When it comes to quaffing whisky, 'authenticity' has no taste

Roald Dahl, who wrote the Bond script loosely based on the Ian Fleming original, was seemingly a fan of the famous spirit. He reportedly crashed his car into a bridge in Switzerland, after downing bottles of red wine and vodka martinis.

Dahl's joke in You Only Live Twice is straightforward: for all the regional variety of vodka – which Bond no doubt appreciates – the drink cannot come from Thailand. It hails from eastern and northern Europe, not near the equator. Whatever this is, it is not vodka.

What would Bond and his writers think of recent news? The world's top single-malt whisky, as judged by expert Jim Murray, is Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013. In case the name doesn't give it away: the winner is Japanese.

The phrase itself might jar: the most widely used name for single malts is "Scotch". The Yamazaki is Scotch in everything but name (the term can only be used by distillers in Scotland). Yet it was produced about 9000 kilometres away, in Shimamoto, Osaka.

Leaving aside arguments over Murray's decision – those who demur would presumably still recognise the drink's excellence – it is a fine example of cultural change. Japan has refined its distillation techniques over the past 90 years, now producing world-class whisky. And England, in Murray, has produced a judge capable of appreciating these products, without cultural bias.

This seems exceptional, and for good reason: stable cultural formations produce distinct cultural goods. This is not about "authenticity", which often fetishises the past as a dead display, instead of recognising what in the past was formed by innovation. Rather, it is recognition that processes such as distillation – like painting, dance, woodwork and philosophy – take place in specific traditions, in which various subtle and sophisticated practices come together with a certain knack. Without all of the flows of know-how and materials in place, no amount of quality control can replicate the creation.

In this light, it is not absurd for laypeople to be surprised by the judgment: single-malt whisky is the product of centuries of Scots effort, and it is no small feat to equal their arts.

But in another sense, it is naive to expect whisky to stay local. What became whisky was once a monastic product, used ostensibly for medicinal purposes (wink-wink, nudge-nudge, hiccup). Distillation, in turn, was passed on from mediaeval Arabs (often making perfumes), who reportedly learned techniques from Alexandrine Greeks, and so on. The point is not that whisky is therefore Hellenic, but that these cultural products are, in the long term, constantly shifting. And likewise for scholarship, art and craft: these pursuits are only minimally stable, with techniques being forgotten, renewed, altered and rejected.

We do not know what will happen to Western civilisation, but it is naive to expect "Western" goods to remain tied to specific countries or languages over the centuries. Philosophy, for example, was a Greek innovation, which is now global: there are Chinese, African, South American and Australian philosophers. English is a melange of various continental languages. No one is quite sure where exactly baklava was originally from. Perhaps the notion of "originality" is itself suspect, with its overtones of single sources and specific instances.

The point is that these goods – and make no mistake, single malt is a good – are the briefly stable products of constant flux and ambiguity. They seem singular and fixed, but meanwhile the vague tangle of culture is shifting imperceptibly.

So Siamese vodka might indeed be the next big thing. In the meantime, perhaps someone can shout me a neat Yamazaki.

Damon Young is a Melbourne philosopher. damonyoung.com.au