I hated my first whiskey. I don’t remember what it was and it doesn’t really matter, but I think it made me sick. I was probably drunk at three o’clock in the morning in my friend’s college dorm room, and it’s not something I’d like to recall. Everyone has a story. The question I’ve heard a lot is what’s a good whiskey? Or rather, what’s the best whiskey? If my first whiskey made me sick, what’s a good “smooth” whiskey that won’t? Frankly, a good whiskey is one that you enjoy.
Many of the folks who have been working at distilleries their whole careers have plentiful answers for the curious consumer. As I toured the peat fields on Scotland’s island of Islay with Iain McArthur, who has been a warehouseman at the LAGAVULIN distillery for more than forty years, he looked me in the eye and said, his thick Scottish accent at full throttle, “The best whisky is the one you get for free.” Dozens of other Scotsmen have said, chuckling, that the best whisky is the one you’ve got in your hand. Hundreds of books are available to help you navigate the seemingly infinite library of whiskies that grows by the month. Dozens of competitions are popping up, judged by distillers, whiskey experts, and drinkers who have been tasting whiskies since before your mother was old enough to drink. These references can help direct your choices, but at the end of the day, it’s really all about what fits your taste buds at this specific moment. Flavors and aromas can vary depending on what you just ate, where you are, or who you’re with. The whiskey you drink on your wedding night might be the best-tasting whiskey you’ll ever have.
The whiskey curriculum continues to grow. The industry is constantly changing and adapting, and there exists a breadth of knowledge thousands of bottles wide. I’m sifting through the bullshit for you so we can get right to the good stuff. Before you stick your head into a bucket of booze, here is the information that you will need to make the rest of the book more digestible. In order to break the rules, you must know what they are. Understanding this small foundation will take you a long way. It will be your Swiss Army knife for a whiskey journey that will span your entire life.
Remember, this is just a beginning.
WHICH WHISKEY IS WHICH
Whiskey is the overall category and can be made anywhere. Subcategories are defined by where the whiskey is made and what it is made from. All bourbon is whiskey. All Scotch is whiskey. All Canadian, Japanese, and Irish whiskies are also whiskey. These are just descriptions of where your whiskey was created. Drink rye? That’s also a kind of whiskey. Here’s a little chart to make the naming oh so obvious. It’s totally acceptable to call any of these drinks whiskey, but if you order a whiskey at a bar, it could be any one of these. Whiskey, according to flavor, can mean a whole lot of different things.
YOU SAY POTATO(E)
For some reason, everyone gets caught up on the spelling of whiskey. It’s utterly unimportant, and no one should spend more than thirty seconds on understanding the rule. Ireland and most U.S. distilleries spell it with the e, while Scotland, Japan, Canada, and most other countries spell it without the e. A few American distilleries, including GEORGE DICKEL and MAKER’S MARK, drop the e to confuse you. You don’t get your arse all knotted up trying to analyse the British spelling of flavours and colours, so try to stay centred and know that we’re all speaking the same language. For the sake of this book, when I’m talking about Scotch, Canadian, or Japanese whisky, I defer to their spelling, and when I talk about U.S. or Irish whiskey or whiskey in general, I use the U.S. spelling, unless, of course, we’re talking about a U.S. brand that spells it without the e. That said, I don’t want you to worry about spelling whiskey. Instead, worry about tasting it.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Each chapter chronicles the trajectory of whiskey, and each story is a puzzle piece that fits with others to form a complex and beautiful history. Before you dive into Whiskey 101, it’s valuable to understand the basic story of how the spirit was born and why it became more popular than Pac-Man.
Distilling technology has been around for millennia and was originally used to make perfumes in the Middle East. In Europe, it was used to distill wine into spirits. The technology stayed in a religious realm and the knowledge spread from monastery to monastery. As the know-how made its way across the continent, God’s men in Ireland decided to distill beer, since grain grew more easily there than the grapes used on the mainland. That was the birth of whiskey.
As the distilling process moved across the British Isles, it was taken up by small-scale farmers. Soon enough, royalty became interested and found they too were fond of the so-called water of life. From that moment on, the history of whiskey has been at the focal point of taxation issues. Its own trajectory was marred and shaped by government regulation and the balance of a thirsty world. Whiskey making thrived in Scotland and Ireland and spread to new shores with those who left to start new lives in colonial America. Techniques of the whiskey-making process changed as it hit the New World, and again whiskey was a key character in the political and social landscape of the emerging world power. It was sought by governing officials and western pioneers alike and became the drink of choice for hundreds of American senators, poets, and actors. Once the whiskey industry took hold in the United States, the rest of the world looked on with envy, and other countries leapt into making and consuming the spirit.
Somewhere along this time line, whiskey became a manly man drink and a symbol of complexity and masculinity. Things flipped on their head, and what was first made in monasteries and then on small farms is now produced by multinational companies that supply the world with enough whiskey to float on. Not many pastors make whiskey any more, but I’ve sure met a bunch who love drinking it.
WHISKEY MAKING IN ONE MINUTE
Although you don’t need to know how to make whiskey to drink it, knowing the ABCs will help you understand what you’re drinking and why it tastes the way it does. Any and all whiskey is simply distilled beer made from three ingredients: water, yeast, and grain. Every distillery makes its whiskey in essentially the same way, with the same kinds of equipment. Making it is a relatively simple process but a difficult one to master. The distiller takes cereal grains (namely corn, barley, oats, rye, or spelt, or some mix of grains, known as the mashbill), smashes them up, adds hot water and yeast, and lets the mixture ferment to make beer. The beer is then boiled in big stills. Since alcohol has a lower boiling point than water, the alcohol is captured as vapor and condensed back to liquid form. For some whiskies, this is repeated one or two more times. The alcohol is collected, put into barrels, and left to age until it is ready to drink. Luckily, there is no yellow dye no. 5 in whiskey; the wooden barrels give it its beautiful color, its oaky smell, and much of its taste. That’s oversimplified, but it is nearly that simple.
Do the math: a whiskey that is 90 proof is 45 percent pure alcohol. That means that more than 50 percent is water and the rest is compounds that contribute flavor and color. Since pure alcohol and water don’t taste like anything, it’s that small percentage that you’re most interested in tasting. A lot of time goes into making that 5 percent. When people talk about “smoothness,” it is not about alcohol content; it’s just a great 5 percent.
PROOF READING
Everyone wants to know a whiskey’s strength. Although it shouldn’t be of the utmost concern unless you’re driving home after a few tastes, it’s good to understand the “heat” of any whiskey. Most whiskies fall in the 80 to 90 proof range (40 to 45 percent alcohol), and you can find many that are significantly stronger. If a bottle is “cask strength,” it means that the whiskey was not watered down and will pack a punch of around 120 proof (60 percent alcohol). Cask-strength whiskey is not always easy to sip on, and be careful when sticking your nose into it. Some cask-strength whiskies slide down without a burn, however, and can be enjoyed neat. When you taste, remember that “spicy” and “strong” are two different sensations in your mouth. A dram of whiskey might taste “harsh” because of its spiciness rather than its alcohol content.
HOW TO DRINK WHISKEY
Open your mouth, pour in whiskey, close mouth, and swallow. Repeat.
Whiskey companies should appropriate the 1990s Reese’s peanut butter cup campaign slogan: There’s No Wrong Way to Drink a Whiskey. If you’re throwing down cash to buy a bottle of whiskey, you should enjoy it however the hell you want to: straight, with water, with ice, with juice, even with peanut butter and chocolate—do whatever suits you. The snobbery around whiskey is on its way out. I’ll walkyou through the traditional ways of tasting and mixing whiskey and why they’re recommended, but take them all with a grain of salt. Or two grains, if that’s the way you like it.
HOW TO TASTE WHISKEY
There’s a difference between tasting whiskey and drinking it. You wouldn’t taste a fine wine by first making sangria with it, or taste a fine cut of tuna belly by first boiling it and mixing it with mayonnaise to turn it into a tuna fish sandwich. Most people want to know how to taste whiskey—and the loose rules have been honed for years by distillers, connoisseurs, and bartenders trying to figure out how best to explore a diverse range of flavors on some common ground rules. Every time you drink whiskey you don’t need to follow this step by step, but it’s a good orientation. This is generally what people do, and why they do it.
First, relax. Take off your coat and put everything down. This is not a board meeting and you aren’t about to walk into litigation. Make sure you’re with friends or other human beings. Whiskey tasting should be social; doing it alone is never as much fun.
Stick your nose into your whiskey glass and smell it. Do it again. Try smelling from varying depths and places along the rim. Remember the smell and do it again. If you don’t enjoy the aroma, that’s a red flag. A whiskey’s fragrance (or its “nose,” if you prefer to use the lingo) can tell you a lot about the liquid. It’s part of the experience and I’ve seldom loved a whiskey whose smell didn’t intoxicate me first. Splash it around and stick your nose in it again. Pour a couple of drops into your hands, rub it around, and then smell it. You’ll have evaporated the alcohol and should be able to smell the essence of the grain and essential oils more clearly. If you’ve found a smell you love, rub a bit of the eau-de-whiskey behind your ears and on your neck for maximum effect.
If you’re out to taste whiskey, it’s most beneficial first to try it neat, with nothing in it. It can be fiery and full of alcohol, but try it the way it was bottled. You can always add more to your glass, but it’s impossible to take anything out of it. Sip on it and nurse it, that is, move the whiskey around your mouth. Take note of how it feels as it slides down your tongue and into your throat. Flavors can change in your mouth. That is part of the experience. Breathe out and taste it. There’s nothing wrong with having a beer at your side to keep you company and bring your taste buds back to familiarity. It’s not a race. Although I’ve had friends who think that their whiskey snifter is just a top shelf shooter of Scotch, that surely wasn’t the experience the distiller imagined when the spirit was being made.
No need to swirl around the whiskey to mimic a hyperactive wine taster. That will actually kick up the alcohol vapor and make the whiskey more difficult to smell. It might look badass to wrap your fingers around your glass so your hand warms up the whiskey, but it will have the same effect and evaporate the alcohol. If you need something to do between sips, tilt your glass a bit and slowly turn it to check out the color and oiliness of the whiskey. It’s mesmerizing and will make you look like an expert.
Try a few whiskies in the same sitting. When you’re just starting out, you’ve got very little to compare. Having a few tastes side by side will not only give you a frame of reference but will also help you taste through a range of flavors and get your tongue dancing. It will make it easier to sense what you like and what rubs you the wrong way.
Next, add a little water and taste the whiskey again. Water is to whiskey what oxygen is to wine: it will help open the flavors and bring out new smells that you otherwise won’t pick up. If you must use an eyedropper to measure your water precisely, please don’t do it in public. It might get the approval of the old man in the kilt watching over you, but it’s ridiculous and pretentious. You can use a straw as a pipette if you need to add a few drops, but remember this is not a science lab. Add more water if you want to. Distillers add water to most whiskies right before they’re bottled anyhow. It’s fine to keep adding water until you taste flavors that you like. Just make sure you’re using decent water. It would be a shame for you to ruin the taste of a fine whiskey by using chlorinated or contaminated tap water.
If you like tasting whiskey cold, feel free to throw in some ice (the larger the chunk the better, as it will melt more slowly). Unless you want a glass full of water that tastes like whiskey, don’t get a cup full of ice and add a shot of whiskey—use just a cube or two. The cold will mask some flavors but bring out others. A few companies are now marketing whiskey stones: rock cubes or disks that you freeze and drop into your whiskey to chill it without watering it down. Since water can bring some nice changes to whiskey, I’ve never gravitated toward whiskey stones, but they are a cool addition to your home bar. If you love whiskey paraphernalia, there is no harm in testing them out. The folks at the LAPHROAIG distillery in Scotland even told me of some die-hard fans who picked up rocks on the beach outside the distillery to use as their own whiskey stones.
If you feel like tasting whiskey while eating chocolate or pairing it with food, that’s another great way to take your taste buds on a trip. After all, whiskey tasting is a big roller-coaster ride that’s not always about getting to the finish line.
Don’t hesitate to put whiskey away for a while. It won’t change in the bottle, but your palate will. What you like today might strike you differently tomorrow, and what you really enjoyed last month might taste like an astringent medicine next week.
A great way to taste a tremendous amount of whiskey is to get together with friends, have a whiskey potluck, and taste your way around the table. Record your thoughts so you’ll remember what you’ve had. You can either reach for a pen and paper or download a whiskey app on your phone. After tasting twenty whiskies, I rarely remember two of them if I have failed to take notes.
BLING BLING
Perhaps the second most confusing thing about whiskey after the spelling is the price. Some bottles are dirt cheap and others sell on eBay for about what you would spend on a flight from London to Hawaii. The big questions are about the differences in brands and how to navigate them. I can tell you from the start that some modestly priced bottles are delicious, and that I’ve had glasses of Scotch twenty times the price that I would never order a second time. It all depends on why you’re drinking it. Are you ordering a glass to impress a boss? A cheap well shot probably won’t get you a raise. On the other hand, if you’re making a big vat of whiskey sours for a summer potluck, filling it with premium, expensive bottles of single malt isn’t the best use of your money. Before you drop your weekly salary on a whiskey, you might want to think if you’d rather have three times as much of the less pricey bottle.
It’s important to understand what makes some whiskies expensive. The first factor is age. Not because older is necessarily better, but because as whiskey ages, a large percentage of the alcohol evaporates. Since distilleries then have less to sell, they need to charge more to recoup their costs. The longer a whiskey ages, the more time it takes up space in a warehouse—another expense that gets tacked onto the price.
The second cost factor is all about how much whiskey is made and how much still exists. A single malt from Scotland’s PORT ELLEN distillery that shut down in 1983 is destined to be expensive (and probably a solid investment). This consideration is simple supply-and-demand economics. The quantity is limited because the distillery no longer exists and its whisky is coveted among collectors. Similarly, microdistilleries make such small quantities that their prices are higher (than those of large international companies) to cover their cost per bottle.
The third factor that determines cost is plain and simple marketing: expensive brands for the sake of being flashy and high prices for perceived age and quality. There is a time and place for these bottles, as well. Buying a bottle to kiss up to someone who doesn’t know a thing about whiskey? I guarantee that the bottle with the big price tag on the top shelf will be impressive.
WHAT IS MALT?
The term malt has become shorthand for single-malt Scotches and in general refers to malted barley. As a verb, malting is the process of tricking barley (or other grains) into thinking that it’s springtime by soaking it in water. Each of the kernels starts to sprout and they are heated up (or smoked—think peated whiskey) to stop them from growing into full plants. The sprouted barley is then thrown into the whiskey-making process. If the initial steps of making beer go sour, it can be turned into malt vinegar, a perfect condiment for fish and chips. When you malt a grain, it changes its starches and makes it ideal for creating alcohol. If a bottle says anything about malt, it’s made entirely with malted grains, and in Scotland, it will always be malted barley.
SINGLE MALT VERSUS SINGLE BARREL VERSUS SMALL BATCH
Single malt is a reference to both how and where a whiskey is made, and single barrel and small batch refer to which whiskey is actually put into a bottle. These classifications get confused all the time.
A single malt is a whiskey that comes from a single distillery and is made from 100 percent malted grain (99 percent of the time we’re talking about malted barley). A single malt can be made from a mix of different barrels, but you still know where the whiskey was made, who made it, and you could go visit its birthplace. Single malts can be made anywhere in the world, but single-malt Scotch is the standard bearer.
On the other hand, a single barrel is just that. In fact, it could be called a one barrel. Whiskey goes into a wooden barrel, ages for a specified number of years, and then goes into a bottle. It is never mixed with other barrels of whiskey. You know single barrels are usually good because they are hand selected and tasted for quality. Every major whiskey country is making some sort of single-barrel whiskey. You know where it was made, what it was made from, and who made it. It could be single-barrel bourbon, single-barrel Irish whiskey, or single-barrel single malt. If you fall in love with a single barrel, jot down the specific barrel number (look for it on the label) and go back to where you bought it. You might just be able to get another bottle from the same barrel. Another bottle from a different barrel could taste completely different. Although there is usually some consistency among single barrels from a distillery, they can be an exciting whiskey grab bag.
Small batch is a marketing term that doesn’t have a hard-and-fast meaning. Usually it’s a premium whiskey made in a smaller quantity (and therefore more expensive) than a standard bottling and made from barrels that hold the best-tasting whiskey. Any kind of whiskey can be made in small batches.
PERCEPTION
Whiskey tasting is all about perception. It’s like lightly crossing your eyes and staring at a Magic Eye image and then chatting with your friend about what you see. I might love a Scotch that you hate, or the Irish whiskey I just enjoyed might sit like a grass-flavored jelly bean in your mouth. And that’s perfectly okay. Let your mind run wild. No whiskey actually has cinnamon, vanilla, fruit, or grass in it, but it’s still a fun goal to search for subtle flavors. It makes tasting whiskey a dynamic experience. Be specific. What does it mean to taste mint? Is it fresh spearmint, or a red-and-white candy mint? The sweetness of crème brûlée is quite different from the sweetness of a ripe apple. Think for a second about Big Red gum. Does just thinking about it hit your tongue in a specific place? If I told you something tasted like cinnamon, I could be talking about several different flavors; on the other hand, Big Red strikes a distinctive chord. A friend of mine tried a Scotch that reminded him of sitting on sterile paper in a doctor’s office while dressed in an open-back hospital gown. Although no one loves the drafty one-size-fits-all outfits, I knew exactly what smell he was talking about—and I had to try it. Anything goes. Some Scotch distillers even have a flavor thesaurus sitting on their desk with entries like child’s vomit and electric cables. Everything your tongue senses is fair game. Just remember that “smooth” is not a taste.
The beauty of sipping whiskey with friends, family, and complete strangers is realizing that though you weren’t thinking about it, your bourbon actually does taste like a Werther’s Original. I have only one tongue, so I can’t taste everything a whiskey has to offer. How utterly boring would it be if we all had the same sense of taste? “I taste apricot fruit leather.” “Yep, me too.” “This is my favorite.” “Yep, agreed.”
Even within your own mouth, perception can make whiskey tasting into a series of funhouse mirrors. Just like brushing your teeth makes the freshest orange juice taste like a rancid toilet cleaner, flavors in whiskey can be flipped upside down by what you’re eating, drinking, or smoking.
Cigars and whiskey seem to go together like Bonnie and Clyde. There’s now even a magazine called Cigars & Spirits to talk through the pairing. Light one up and grab a dram if you want to feel like you just sold your company, but it’s mostly about the image. The cigar will trick your tongue and bring out the sweeter nuances of a whiskey, but keep puffing away and you’re likely not to taste a whole lot in your glass.
WHERE TO BUY WHAT
You don’t have to run to a fancy liquor store to find great whiskey. A lot of brands are common anywhere. Try whiskey everywhere. Even Costco’s Kirkland-branded whiskies turn up some surprises (they are made by large whiskey companies that make other big-name brands). International bar scenes will carry a whole collection of different whiskies. Many companies release brands only in specific regions. Duty-free shops are often fantastic places to have a few sips before cramming your legs into a 747. Not only have I been to airports that have whiskey experts pouring me tastes of every bottle before eight o’clock in the morning, but often companies will make special editions that are sold only at duty-free shops. More websites are selling whiskey online, and if they navigate the legalities just right, they are fantastic resources for finding less-common bottles. Ask a lot of questions; even your local bartender might have some surprises for you.
RESOURCES
Thanks to millions of fanatic aficionados, volumes on whiskey have emerged from every corner of the globe: thousands of blogs, hundreds of books, several big magazine titles, and more information than most brains can reasonably handle. A lot of the books offer listings of whiskies with the author’s notes about each one. Michael Jackson was not just the king of pop. Another Michael Jackson, the king of whiskey, might perhaps have been the most prolific whiskey writer the world will ever know. Whiskey geeks will often use his books or Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible as a checklist of labels to try. I have even seen tourists at distilleries marking whiskies off of a piece of paper as if they were birders competing to update their life list.
These books have thousands of reviews and descriptions that may serve as a platform to understand whiskey, but they stop there. Just because Michael Jackson loved MACALLAN 25 doesn’t mean you should go buy ten bottles of it. I don’t read tomes about a painting before I look at it, and it is often best to dive into whiskey first and ask questions later. Sometimes tasting notes don’t mean much at all. In his Whisky Bible, Jim Murray explained a PORT CHARLOTTE six-year-old Scotch as a proverbial orgasm. Sure, orgasms are delicious, but that’s most likely not what you’ll get when you throw down your entire wallet for a bottle. Take reviews as walking sticks; you’ll have to do most of the hiking yourself. The famous names and icons lend legitimacy to brands and are flaunted in marketing material everywhere. For example, many people were hesitant about diving into a whiskey from India until Jim Murray raved about AMRUT in a review. You don’t have to love what the experts love and, ultimately, your best guides will be your own senses and the people around you. In other words, look to your coworkers, family members, favorite bartenders, or Facebook friends for recommendations. Want to dive into more literature? Check out the bibliography at the end of this book. If you’re inspired to geek out with other human beings in real life, join a whiskey club—or better yet, start your own.
Written by Daniel Yaffe in "Drink More Whiskey - Everything you Need to Know About your New Favorite Drink", Chronicle Books, San Francisco, USA, 2013, excerpts chapter 1. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.