Tasting Whiskey

by Lew Bryson

  Because despite the bizarre drinking habits of the folks I served at the Timberline bar in Iva, Pennsylvania, back in the 1980s, who drank Canadian with grapefruit soda — except for the one woman who stipulated grapefruit juice, because “it’s healthy” — I think that’s the way to mix a Canadian highball: with ginger ale. As the Canadian whisky guru Davin de Kergommeaux insists, the stuff’s usually chock-full of rye; serve it up like rye! I do tend to give it a squeeze of lemon to deal with Canadian’s usually sweeter character. But ice it, pour it big, and let’s have a party.

  Japanese! We’ve already talked about this one. The Japanese highball is blended whisky and soda, the “soda-wari.” They mix it, they put it in cans, they even serve it on tap in some bars, because it’s huge, and people drink it by the mug. They really get the whole highball thing, pushing it down to beer-strength levels. I love that idea: whisky cocktails by the mug.

  Craft! Really? The wonderful handcrafted whiskeys that the distillers slaved over, sang to, and did only the best things for: you’re going to put them in a highball? You bet you are, because one of the biggest things going for craft whiskey is the money-making white whiskey — unaged or lightly aged spirit — and that stuff, like Mencken’s Tennessee tipple, is just begging for something to turn it into a drink. Get an unpretentiously good and reasonably priced one, like Finger Lakes Distilling’s Glen Thunder corn whiskey, ice down a couple of ounces, and top it up with Pepsi, Dr Pepper, or cream soda. It’s darn near a blank canvas, so paint the boozy drink of your dreams.

  Mint Julep

  Throw Away All That

  It’s a big, beautiful glass of bourbon — really, it’s 3 or 4 ounces of whiskey — in a silver cup with shaved ice and mint. If that’s not a Kentucky snow cone, I don’t know what is.

  There were once a lot of arguments over the mint julep: whether to muddle the mint, where the drink originated, what was the original liquor, and the best way to construct one. My favorite recipe was this, from Louisville journalist and editor Henry Watterson.

  “Pluck the mint gently from its bed, just as the dew of the evening is about to form on it. Select the choicer sprigs only, but do not rinse them. Prepare the simple syrup and measure out a half-tumbler of whiskey. Pour the whiskey into a well-frosted silver cup, throw the other ingredients away, and drink the whiskey.”

  It has an admirable directness, but once you’ve had a well-made julep, you’ll understand why people used to be mad about them. I do muddle the mint, gently, briefly, with a full teaspoon of table sugar, in the bottom of a chilled silver julep cup (glass works, but silver’s so fine).

  Then I cheat: I use a Hamilton Beach Snowman ice shaver. A steal at 20 bucks! It’s a motorized device that shaves pucks of ice pretty quickly and keeps them cold. So I shave until I have a cup full of snowy ice crystals, and then I pour in the delicious bourbon. You’ll want something that can stand up to the melting ice, so even though you’re pouring 3 to 4 ounces — your call — you might want to go big and bold: Knob Creek, Wild Turkey 101, or Old Forester Signature. Stir till the glass frosts up (if you’ve chilled it properly, that won’t take long). Then top it up with ice. Stick more sprigs of mint in the top, after you’ve given them a quick spank to release their aroma.

  If you give the drink a straw, use a pair, and cut them so they’re just an inch over the lip; that way the drinker has to get his or her nose right down in the mint, and that’s an essential part of the drink. The sugar takes the edge off any bitterness from the mint, and the mint enhances the character of the bourbon. I often find hints of mint in bourbon, and the herbal quality of the mint also works well with the vanilla and corn of the whiskey. It’s a fun, fun drink, but watch it: a big julep is about two Manhattans.

  This drink makes me laugh, and not only because it’s so good. Here you’ve got these whiskey snobs telling you that you’ve got to drink it neat, and no water, and certainly no ice, yet here’s one of the most traditional whiskey cocktails there is, and it’s just stuffed full of ice, designed to chill the bourbon till it’s smoking with cold. It is to laugh.

  One cautionary tale: be sure of the source of your mint. I got to like these drinks so much that I grew a large patch of mint in our backyard, big enough to roll around in. I made mint juleps, I made mint tea, I put mint in my bourbon highballs. Then one day I was making a julep, standing at the kitchen sink, muddling with my specially bent iced tea spoon, when I looked out the window. There was our springer spaniel, Barley, furtively lifting his leg on my mint patch.

  I was off juleps for over a year.

  Frisco

  Thanks, David Wondrich

  David Wondrich is a cocktail writer, in the same way that Grantland Rice was a sports writer. He’s a damned genius, is what he is, and he ferrets out historical details that make reading his stuff about cocktails fascinating even if you’re a teetotaler, assuming you’re one with a sense of humor.

  He writes a column for Whisky Advocate, covering a different whiskey cocktail every issue. I’ve learned a lot about cocktails and American history from editing him. One that’s become a favorite was this little beauty I’d never heard of before: the Frisco. It’s simple: put 21⁄4 ounces of bourbon and 3⁄4 ounce of Benedictine in a shaker with plenty of ice, and shake the bejayzus out of it. Strain into a chilled glass, and twist a shave of lemon peel over it. Done.

  As will you be after more than two. That’s a Manhattan’s worth of bourbon there, son, and Benedictine’s got a lot more zap to it than vermouth, if you’re counting. But the Frisco is so beguilingly easy to drink that it tends to disappear faster than a Manhattan. The golden glow of the Benedictine’s herbal magic surrounds the bourbon and smooths off the rough edges, enhancing the oak and vanilla.

  I keep the formulation handy in a file on my cell phone, and when I see a bar with a bottle of Benedictine — they’re not everywhere, unfortunately — I’ll ask the bartender if she or he wants to learn an easy new recipe. If I keep this up, I may be able to spread the good news across the country. Give me a hand.

  Irish Coffee

  From Shannon to San Francisco

  If you’ve ever been to the Buena Vista Cafe on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, you must have had the Irish coffee the BV is famous for. It’s hard to miss the connection, with the framed newspaper and magazine articles on the walls. The bartender — likely Larry Nolan, who’s been making Irish coffees here for over 40 years, hundreds a day, or maybe his brother Paul, who’s been here only about 30 years — will be lining up the mugs on the bar and prepping them with the requisite two cubes of sugar for the next round. And just to hammer it home, there are rows and rows and rows of bottles of Tullamore Dew standing shelved and ready. The Buena Vista has made its name on Irish coffee, and in all the times I’ve been there — morning, afternoon, late night — I’ve never had anything else. They’ve perfected it, and such devotion must be recognized.

  They didn’t invent it, of course. That is recorded history, and it happened in the dark days of World War II. A transatlantic four-engine seaplane leaves the dock at Foynes, Ireland, aiming for Newfoundland. It heads down the cold, gray River Shannon, lifting into the sky. But the flight is a nightmare of storms and contrary winds, and the pilots make the decision to turn back. Ten hours after they left, the exhausted passengers trudge back into the terminal.

  Barman Joe Sheridan sizes them up and decides that they need something more than coffee. He drops a nutritional dose of sugar in the black elixir, along with a healthy and stimulating dollop of the water of life, and floats a whipped spoonful of cream — more nutrition — on top. The Irish coffee is born, and Sheridan has made his name.

  How it got to the Buena Vista is recorded as well. Pulitzer Prize–winning San Francisco Chronicle columnist Stanton Delaplane had an Irish coffee at the Shannon airport (this was after the days of the seaplane flights), and after his return home he talked to the owner of the Buena Vista, Jack Koeppler, about it. They decided to re-create the drink.

/>   As Delaplane told the story, after hours of experimentation they captured the drink. Here’s how. Start with the mug. You can buy special Irish coffee mugs these days; they’re stemmed glass mugs, with a handle. Clear glass will let you see the cream float, but ceramic works, too. Pour hot water in the mug to heat it. Dump the water, and put in two sugar cubes (or 11⁄2 teaspoons of sugar). Add 11⁄2 ounces of Irish whiskey (or 2 ounces, depending on how cold the day is) and about 5 ounces of coffee, up to an inch below the rim. Stir.

  Then carefully float a layer of whipped heavy cream on the top. This is one time you really should get heavy cream and whip it by hand; don’t use the spray-can stuff. Sheridan is supposed to have said that the secret was to use cream that was a couple of days old; take that with a grain of salt. And if you don’t really want to whip it, you can pour it carefully over the back of a spoon held just above the coffee. The point is, don’t just stir the cream in; float it.

  Does Irish coffee have to be made with Irish whiskey? You could probably substitute a gentle Scotch, like Auchentoshan or Tomintoul, but why? You can, after all, simply drop a shot of any whiskey in your coffee with no ritual at all. The fellow who taught me bartending swore by it: “Catch the buzz, stay awake to enjoy it,” he told me many times as he poured Old Grand-Dad into a hot, black cup.

  Irish coffee is more than that. It’s an original, an icon of Ireland. And there’s nothing like it when you’re sitting with friends, late on an evening, telling tales of the day you’ve had.

  Rusty Nail

  Sweet and Solid

  Cocktails are, classically, a simple mixture of spirits, sugar, bitters, and a bit of water. Too complicated for the Rusty Nail! It’s liquor (blended Scotch) and liquor (Drambuie Scotch liqueur) over ice. Done. You’ll have to find your own favorite ratio of ingredients. Start heavy on the Scotch side of the equation, maybe 3 parts whisky to 1 part Drambuie, and work your way toward sweet Scottish nirvana from there.

  The reason the Rusty Nail is so easy is that all the hard work’s already been done for you. Yes, the whisky’s been made — and don’t skimp on it; use a better blend to get the full potential here — but it’s the Drambuie that’s the star here.

  Drambuie (“The Dram That Satisfies”) claims to have been the private recipe of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a.k.a. “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” After the disastrous loss by the rebellious Scots at Culloden in 1746, the prince fled, pursued by English troops. John MacKinnon, the MacKinnon of Clan MacKinnon, helped him escape over the water to the Isle of Skye. The story is that the prince, in gratitude, gave MacKinnon the recipe for his personal blend of whisky and flavorings that became Drambuie. One hopes MacKinnon got at least a few swallows as a sample as well; he’d spend a year in jail for helping the prince.

  Story aside, Drambuie’s quite good stuff. It must be; after all, it’s been in production since 1909, and there aren’t a lot of liqueurs that have lasted that long, especially in the whiskey world. Flavored whiskeys are all the rage now, but it’s a recent trend. Before Beam’s Red Stag broke out, whiskey liqueurs were usually short-lived and not that popular, with the exceptions of Drambuie and Irish Mist, which have both established a small, devoted base of drinkers.

  Drambuie’s constituents are the subject of some mystery. All the Drambuie Liqueur Company Ltd. will say is that it is a blend of herbs, spices, and heather honey with a blended whisky. The whisky is itself a Drambuie blend; the company buys new spirit from malt and grain whisky distillers and ages it in bourbon barrels in its own warehouses (it currently has well over 50,000 barrels of aging whisky). That’s the kind of thing you can do when you’re independent. The company is wholly owned by the MacKinnon family (not the same MacKinnons as the originals who aided Prince Charlie) and has been since 1914.

  I reviewed Drambuie not long ago for Whisky Advocate: “Intriguing herbal/medicinal nose, with notes of pepper, grass, dried hay, dried flowers, orange peel, and licorice. Sweet but lively and light on the palate, as the orange explodes and the whisky boldly appears, wrapped in honey and herbs. The finish is herbal and sweet as the whisky strolls off into the distance. Overall, quite complex and rewarding.”

  It was the first time I’d had it in years, and I realized a new respect for it. Add the Scotch for a Rusty Nail and you get more whisky flavor; if you use a nicely smoky one, like Johnnie Walker Black, you’ll find it adds not just smoke, but more depth, more character, more satisfaction.

  Then I tried the new Drambuie 15, made with 15-year-old Speyside malts (the first time the whisky itself has been given top billing with Drambuie), and I was very impressed. The whisky steps into the foreground, and the drink is lighter, even more herbal, and delicious. Not as much whisky is needed; I’ve had this 1:1 in a Rusty Nail, and it’s an excellent drink. A 15-Penny Rusty Nail? No, I’d better leave making up drink names to someone else.

  Blood and Sand

  Kinda Sticky

  The blood and sand is one of the classic Scotch cocktails. There aren’t many. The Rob Roy is really a Manhattan variation (I’d argue that the Bobby Burns is, too, but there’s that dash of Benedictine; pretty cool). Still, this is the one that comes up every time someone tries to argue that Scotch just doesn’t mix in a cocktail that well. “But there’s the Blood and Sand,” they’ll say, and you have to deal with that.

  Do you? The Blood and Sand strikes me as the kind of cocktail that wouldn’t have survived with any real competition. I think it’s mostly around because we need to have a Scotch cocktail, and it’s easy to make. Why do I say that? Take a look at the recipe. It’s all equal parts: 3⁄4 ounce each of blended Scotch, fresh-squeezed orange juice, Cherry Heering, and sweet/Italian vermouth. Shake it, strain it, and garnish with a cherry. Easy. All you have to do at that point is choke it down. I say “choke it down” because in these classic proportions, the Blood and Sand is a gagger, extremely sweet, and so throttled by the cherry and orange juice that you can’t even taste the whisky. What’s the point?

  I was deeply disappointed by the Blood and Sand, until I had the Dried-Up Blood and Sand at Emmanuelle in Philadelphia. Bar manager Phoebe Esmon heard about my disappointment and lured me down with an irresistible offer.

  “I’ll make you a Blood and Sand,” she said, “and you won’t like it. Then I’ll make you ours. It’s better.” Esmon and partner Christian Gaal boost the Scotch to 11⁄2 ounces (they use Famous Grouse) and dial back the juice and Cherry Heering to 1⁄2 ounce — “That’s a scant 1⁄2 ounce of cherry, too,” she said. “It takes over a drink.” And they garnish it with a big curl of orange zest, not a cherry.

  The difference was obvious and delicious. The first one was sticky; the “Dried Up” version was a blend of flavors that kept the mind active. The Scotch and vermouth were now solid parts of the drink, the same kind of blend as a Manhattan but with the interesting interaction with the juice and the cherry added, and now they were not dominating.

  The Blood and Sand cocktail was first made to promote a 1922 Rudolph Valentino bullfighting movie. It was silent, and black and white. Movies have changed; why not cocktails? Try the new version. As Phoebe said, “You don’t really want a drink when the blood’s still fresh. Wait till it’s dried up a bit. Then have a drink.”

  Penicillin

  Good for What Ails You

  This is what’s called a “new classic” cocktail. But some would say that if you take a close look, it’s roughly a whiskey sour made with blended Scotch, honey syrup (and some ginger) instead of sugar, and a float of Islay malt on top. Not a whiskey sour, but not far off, either.

  Oh, heck, it’s not, and that’s why it’s a new classic rather than just a variation. Because with something that works this well, that whining comparison I made above sounds like, “Well, a Harley-Davidson, that’s really just a bicycle with a motor on it.” Yeah, but . . . no. There’s a quantum leap’s worth of difference.

  The good thing about “new classics” is that we usually don’t have to go through the detective work
to figure out where they came from. The Penicillin is documented: it was created in 2005 by Sam Ross, when he was working at the Milk & Honey bar in New York City. We even know the original recipe, because Sam shared it with everyone. And here it is:

  Muddle three slices of fresh ginger in a shaker glass. Add 2 ounces of blended Scotch, 3⁄4 ounce fresh lemon juice, and 3⁄4 ounce honey syrup (equal parts honey and hot water: stir till an equal consistency, chill), and shake with ice. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass and float 1⁄4 ounce of Islay single malt on top (Laphroaig 10-year-old seems to be the usual choice, but don’t feel constrained; Caol Ila should be considered). Some bars get calls for these often enough that that they make up a honey-ginger syrup to save time; it still tastes great.

  When you get the first whiff of this, you know why there’s no garnish: There’s no point. Lifting this drink is like standing downwind from the Port Ellen Maltings on Islay: peeeeat! Orange peel? Lemon peel? They might as well be encased in glass; you aren’t going to smell them. You can’t smell anything past that little 1⁄4-ounce float.

  At least, not until you start to drink, and things start to mix, and then you get the lemon, and the ginger, and you realize why this cocktail has become so popular. It’s no one-trick smoky pony; it’s got a lot going on, and the blend of flavors is well considered and synergistic. It really is a cure-all for the boring cocktail.