Tasting Whiskey
Page 27
Japanese Whisky
Just a note about Japanese whisky here. While Japanese whisky is, indeed, different from Scotch whisky, there are unmistakable similarities. Part of the reason that malt whisky similar to Scotch has thrived in Japan is that the cuisine is complementary. It is largely grain- and fish-based, both of which are eager matches for malt whisky. Stick to those, and it’s hard to go wrong, but think also of some of the accompaniments to Japanese food: ginger, soy, and miso all will cleave to the right whisky. Again, experiment, and you’ll find your happy pairs.
Bourbon and Rye
Bourbon is pretty easy (and for this chapter, anything said about bourbon goes for Tennessee whiskey, too). You can put a bourbon glaze on any of the sweeter or bland meats — pork, chicken, turkey — or on salmon, and it makes a sticky, delicious meal that boosts the flavor of the meat and the whiskey you’re going to drink with it, which is perfect for food pairing. It works on tofu, too, and you can only imagine how happy I was to learn that: more flavor in tofu!
Keep it simple: 1⁄2 cup of brown sugar, 1⁄4 cup of Dijon mustard, and 2 tablespoons of bourbon. Whisk that up, and dab it on generously. Feel free to play around with that. You can use butter instead of the mustard if you prefer; you can substitute maple syrup for the brown sugar. Add some Worcestershire sauce or ketchup, add a couple of shots of hot sauce if you want, but try it straight up first. This works fabulously well on ribs, but don’t put it on too soon. Wait till they’re almost done.
You can also keep it really simple and grill chicken or pork chops like Jim Beam master distiller Booker Noe used to do it. He’d get some nice, thick chops going on the grill, and just before they were done, he’d take a bottle of bourbon — he used his own Booker’s brand, but it’s a bit high proof for open-flame grilling for most of us! — and splash it liberally on the chops, and then he’d cover the grill for a minute. The chops get a great bourbon flavor and a little layer of char that’s just delicious.
Enough cooking advice! As I mentioned earlier, pork is a slam dunk with bourbon; chicken, too. The sweetness of the meat will pair up with the whiskey and make it all luscious and juicy; happy mouth time. If you want to put some sauce on the meat, either at serving or during the final phase of cooking, sweet fruit sauces (apricot and plum especially) work great with bourbon.
Needless to say, cooking pork low and slow is perfect with bourbon; that’s right, I’m talking about barbecue, cooked slow over a smoky wood fire. Pulled pork: lay some bourbon sauce in there. Ribs: cut the delicious grease with a sip of bourbon or a big pull of Kentucky tea. Burnt ends: bourbon cuts the char a bit (believe me, it knows about char). Whether you’re using hickory, apple, cherry, or oak (I like a blend), that wood smoke is calling right out to the oak in the liquor. The same thing goes for smoked bacon.
Side dishes can be bourbon magnets, especially if they’re a bit sweet. The mother grain, corn, is especially versatile, since it doubles as a grain and a vegetable. You can win with creamed corn, cornbread, and grits (and all the great things you can do with grits and cheese, shrimp, maple syrup). The Mexican-style elote, which is corn on the cob grilled (or boiled) and slathered with mayonnaise, cheese, and chili powder, is delicious with bourbon, if a bit messy.
I am not a fan of sweet potatoes, but sweetened up with brown sugar or maple syrup (another bourbon lover), they’re great with the red liquor. Just about any vegetable (that isn’t bitter; stay away from escarole and similar greens) will cozy up to bourbon if you add some butter and brown sugar, or some ham or bacon bits; baked beans, if you haven’t figured that out already, are great, and again, you can slosh some whiskey right in there.
Desserts? Absolutely! Bourbon is one of the whiskeys you can pour right on ice cream, especially vanilla or the extra-rich French vanilla. A bourbon sauce makes bread pudding a decadent mess of hot whiskey love, and I’ve seen more than one dinner crowd reduced to satisfied groaning by the combination.
Now, I did say rye up above. I have not done a lot of experimentation with rye whiskey, because I tend to drink it up before the food gets served. But I did partake in a Knob Creek Rye–sponsored dinner in 2013, and I learned one thing: rye will go with most of the stuff bourbon does, but ease back on the sweets throttle. “Dry” and “rye” seem to rhyme for a reason. So pork belly? Great with rye. Maple-infused pork belly? Better go bourbon.
One thing that is amazing with rye, and it almost seems a cliché, is pastrami. Spice to spice, it’s a complement thing; when you have a nice cut with some of the tasty fat, the rye will cut that. It’s so good.
Whiskey Dinner
Not too long ago, my wife and I invited two other couples to our house for a whiskey dinner. The friends we invited had mentioned that they’d like to learn more about whiskey, and I was only too happy to help with that. I decided to do it in the format of a dinner because it’s more convivial and more likely to generate easy conversation than a simple tasting. I like to come at things from the side sometimes, rather than take them head-on.
I wanted to introduce them to all four major whiskey types (Scotch, Irish, American, and Canadian), so I planned the menu accordingly. We started with a Highland Park 12-year-old; a bit of peat, but nothing overwhelming, and a beautifully varied range of citrus and malt flavors. I served it with water crackers, a farmhouse cheddar that had a hint of tartness to it, and a filet of salmon I’d hot-smoked over alder wood that morning; rave reviews as the cheese caught the fruit and the fish brought out that wisp of smoke a bit more. There were also some cornichons and olives, but to tell the truth, those didn’t work out so well.
Next was the main course: Elijah Craig 12-year-old bourbon, with a bourbon-glazed pork tenderloin, fresh-cut corn, and bourbon sweet potatoes. The bourbon is one of my go-to bottlings: big, unabashedly sweet and barrel-wrapped with vanilla and bit of oaky spice. I served it in rocks glasses and gave the guests the option of adding cool spring water or ice on the warm summer evening.
The food reflects my philosophy on bourbon and food pairings: you can never have too much bourbon! Pork’s sweetness works well anyway, and the bourbon glaze adds a caramel and burnt sugar flavor that boosts the whiskey’s character. Corn always works with bourbon; it’s the mother grain, it can’t miss — unless you put too much salt to it. I don’t care for well-salted corn on the cob with bourbon, so when I do have that, I’ll skip the salt and just do butter; Mexican-style elote is also good. The sweet potatoes were dead simple: boiled and mashed with pumpkin pie spices and brown sugar to taste, and 1⁄4 cup of the Elijah Craig. Again, rave reviews, but this was a no-brainer.
Dessert was great. My wife Cathy had picked up some baklava at the market, dripping with honey. We served that gently warmed with glasses of luscious, single pot still Redbreast, and the sweet, fruity whiskey snuggled right up to the pastry. It emphasized the honey and nuts but shaved the sticky sweetness to a lighter level. Redbreast was the whiskey I got the most questions and comments on that night; the baklava didn’t hurt.
Then it was time to relax, and I brought out a bowl of fresh-roasted, lightly salted cashews and some carefully poured drams of Canadian Club 30-year-old. It’s rare, and I may have been cheating a bit by “introducing” Canadian whisky with such an exceptional bottling (in fact, I recall advising you against just that sort of thing). But it possesses all the qualities of the CC 20-year-old, and as more of the high-end Canadians start to slip into the U.S. market, it’s a fair preview. And did I mention how well Canadian whiskies pair with high-quality roasted nuts? Richness and wood wreathing make the nuts float in the mouth, a synergistic blend that kept us munching, sipping, and talking well into the late evening.
It was a great night. Whiskey can make a dinner, and food can be a fantastic way to show off whiskey’s flavor qualities. Have some fun, have some food, have some whiskey.
Irish Whiskey
Because there are only a few Irish distillers, I’m going to shortcut you here. They’re all good, but there’s definite similar
ity to Scotch in some cases.
The Bushmills whiskeys are born close to Scotland, and they pair like Scotch. So go back to the Scotch whisky section and look at whatever works with unpeated malts. It all works quite well with Bushmills, and remember: Black Bush is sherried, and the 16-year-old has three woods in there, so match appropriately. I’d add that the standard bottling is quite good with cold ham, in a way I’d never think to try with Scotch.
If you’ve got the Cooley whiskeys in front of you, the pairings for the peated Connemara are similar to the peated Scotch whiskies; The Tyrconnell pairs like an elegant Speyside (and is genius with anything with honey in it); and Kilbeggan works a treat with trout.
It’s the Tullamore and Midleton whiskeys that are different, because of the blending in of single pot still whiskeys. I find that the grassy, fruity character of those whiskeys makes them great with a large variety of cheeses, including the blues that I just can’t handle with single malts. They’re marvelous with older hard cheeses such as Mimolette and aged Gouda, and pair up well with the nutty flavor of Swiss cheeses, especially when there’s some fruit nearby. A glass of Green Spot, some fresh brown bread, a crisp apple, and a chunk of Prima Donna make a very pleasant tasting indeed.
You’ll find them equally at home with fish, especially with a milder flavored one. Place a dish of trout or halibut (or fresh cod, if you can find some) prepared with lemon and chervil, and potatoes in their jackets, beside a glass of Jameson 12-year-old. The whiskey’s smooth but complex mix of malt sweetness, oak-aged roundness, and green freshness will support the fish’s subtle flavor.
Irish whiskeys shine in the dessert course. Redbreast will dress up almost any type of sweet, from chocolate to lemon to simple sweet pastry. You can even serve the everyday bottlings, standard Jameson or Powers, with most desserts and know that you’ve got a good match going.
Canadian Whisky
Canadian whisky is a bit tougher to pair than others. Not because of how it tastes, or what Canadians eat, but because of how people generally drink Canadian whisky: with a mixer. That’s how Canadian distillers have sold it, that’s how Canadians and Americans drink it, and it works pretty well that way. But then you’re “pairing” with something that’s already been paired, and it gets odd.
For myself, as I mentioned above, I think Canadian whisky goes great with good roasted nuts. The flavors combine well, and it’s even better with smoked nuts. I think it’s the distinct wood character in the better Canadian whiskies, the real oak and hewn wood aromas; they pick up similar characteristics in the nuts, and I really like that.
Canadians also go very well with sweets, particularly baked goods: cakes, pies (pecan and hickory nut pies are great with a glass of Canadian), and cookies. My favorite pairing in this category are spiced cookies — gingersnaps, gingerbread, and the cinnamon-topped snickerdoodles — and nut cookies, like Russian tea cakes. The sugar is there, and it caramelizes, and the spice picks up the rye zing. You may feel odd eating cookies with whisky, but the feeling never lasts longer than the first half of the cookie.
Not to run the whisky down, but Canadian actually goes well with beer, a wide range of it. It’s big enough to stand up to most beers, but not as prickly as an Islay Scotch or a brash young bourbon, so the blend is good. I remember a story from the 2008 presidential campaign where Hillary Clinton had a beer in one tavern and not long after a shot of Crown Royal; I thought she should have had them together!
Collecting Whiskey
The idea of whiskey collecting has been catching on and the prices of “collectible” whiskey at auction are rising. There are now regular auctions in New York, Edinburgh, and Hong Kong, and whiskey has become an investment property to some collectors. Auction houses learned about the money to be made by auctioning fine wine years ago (they make their money off fees and percentages), and have recently discovered that fine whiskey holds a similar interest for aficionados and collectors.
The numbers are astonishing. Consider this, from a March 2013 press release from the Whisky Trading Company, which was then raising money to purchase a pool of three thousand select rare bottles as an investment:
Whisky auction houses in the UK alone saw 14,000 bottles sold in 2012, a huge jump from just 2,000 in 2008. By 2020, this number is estimated to grow by 114 percent to 30,000 bottles. Globally 2012 saw around 75,000 bottles auctioned valued at £11 million, and this is expected to double in volume to 150,000 bottles in 2020 with values trebling to £33 million, suggesting that the trend towards premiumization will continue.
The projections seem overly optimistic about how many rare bottles there are (and that none of us will drink them). But if 14,000 bottles were auctioned in the UK in 2012, out of 75,000 auctioned in the world, that’s a lot of rare whiskey being auctioned and shepherded into people’s collections.
Of course, people collected whiskeys long before auctions. There are the miniature collectors, who like the little 50 ml “airline” bottles and try to collect as many different ones as possible. There are single-brand collectors who want all possible bottlings of a brand: different labels, years, ages, one-offs. There are the “dusty hunters” who cruise the aisles of liquor stores, looking for whiskeys that never sold and may still be in inventory (at the original price!); you’d be surprised at what people still find even today.
Why do people collect whiskey? There’s a commonality with the people who collect coins, and cookie jars, and license plates. The right whisky has as much history and as interesting a story to tell and can be as visually appealing, given some of the labels and bottles.
The Most Collectible Whiskies
These are the distilleries that make the whiskies collectors dream about, whether for rarity, for excellence, or for sheer character. I picked the brains of my friend Jonny McCormick, Whisky Advocate’s auctions and collecting expert, to corral a few good bets for collectors. (But remember: they’re bets. Please consider the risks, including the substantial one that you might just give in to temptation some night and open the bottle!)
1. The Macallan Consistently at the top of the heap.
Bottles: The Lalique bottlings are out of range for most, but the annual Easter Elchies bottlings are a good bet.
2. Bowmore The Black Bowmore is many a collector’s white whale.
Bottles: The Black is pricy but will surely still appreciate; the older Feis Ile bottlings and the 1979 Bicentenary are steady gainers.
3. Ardbeg Loyal fans and great whisky drive a desire for older bottlings.
Bottles: The 17-year-old is prized, pre-1984 distillations are coveted, and the Committee bottlings are almost sure things.
4. Brora Silent, but the beauty still shines in the hearts of collectors.
Bottles: Anything, really; it’s hard to go wrong with a good silent distillery, and Brora’s appreciation is slowly growing.
5. Springbank A bit eccentric; very popular with “drinking” collectors.
Bottles: The Local Barley seems to be a sleeper, and the older 21-year-olds have a special cachet.
6. Port-Ellen Rarity and heavy peat are a lure for collectors (especially when so many keep opening their bottles).
Bottles: Again, it’s hard to go wrong with a silent distillery, especially when the prices of the official releases keep going up.
7. A. H. Hirsch/Michter’s The top bourbon on the list. A long-silent, beloved Pennsylvania distillery; bottles are harder and harder to find.
Bottles: The 20-year-old is rarer, but the “blue wax” 16-year-old is most sought after.
8. Any older Japanese malts Older Japanese malts (and the aged blends) are doing very well right now as the world finally realizes just how good these whiskies are. Many of the bottlings are simply beautiful.
9. Glenfiddich A popular malt with lots of fans, and a lot of stock for special bottlings..
Bottles: Snow Phoenix (a one-time bottling) is still appreciating, as are the older special bottlings, like the still affordable Havana Reserve.
Whiskey certainly has the variety that is like catnip to the collector: hundreds of different distillers (many more than just the ones that are still open), and labels, and blends, and finishes, and ages. There are anniversary bottlings, commemorative bottlings, special packages — decorative decanters, throwback crockery jugs, elaborate metal-studded wood and leather presentation boxes, luxury crystal — even personal bottlings.
Like the best collectibles, whiskey has stability. Given a good closure, whisky can last over 100 years in an unopened bottle. A collector or investor can buy a bottle with reasonable confidence that it will be in similar condition in 10 to 20 years, a necessary assurance to create a market.
What makes whiskey even more interesting to collectors and investors is that there is a finite supply of the desirable bottlings. Only so much whiskey was distilled in any given year; a smaller amount made it into single malt bottlings (still the most desirable, though bourbons and blends are starting to get some interest); a smaller amount of those have been opened; and a smaller amount still is in unopened, undamaged bottles. And of course, every time someone gives in to the desire to actually try the stuff, there’s one less bottle, which only puts the price higher.