Tasting Whiskey

by Lew Bryson

  I’d advise you to err on the side of egalitarianism and pour flagship bottles, rather than pull out the treasures of your collection. Think about it. If you start by pouring the three highest-end whiskeys you have, where do you go from there? If one of your friends decides he really likes a truly rare whiskey, he doesn’t want to hear, “Oh, you can’t get that one anymore, and if you did find a bottle, it would probably cost you over $500.” Or what’s worse, what if they don’t like any of them? You may feel like a boob, or you may think your friends are tasteless idiots, and neither is much fun (or likely to lead to more tastings).

  Instead, go with something approachable, not bold and intimidating, and maybe a small step above the basic bottlings in the category. For example, you could pour Johnnie Walker Black, a tasty blended Scotch whisky with a bit more oomph than the standard Red label. If you want a single malt, you’re already a step above: start with a solid Speyside 12-year-old, like Glenfiddich or Glenlivet. You could let them taste Black Bush, a Bushmills with some added depth from sherry-cask aging. For a bourbon, maybe Maker’s Mark, with its smooth wheated character, or surprise them and pull out a rye, like Rittenhouse.

  The idea is to keep it interesting without raising the stakes. Because with whiskey, there’s always the temptation to go right to your favorites, and push people to enjoy them as much as you do, and that’s just not how it works sometimes.

  Realize that sharing the fun means being with the people you’re tasting whiskey with, in the same room, at the same table. I do online tastings sometimes, and it’s better than being alone, but it’s nowhere near as good, as spontaneous, as valuable as being with the people and their whiskeys. You can’t hear laughter or see faces in a chat room; you can’t pull out another bottle to share during a video chat.

  That means you’ll need to get your nose out of this book, and your fingers off the keyboard. You’ll need to clean up your kitchen a bit, buy some bread, some cheese, maybe some smoked salmon or a cut-vegetable plate. Get more glasses if you need them, and bottled water, and a small pitcher.

  Set up your tasting area for however many you are, maybe going a bit less insistent on the “no distractions” part. It’s probably best to put aside the note taking at this point.

  When they arrive, offer them a drink, but don’t have more than one before the tasting. The more you have to drink or eat, the less sensitive the palate is, and you want to give the whiskeys a fair chance.

  Pour the first whiskey. Remember: chances are your friends won’t be past The Wall yet, so concentrate on gentle nosing at first. Start with something simple; nose the first whiskey and open up with whatever you’re smelling. It’s best if you take it slow; you want to guide the tasting, not lead it or take it over. Try to get some conversation going on what they’re smelling, and don’t just say, “No, I don’t smell that.” Don’t get too picky, don’t be too firm, don’t tell your friends how they must do this. Instead, suggest to them that what you’ve been doing is working pretty well, and they can try it.

  When it comes time to taste, encourage them to sip slowly, and to save some of the whiskey to compare with the other two. Be quick to suggest adding water if someone gets that painful “hot hot hot!” look on his face, and add some to your own glass as well. This is an inclusive process, and you don’t want him to feel left out.

  After you’ve tasted the three whiskeys, talk about which ones they liked and, maybe, didn’t like. Now’s the time for talking, and maybe having some more whiskey; the ones you’ve tasted, or something else, if they’d like. It’s up to you now; the whiskey will have broken the ice, and you can go on to talk more about the whiskey . . . or about anything else your friends care to.

  There’s the cleanup afterward, and yes, maybe some of your friends might want to stay longer than you’d like. It’s whiskey; make allowances.

  In the end, all the work you put into tasting whiskey is worth it for the good times, and the good tastes, and what you’ll learn from the experience. It doesn’t stop there, either. Opening your mind to tasting what’s in your whiskey will bring you to think more about what you’re tasting every day. You’ll taste new things in your food, in your other drinks, and smell new things on the breeze. Your world of pleasures will expand.

  It’s not all about whiskey, after all. Karate training aside, Mr. Miyagi still got his cars waxed.

  What You’re Tasting

  Just like any other work of human art — a cathedral, a novel, a painting, or a fine meal — whiskey is built from a variety of elements. Grain, water, yeast, and oak aging, yes, but what I’m talking about are the congeners, or the elements — literally, the chemical elements — that assemble to create the scent, taste, and flavor of a whiskey. Here are those building blocks.

  Grains

  The flavors of the grains come through fermentation and distillation (if the final proof is not too high) and are one of the major components of what you taste in some whiskeys. Malt whiskies get a sweetness and a nutty, warm cereal character. Corn yields sweetness and the recognizable flavor of . . . well, corn. Rye is somewhat bitter, herbal, grassy, and minty and can add those characters even in relatively small amounts.

  Esters

  Esters are fruity, aromatic by-products of fermentation and can be carried over through distillation. Various esters have different aromas (e.g., isoamyl acetate smells like bananas, and ethyl caproate like apples), and the degree of reflux and how the cuts are done determine how much will be in the spirit. Esters are also formed in the barrel by the breakdown of lignins and have yet more aromas. For example, ethyl syringate smells of tobacco and fig; ethyl ferulate, spicy/cinnamon; and ethyl vanillate, a smoky, burnt aroma.

  Lactones

  Lactones are found in oak and come into whiskey during the aging. Bourbons, being aged in new barrels, pick up more lactones than whiskeys aged in used barrels. Two isomers of oak lactones are typically found in whiskey: cis-lactone gives the whiskey a sweet vanilla-coconut character; trans-lactone yields a spicier blend of cloves and coconut but is weaker.

  Phenols

  Phenols are the main smoky aromas in peat-smoked malt, measured (and touted) in parts per million. Their utilization can vary depending on the fermentation and distillation process; numbers don’t mean everything.

  Alcohols

  Ethanol is not the only alcohol created during fermentation and may not be the only alcohol carried over in distillation. It is not highly flavored, with a mostly clean and just a tiny bit sweet essence. The other alcohols may be collectively called fusel alcohols, and they are undesirable, yielding oily flavors in high concentrations.

  Methyl Salicylate

  Methyl salicylate is present in low levels in some white oak; it gives a minty aroma to young whiskeys.

  Vanillin

  Oak yields vanillin in a number of ways, including the breakdown of its lignin. Its vanilla character is most notable in bourbon.

  Aldehydes

  Aldehydes have their own aromas — floral, lemon, or solvent — and can also react with oak lignin to create esters.

  Tasting individual casks can be a quiet and intense moment in the warehouse.

  Table Whiskey: The House Bottle

  I have some whiskeys that I always keep in the house. Blended Scotch: Johnnie Walker Black or Compass Box Great King Street, sometimes Dewar’s. Bourbon: Jim Beam Black, Evan Williams, or some Very Old Barton if I’ve been to Kentucky recently. Irish: usually Powers. Canadian: Canadian Club or VO. And in the summer I’ll pick up a handle — a 1.75-liter big-boy bottle — of Pikesville rye for highballs.

  I’ve got hundreds — literally — of other bottles, some rare and some wonderful, that I’ve picked up in the past 20 years. They’re the ones I’ll pull out when something special comes around: a birthday, a major holiday, a promotion, an unexpectedly welcome guest. There are other mid-level bottles that I’ll savor more often. But most days, when I’m having a whiskey before dinner, or making a cocktail, or keeping my thirst
quenched while grilling, I’m going to that stable you see above, the ones I call my table whiskeys.

  When it comes to “advanced” whiskey drinkers, though, I’m feeling out of touch because of that. I’ve encountered a growing amount of whiskey snobbery from people who won’t drink a whiskey unless it’s rare, or “rated above 90,” or single malt/single cask. I almost wonder if they like drinking whiskey, or just like people knowing that they drink expensive whiskey.

  Table whiskey isn’t rare, or expensive, but it’s pretty down to earth. Imagine if whiskey were cars, and you and I were hosts on Top Gear, the popular BBC series in which the hosts drive some new supercar every week. The only times we’d drive “ordinary” cars — table cars — would be to make light of them, or after we’ve made bizarre modifications.

  I love watching Top Gear. It’s funny, it’s interesting, and who knows, it’s possible I’ll get to drive a car like that someday. Once. But meanwhile, I drive a table car every day. That’s real life.

  In real life there are people who can drink very rare whiskey every time, because they have enough money to not care, or because they’ve made other sacrifices. That’s great! But the simple facts of the equation are that if enough of us start doing that, rare whiskeys will become even harder to get, and even more expensive, and even more frustrating.

  So I’d encourage you to put some effort into finding some reasonably priced, readily available table whiskeys you like. That way you’ll always have drinking whiskey available when friends show up, or when you want a quick highball with dinner, or when you feel like a cocktail but don’t really want to put a $250 bourbon in there.

  I like whiskey, and I like beer. Both drinks offer me options for different occasions — thoughtful sipping, grinning glassfuls — and both offer good value all along the price spectrum. I guess I also like them because they’re egalitarian, without a lot of the baggage wine has. If we want to maintain that, we ought to talk up the virtues of table whiskey.

  Mapping Whiskey Styles

  There’s a temptingly interesting concept about what Europeans drink (and what drinks they make) that’s referred to as the “grape/grain divide.” Before the days of cheap transportation of goods and people, before the days of international brands and refrigerated storage, the wine and beer regions of Europe grew naturally from what people had to work with.

  In the warmer south, the theory goes, grapes thrive, and the people made wine. In the cooler north it’s all about wide expanses of grain rather than grapes, so the people brewed beer. It’s an attractive theory: Italians make wine, Spaniards and Greeks drink wine, and Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, and the British brew beer. In France the line runs roughly through the country in the northeast, slicing off Nord–Pas de Calais, Alsace, and Lorraine, where the wine-loving tendencies of the French drop off in favor of bière de garde, saison, and pilsner. Champagne is up there too, of course, but it’s not a sharp line.

  Germany may seem a bit difficult to sort out. Here brewing overlaps with the substantial wine production in the upper Rhine and Mosel valleys. That seeming conflict dates back to the Roman era. The Romans didn’t care for beer — the upper classes, at least (Emperor Julian said of the drink, “You smell like a goat”) — and they brought winemaking with them to ensure a ready supply. It stuck; there’s even a wine tent at the famously beery Munich Oktoberfest.

  Add in the strong pockets of apple-based booze in Spain, Normandy, western Germany, and England, and you realize it’s quite a fuzzy line when you’re used to boldly drawn ones . . . but the concept still holds up. It’s not surprising, really. At a time when people rarely traveled more than 10 miles from their birthplace, they usually ate and drank what grew plentifully in that area.

  The Grape/Grain Divide

  Once knowledge of distillation and the necessary metallurgical arts spread into Europe, the southerners made brandy, or grappa, and the cooler northerners made vodka — and whiskey. While beer is distilled into schnapps even today in Germany, in almost every case whiskey is made from grain that is malted and fermented for that specific purpose (as is vodka, originally made from grain, not potatoes; the New World tuber was introduced to Europe through Spain in the 1500s). When distillation was introduced to northern Europe, sometime around 1400, unaged grain spirit was soon being made for medicinal purposes, for perfumes and essences, and for drinking. Drinking quickly became the primary use, and the rough, clear spirit was variously known as vodka, korn, and uisce beatha, the last being the Gaelic for “water of life” (aqua vitae in Latin), as spirits were known in the late Middle Ages.

  Grape and grain divided and conquered Europe. It was now up to the Irish and Scots to stake their distinctive claims in their own offshore corners of the continent.

  Transportation Limits

  If you take the idea of the grape/grain divide further, expanding it out of Europe into the whiskey regions of North America, you can apply it to the different whiskeys that have grown up and prospered, and learn why they are what they are. The grape/grain divide addressed broad swathes of regions and agriculture, but things are more compartmentalized than that. It’s not just about grains that thrive in an area; it’s down to particular grains and the fact that when whiskey was first being made distillers were usually farmers, and they didn’t have a lot of choices.

  Let’s look at a modern idea that hearkens back to those early days and reveals a lot about why whiskeys are what they are. Locavores are a growing movement of people who reject the idea of shipping food and drink thousands of miles. They want to get their food and drink — as much as possible — from local sources, optimally within 100 miles.

  That obviously limits what fresh fruits and vegetables are available to them, what cheeses and sweeteners they can eat. There’s no frozen lamb from across the world for them, no out-of-season fruits and vegetables from another hemisphere, and no exotic flavors from other climates. They celebrate the local harvests and preserve them in any way they can to eat through the winter (or pay handsomely for what others have preserved).

  Farm-to-table restaurants have reinvented this idea, working with local suppliers, preserving foods, and using every bit of the plant or animal. But when you’re limiting yourself to the local foods and you’re in, say, Chicago, recipes will change. You won’t have olive oil, for instance, or Tabasco sauce, and even things as common today as black pepper are off the menu. You have to use what you have.

  Where does that leave whiskey? How much being a locavore cuts into what whiskey you can comfortably drink depends on definitions. Is a whiskey local if it’s distilled within 100 miles, or does the grain the whiskey is distilled from have to be grown nearby? That depends on the locavore, and on the strength of his or her taste for whiskey.

  But back in the days when whiskey was just getting started (in the late Middle Ages in Ireland and Scotland, and in the 1700s in America), there was no such waffling about the meaning of “local.” “Local” meant grown within 5 or 10 miles at most, and local grain, whatever it was, was what you used to make your whiskey; there was simply no other economical way to do it.

  That’s because transportation costs were astronomical, relative to today’s. Goods traveled by water, powered by wind or river current (subject to the whims of the first and the one-way direction of the second), or on land, carried solely by human or animal muscle. The only significant improvements in transportation since the Roman Empire were on the ocean, where more sophisticated sailing ships allowed faster travel, with fewer crew and larger cargos. Even these newer ships were still largely grounded during winter’s harsher weather.

  Where grain was transported by water, it mostly traveled down rivers from the interior, and then from one port to another. And for the most part, transport of grain wasn’t possible unless a farm was close to water, because the low ratio of bulk to price made even short overland hauling prohibitively expensive. The relative costs of such ground transport are staggering to modern minds. In the late 1700s, for example,
the cost of shipping a ton of freight over 3,000 miles from England to Philadelphia, the largest and best-connected port in the American colonies, was the same as hauling that ton of freight a mere 30 miles over land, a distance that barely gets you out of the city’s suburbs today. You can imagine what transportation costs were like in the rough ridges of the Scottish highlands, or across the Irish hills and bogs, before canals and railroads.

  The effect this had on whiskey was profound. Until the Industrial Revolution changed the equation completely in manufacturing and transportation, distilling was diffuse and small scale, done by farmers and their relatives to create whiskey that could be bartered for necessities through the year. Whiskey was just another farm-made product, like cheese, butter, cider, or bacon.

  It’s easy to see why farmers distilled grain from their surplus grain crop rather than selling the grain. Getting 40 bushels of barley to market meant moving around 1,200 pounds of grain, or about eight mule loads. Mashed, fermented, and distilled during the quiet months after the harvest, 40 bushels yielded about 20 gallons of whiskey. Even with the added weight of stoneware jugs or wooden barrels, 20 gallons of whiskey could be slung on the back of a single mule and traded at a higher return than what the grain would bring.

  These are the kinds of factors that shaped how whiskey was made in the four traditional whiskey-producing areas: Scotland, Ireland, the United States, and Canada. Whiskey making in Scotland and the United States was largely set in place before the transportation revolutions of the nineteenth century; railroads, canals, and steam power would have a place in the shape of Irish and Canadian whiskeys. Japan, a fifth area — colonized, if you will, from Scotland’s whisky traditions — would be a product of twentieth-century technology, using peated malts imported from Scotland by steamship. Here’s how it happened.