admin
As with any other noble pursuit, the quest for good whiskey is a complex one and should be embarked upon with some level of studious nature. And a guide. While you don’t want to hit the books hard enough to diminish the incredibly fun and rewarding experience, it really helps to do some reading and develop a baseline understanding of what you’re looking for as a beginner.
Let’s start with something pretty obvious:
Cost
Just because whiskey is rare or expensive, doesn’t necessarily make it good, and just because a particular whiskey isn’t all that expensive doesn’t make it bad. Granted, the market typically sets a fairly good value, but sometimes it can be all hype, just like anything else. So consider that first before going in for the rest.
The Introductory Guide to Damn Good Whiskey
We’re going to be really careful here because in the complex and well-aged (forgive the pun) world of whiskey you can get drawn very deeply down the rabbit hole quickly and our goal here is to provide a direct and concise resource for the beginning whiskey connoisseur. We’re going to focus on four main categories, each of which has entire catalogs of websites devoted to them. They are Age, Appearance, Aroma, and Flavor.
Age
First, say it with me now and louder for the kids in the back: WHISKEY DOESN’T AGE IN THE BOTTLE. If you have a bottle of 12-year-old Whiskey sitting in the cabinet for nine years it has not magically evolved into a 21-year-old Whiskey. Whiskey isn’t Wine and Wine isn’t Whiskey. The true age of Whiskey is determined in the barrel by how long the Whiskey has been in contact with the wood from which its flavor is derived. As time passes the flavor and viscosity of the Whiskey changes as the flavors of the wood are absorbed and balanced. This will naturally vary based on other factors than time, such as wood type, how long the casks have been toasted (burned), and of course where the Whiskey is aged. But that’s a story for another day.
In Men’s Journal, G. Clay Whittaker wrote, “If there’s been one central theme to every major whiskey story of the last decade, it has been age: The rare Pappy Van Winkle 23 so coveted that an actual heist occurred, the absurdly old 72-year-old Macallan release, thinly stretched bourbon makers who dropped numbers from their bottles so they could use younger whiskeys to meet demand. The age statement of a whiskey is, in popular culture, a simple quality marker, with an even simpler rule of thumb: Older is generally better.”
But there are exceptions as Lew Bryson, noted whiskey expert pointed out. if whiskey is left too long in a barrel, a lot of bad things can happen. “A whiskey can completely evaporate, or go all solventy, or get so fragile it ‘collapses’ [loses structure], or [it could] go underproof in the barrel, at which point it’s no longer whiskey,” he says.
Ultimately some Whiskeys don’t even put the age on the bottle! In which case, swirl it in your glass, a well-aged dram of Whiskey will cling slightly to the glass.
Appearance
The appearance was once a hallmark method for being able to identify and classify whiskey because once upon a time you could identify the wood type, cask type, and/or the number of times a cask was used by the color of whiskey. But unfortunately, the world has E150a, also known as “spirit caramel, or caramel coloring”, this is tragically no longer the case.
distiller.com explains,
“When E150a is used, all bets are off. A rule of thumb: unless the label explicitly mentions the whiskey still has its natural color, you’re safe to assume it doesn’t. It is impossible to judge an artificially colored whiskey on anything other than flavor.”
Scent
Ah, the scent of a damn good whiskey. ScotchWhiskey.com has a hilariously accurate article on the woes of trying to articulate the aromas of great whiskey. They laughably point out that the biggest problem is a lacking a common frame of reference, unlike say.. wine tasting.
Dave Broom who worked on the flavor wheel used by Diageo wrote, “The problem with the flavour wheel is that there needs to be one for each language/culture. There is something of a quasi-imperialist approach in the way that Scotch is ‘taught’ around the world. The (often kilted) masters descend, talk about clootie dumpling and Christmas cake to a baffled audience and leave. Having a culturally specific set of wheels would help – and allow a shared language to be created.”
The Flavor of Damn Good Whiskey
Let’s be blunt. A Damn Good Whiskey must TASTE GOOD. It doesn’t matter if a book or magazine or even a shopkeep tells you that it’s good, it actually has to taste good to you! There is some controversy over the addition of water to determine a whiskey’s flavor profile or not. However, the common strategy is to hold the dram of whiskey in your mouth with some air, moving it around to gain the feel and flavor nuances, and then repeating the same process with water.
There are many variants of flavor, The Whiskey Exchange features the following classifications:
- Elegant and Floral
- Fresh Fruit and Vanilla
- Dried Fruit and nut
- Malt and Honey
- Rich Fruit and Spice
- Peat and Fruit
- Maritime and Smoky
- Rich and Peaty
Whether it burns like the devil all the way down or if it is a warm comfortably nuanced sip, the flavor of a damn good whiskey should be complex and evocative, layered and subtle but ultimately it is subjective. Here’s your assignment: using what you’ve read, start trying some wonderful whiskeys of each variety and find your favorite. There is nothing else like a damn good whiskey and your preferences for other food and drink likely will not influence your preference of whiskey. Someone who loves steak and the scent of leather may love an Elegant, floral dram. Someone who only drinks sweet wines may like something Maritime and smoky. It’s a trial and error process, and a wonderful exploration of your senses.
