Shuttered distilleries that escaped the bulldozers are being reopened, primarily to produce whiskey to be bottled as single malts. (All distilleries sell some of their output to blenders.) Glenmorangie, whose own whiskey is the best-selling malt in Scotland, restarted Ardbeg in 1997; Gordon & MacPhail refired the stills at Benromach four years earlier. A new distillery, complete with traditional pagoda-roofed towers, was built on the island of Arran in 1995.

ALL of that puts history into reverse. Single malts -- the products of single distilleries made in pot stills similar to those used in Cognac from malted barley dried over peat fires -- were the original Scotch. Not until the invention of the cheaper, faster columnar or patent still by Aeneas Coffey in 1830 did the Scots begin making spirits from a mixture of malted and unmalted grains. Lighter and much less robust in taste, these grain whiskeys were and are used to soften the flavors of malts in proprietary blends.

''The best of the blends have great character and complexity,'' wrote Michael Jackson in his ''Malt Whiskey Companion,'' first published in 1989, ''but it is a shame so many are so similar, and that for so many years orchestrations drowned out the soloists.''

Blenders do not disclose the proportions they use, but people in the industry told me that most use 20 to 30 percent malt whiskey and 70 to 80 percent grain. Premium blends like Johnnie Walker Black Label, Chivas Regal and Famous Grouse contain more, and more mature, malt whiskey.

Most Scots and connoisseurs from other countries drink blends, which are generally less expensive, if they want to mix their whiskey with water or soda in a predinner drink, and take their single malts neat, either before, during or, most commonly, after dinner, like Cognac or Calvados. The addition of ice to a blend is tolerated as an American eccentricity; the addition of ice to a single malt is treated as near-sacrilege.

Each malt whiskey has a unique flavor, just as every classed, chateau-bottled claret differs from every other one. But those distilled in any given region share certain characteristics. The smokiest, peatiest, most iodinic malts come from Campbeltown, on a West Coast peninsula known as the Mull of Kintyre, whose mists were celebrated by the Beatles, and from Islay (pronounced EYE-la), an island near it. Springbank is a notable Campbeltown; Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg are classic Islays.

Other islands also produce distinctive flavors. Talisker, from Skye, delivers the sharp tang of seaweed but also an explosive blast of salt and pepper.