake and, perhaps, will steal....

But there actually is no hard and fast rule/"definition" on the "y" vs the "ey." Its just how different people transliterated the Gaelic words "uisce beatha" that applied to any distilled spirit, regardless of type or where it came from. Although most distilled spirits from Scotland do, in fact, use the "y," you can find some that use "ey" and you can find American, Canadian, Irish and Japanese offerings that use "y"

How do I know such fascinating things??? Just recently took a masters tasting class at the Whisky Attic in Las Vegas (highly recommended!) and, in addition to tasting some great spirits, they showed bottles of scotch that had "ey" and bottles of American Bourbon that had the "Y." One company had used both spellings on different size bottles of the same brand!

My guess is the sales are fueled by people from Arkansas that cross the boarder 'cause we have lower taxes on such fine products.