Among drinks enthusiasts, Germany is famous for producing some of the world’s best beers. And a few of the country’s valleys have attained cult status among wine lovers — in particular, Mosel, Rheingau and the Ahr. German schnapps are pretty much a known quantity, while the country’s herbal bitters have an even broader recognition, or at least the standout brand Jägermeister does.

But German whiskey?

In fact, Germany is now home to almost twice as many whiskey distilleries as Scotland — around 250 producers, according to a website run by the German government, compared to “over 130” in the land of the wee dram, according to the Scotch Whisky Association.

While that might be surprising, bourbon buffs will remind you that American whiskey has a strong German influence. The Jim Beam family came from Germany, as did George Dickel, the great producer of Tennessee whiskey. The Stitzel-Weller distillery — maker of such well-known brands as Pappy Van Winkle, W.L. Weller and Old Weller — was founded by German immigrants, as was the old I.W. Harper distillery near Louisville, Ky. While whiskey produced in the United States might earn frequent comparisons to drinks from Scotland and Ireland, the American bourbon trail was largely paved by immigrants from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

Today, Scotch whisky and Irish whiskey are among the protected geographical designations in the European Union. (Either spelling of the word is acceptable; The Times’s style is “whisky” for the liquor that is produced in Scotland or Canada; others are spelled “whiskey.”) Unspecified-location whiskey can be produced anywhere in the European Union, however. To use the terms, the drink has to be fermented from a mash made of malted grain, distilled, unsweetened, aged in wood barrels of a certain size for at least three years and sold with more than 40 percent alcohol by volume.