Tasting Whiskey

by Lew Bryson

  The warehouse, then, provides a chance for real variety. Go to the top levels of seven-story “ironclads” (wooden-frame warehouses with corrugated metal skins) for barrels that have been subjected to greater heat, and you’ll find their whiskeys have strong oak character. Lower, cooler levels are where you’ll find the best candidates for super-aged whiskey. The deep center of middle floors, insulated by a surrounding thermal damper of thousands of barrels of whiskey, will be where the temperature swings are the most moderate and the character of the aging whiskey will be the most predictable, the heart of standard bottlings.

  All experienced master distillers have their favorite floors (and the warehouse workers know where their favorites are, too), and some that they know just never make good whiskey. There are floors that are not used (sometimes they’re left empty, sometimes they’re used to age other spirits); there are even some warehouses that are no longer used, awaiting demolition. (Bad decisions can take years to come to light in this industry.)

  How Storage Location Affects the Flavor of Bourbon

  Rule of thumb: bourbon gets at least 50 percent of its flavor from the barrel. The longer the bourbon spends in the barrel, the more oak flavor it has. Equally important is how and where the bourbon is stored.

  Double tap the image to zoom to fill the screen. Use the two finger pinch-out method to zoom in. (These features are available on most e-readers.)

  But when warehouse variety is being used to create consistent bottlings of familiar brands, it’s a matter of taking a parcel of mature barrels from one warehouse floor, another from a different warehouse, and so on, and then mingling them. That’s why as a month’s distillation is barreled and put away to age, it’s not all stuffed into one warehouse, on one floor. It’s spread around, to be sure that whiskey is always coming to maturity in different conditions. It’s also protection against losing an entire “vintage” of whiskey in case of fire.

  Because of the much greater volume of whisky Scottish distillers produce, and the other differences they have to work with, their warehouses tend to be more uniform. But they still have warehouses that have a definite cachet, a mystique to them. Some of the best known are on Islay — warehouses that face the ocean and are occasionally slammed by waves during storms. Bowmore’s No. 1 Vaults are perhaps the best known of all, the oldest whisky warehouse in Scotland and actually just below sea level. The ceiling is low, the light is scattered, and the smell is tremendous: sherry, wood, sea freshness, and the strong, sweet smell of malt whisky. This is where the cultiest of cult whiskies came from: Black Bowmore was tucked away here in oloroso sherry casks in 1964. If you can find a bottle of the first bottling, you’ll have to pay over $10,000 for it.

  Whiskey barrels and bar codes: a mix of old and new technology that has revolutionized whiskey making

  Selection and Bottling

  That brings us to the final stages in the process. This is where the parcels of barrels are selected, dumped, mingled, and bottled. It’s nowhere near as simple as it sounds.

  The whiskey has been followed, sampled, and monitored from the moment the grain came through the gates. Samples are kept and records made of every step: milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation, and representative samples along the way. Arguments continue in the industry over the benefits of automation in the distillery — does it create better consistency, or does it take the individual genius out of the equation? — but very few argue about the benefits of computers and barcodes in tracking individual barrels through the maturation process.

  How Old? And How Much?

  A couple of things about age statements. First, not all whiskeys have them. They’re generally not required; age statements are usually just selling points. A whiskey that doesn’t have one is often younger, but not always. Distillers are doing more “no age statement” labeling these days; they say it’s because it gives them more freedom to bottle a whiskey when it’s mature, and not be bound by a preprinted age statement. That’s true, but it is also a reflection that whiskey stocks are on average younger than they were 10 years ago, which in turn is a reflection on whiskey’s greater sales in recent years. It’s our fault: we drank up all that older stuff!

  Second, an age statement means that the youngest whiskey in the bottled blend spent that many years in wood in the warehouse. Once a whiskey leaves the barrel for the final time, aging is officially over. Time spent in the bottle doesn’t count, and a whiskey won’t change in glass unless the closure — cork, screw cap, or whatever — starts to pass significant amounts of air. So just because your great-uncle bought a bottle of J&B in the 1970s doesn't make it a 45-year-old whisky.

  Finally, you’ll have noticed by now that older whiskeys cost more. I hope that after reading this chapter you’ll have a pretty good idea of why, but let’s be sure. First, not many barrels will make it to the extremes of age, simply because most barrels are not the right barrel or in the right place to be able to take a whiskey that far without ruining it. The whiskey may evaporate too fast, or the cask might develop a sudden leak as it gets old, or the wood may not be right and the whiskey gets puckeringly astringent, or it may just not be in the right part of the warehouse. Not every barrel can do it, and the cost of the ones that failed has to be factored into the price of the one that makes it.

  Then the evaporation, the angel’s share, is chewing away at the whiskey in a barrel steadily over the years. Often when a bourbon gets to 20 years in the barrel, or a Scotch whisky gets to 40 years in the barrel, there’s just not much left, even if it’s wonderful. The yield can be less than a hundred bottles, from a barrel that was filled with enough spirit to fill three hundred.

  Then there are the hard facts of rarity: unusually rare bottlings command higher prices from auctions and collectors, and that’s how the bottles are going to be priced. If there are buyers out there who will pay $4,000 for a 40-year-old whisky at auction — and there are, in increasing numbers — then distilleries are leaving money on the table if they price their 40-year-old whisky at $2,000. They may bottle it in an artful crystal decanter and put it in a beautiful presentation case to soften the blow, but there’s the price.

  Of course, there’s Glenfarclas . . . which recently released its 40-year-old whisky, without a lot of fanfare, in the same bottle it uses for all its whisky, with a label only slightly changed from its 12-year-old bottling. It was a delicious whisky, everything you’d ask for from a 40-year-old Speyside sherry-cask whisky: fruit, nuts, lush complexity with a drying bit of leather, and that heavier short-still body. Price? $460. Apparently a bottling for the drinkers rather than the collectors.

  As groups of barrels reach maturity for their particular purpose — blended whisky, flagship bottling, single malt, extra-aged single barrels — sampling may increase to determine whether the whiskeys are properly matured, as opposed to being a certain number of years old. The older the whiskey, or the more divergent from the distiller’s usual bottling, the more care is taken.

  A new bottling, or “expression,” is always exciting. Sometimes a new expression is the result of production staff — distiller, warehouse manager, master blender, distillery manager — letting management and marketing know about something special that’s cropped up; sometimes it’s the result of marketing coming up with an idea or requirement and asking the production folks to make it happen if possible.

  That’s how it works in a perfect world, but sometimes it’s the result of running out of stock for another expression that has sold better than expected. This is the source of the old industry joke about marketing calling up production: “That 16-year-old is great, it’s great! Great job! We’re sold out; can you make more of it for next week?” “How about in 16 years?” production responds.

  Possible Components of a 15-year-old Whiskey

  The back end of selection is planning, deciding how much whiskey to make (and what types), what barrels to put it in, and where to age it. The planners are working with a lead time of 4 to 9 years or more for
bourbon, 3 to 6 years to start for Canadian, and more like 8 to 12 and up for Scotch, Irish, and Japanese . . . and a market that took two major directional changes in the past 30 years. Ask an honest distillery manager about long-range planning, and the first response you’re likely to get is a grin.

  Once the parcels are selected, it’s time for my favorite part of the whole process: dumping. The barrels are lined up, the bungs are drilled and extracted, and the whiskey gushes forth, free flowing, into a trough (some distillers actually use pumps to suck the whiskey out of the barrels, which is okay, but not as visual). It’s fun to watch, it smells great, and you can sometimes get a sample right out of the barrel, the way the distillers and blenders drink it. (That’s strictly illegal, of course. But it happens.)

  The contents of the barrels are mixed; then they are often placed in a tank or a large wooden vat for a length of time (it varies from distillery to distillery). This is called “marrying,” and it ensures an even blend of the flavors of the different barrels.

  The whiskey is usually chill filtered. If whiskey gets very cold, down around the freezing point of water, there are some proteins that will precipitate, turning the whiskey slightly hazy. This is considered visually unappealing, so the whiskey is chilled and the haze is filtered out. This may also filter out some flavor compounds (ethyl esters and attached fatty acids). Some of us believe that makes the whiskey taste different, less flavorful, so there is a growing movement among distillers to forgo chill filtering, and the bottle may say so.

  Some whiskeys may also get a small amount of caramel coloring at this point, if it’s legal in their country of origin. The caramel is made from the same malt sugars the whiskey is, and it’s in the name of having all the whisky in a brand expression uniformly colored, but again, some connoisseurs object, and there are uncolored expressions that make that distinction.

  Then it’s off to the bottling line, the loading dock, and the shelves of your favorite store or bar. That’s not including all the marketing that gets attached (kidding!) or all the taxes that are levied (sadly, not kidding), but it’s best if you not think about those. Focus on tasting the whiskey in light of everything you’ve learned. You’ll be better off that way!

  The Wall and the Work: The Challenge of Tasting Whiskey

  The long wait is over. The acorn was planted, it grew, and it was felled, seasoned, and made into a barrel, which may have then taken years to season wine or other whiskeys before aging the whiskey now before you. The grains were sown, and they grew and were harvested. The barley, corn, rye, and wheat were mashed, the yeast did their happy work, and the beer’s been through the stills. The whiskey has been cradled and crafted by the barrel and the climate for years. It was dumped, bottled, shipped, and sold. Finally, after years of preparation that may well have reached back to before your mother’s mother was born . . . the whiskey is ready.

  Are you?

  Because I wasn’t. I had been drinking for about 15 years when I first faced a whiskey I actually wanted to taste. I drank beer and was tasting it for reviews; I was lucky enough to be learning about tasting from some of the earliest, best craft brewers.

  But when I drank whiskey it was either a frat-boy dare and a fiery shot, or a mix with a soft drink — ginger ale, cola, lemon-lime — to make what I found to be a palatable drink. I didn’t sip, and therefore I was barely getting more than the most obvious flavors whiskey had. Whiskey tasted like smoke (the Johnnie Walker I drank to appear sophisticated), or burning vanilla (Wild Turkey shots fired back in manhood-chasing moments), or a really bad idea (Canadian Club dumped randomly in fruit punch to see if it worked like rum; it didn’t).

  So mostly I drank beer and wrote about it. One magazine I wrote for regularly (and still do) was Malt Advocate (now Whisky Advocate), and it was a beer magazine, founded by passionate enthusiast John Hansell and run out of his basement at the time. We were having a great time keeping up with the rapid advance of microbreweries in the mid-1990s, and I’d just been named managing editor. Then there was an adjustment in the industry as the number of breweries outpaced the demand (and the number of trained brewers). Underfunded breweries started to close, or downsize, or simply cut back on expenses . . . like advertising in beer magazines.

  Luckily, John was also a whiskey drinker, a bit obsessed about it really, and we’d been running the occasional whiskey article. When this great readjustment in the microbrewery niche occurred in 1996, John quickly decided that there was room in the market for a whiskey magazine, and we shifted focus without much hesitation.

  Well, John didn’t hesitate much. I did. I knew next to nothing about whiskey! We had a meeting I still remember, just the two of us, in his backyard, over cigars, dark Baltic porters, and, eventually, glasses of whiskey. Here’s the deal, he told me. If you want to keep writing for the magazine, if you want to stay on as managing editor . . . you have to learn to drink whiskey.

  That might sound like an easy requirement to meet, but there was a problem. I didn’t know the first thing about it, except that the ways I had been drinking whiskey weren’t going to cut it if I were going to write about whiskey in the same way I wrote about beer. I had to understand whiskey, learn how it was made, see it made, understand all the building blocks that went into the liquid. . . and then learn how to discern aromas and flavors, pick out distillery character, develop my own preferences, and finally hone my senses to really taste whiskey, to determine which ones I liked, which ones I didn’t care for, and which ones I loved.

  That didn’t seem likely, because when I drank whiskey, all I could taste was Hot! Burning! In my Mouth! When I put whiskey in my mouth, it was like drinking fire. That’s why I slammed shots or mixed it with soft drinks — to get it over with as quickly as possible or to take that fiery edge off. I would read detailed tasting notes on whiskeys, about maple, citrus, mint, fudge, warm honey, tarry rope, tangerines, lavender . . . and all I got was the roar of heat from what felt like raw alcohol on my tongue. Was it me? Was I genetically challenged? Or was it them, making this stuff up?

  I went back to John and asked him, what the heck do I do? How are you getting all this out of whiskey? That’s when he told me about The Wall, and how to get past it. That’s what I’m going to tell you, and it’s the most important thing about tasting whiskey and enjoying it.

  First, you have to want to enjoy the whiskey. Unless you’re coming to this having already been drinking neat liquor, you’ll need to break through The Wall before you can really get it. I’m assuming you know that learning to drink whiskey is worth it. Maybe it’s because someone told you; maybe it’s because of something you read; maybe it’s because you want more of those flavors you get in cocktails or highballs. If it’s none of those, and someone just gave you this book as a well-meaning gift, well, just take my word for it. It’s going to take some work, but it’s worth it . . . once you get through The Wall.

  Actually getting through The Wall is a matter of practice. “You have to drink whiskey every day,” John told me, and he wasn’t kidding. I didn’t have to drink a lot, but I would drink at least an ounce of whiskey every day. I tried bourbons, I tried blended Scotch, I tried single malts. It got to be a bit like getting kicked in the face by a mule every evening after a while. I didn’t look forward to it, but I kept doing it. I was smelling good stuff, so I knew it was there, but the mouth still rebelled.

  Then one day, after about 3 weeks on the Whisky-a-Day Program, I put a glass of Dalmore single malt (I’d tell you which bottling, but I simply don’t recall) to my lips and sniffed — I smelled some fruit and a hint of cocoa — and then sipped . . . and I tasted fudge. I remember the moment: my eyes widened, I opened my mouth again and breathed in, and I tasted the sweet creaminess of fudge, with just a twist of dry baker’s chocolate. I was finally tasting whiskey.

  Explaining the Wall

  What is The Wall, and how does drinking every day eventually get you past it? In Buzz, his 1996 book on the science of alcohol and caffeine, science
writer Stephen Braun explained why alcohol feels like fire. After showing how the compounds in a sip of whiskey (he playfully specifies an 18-year-old Macallan) are chemically sensed by the ion channels of the taste buds, he notes that none of the taste impressions you’re getting are from ethanol. Pure ethanol is, as the government’s definition of vodka requires, odorless and tasteless; it makes no impact on the taste buds.

  Alcohol does, however, affect a set of nerve receptors called polymodal pain receptors. Braun notes that they respond to three kinds of stimuli: physical pressure, temperature, and specific chemicals. When these receptors are overstimulated, we feel pain. Ethanol in higher concentrations — whiskey, for example, but not beer or wine — will stimulate the pain fibers in these receptors, to the point where we perceive the sensation as burning.

  Capsaicin, the active element in hot peppers, has a similar effect. You may see where I’m going here . . . that’s right: as with hot peppers, you can build up a tolerance to the physical heat and pain of the ethanol in whiskey. If you eat a jalapeño every day, you will find that the burning sensation you initially feel will be lessened over time, and soon you’ll be happily crunching away and tasting the deliciously herbal flavors you couldn’t even notice before, when you were too busy crying. You’ve broken through The Wall, and the pain no longer obscures the flavors that were there all along.

  It’s also worth remembering that most of what you’re doing when you “taste” whiskey is actually smelling whiskey. Our actual sense of taste is a fairly limited instrument compared to our sense of smell. You don’t need to read physiological reports to understand this. Just think of how things taste when your nose is completely stuffed up and you can breathe only through your mouth; they taste dull, blunted.