Tasting Whiskey

by Lew Bryson

  Sku’s Recent Eats Blog

  http://recenteats.blogspot.com

  A prolific collection of reviews, opinions, and flat-out rants about a wide variety of whiskeys from all over. It’s always interesting and sometimes alarming. But what “SKU” is also doing, which is a great public service to whiskey lovers, is maintaining updated and complete lists of both whiskey blogs and all American whiskey distillers and brands, from Jack Daniel’s to the smallest bottler. He’s driven, and we all benefit.

  Whisky Advocate Blog

  http://whiskyadvocateblog.com

  The blog of Whisky Advocate magazine, where I’m the managing editor. You get a lot of reviews and commentary from the editor, John Hansell, who’s been at this for well over 20 years and has connections into the highest and lowest levels of the business. There are also hundreds of reviews of all types of whiskeys.

  WhiskyCast

  http://whiskycast.com

  Mark Gillespie talking to whiskey people. And Mark Gillespie rating whiskeys of every type. He takes every chance to do both, and his recordings are very high quality. This is a chance to see and hear the people who make the whiskey. And what else were you really doing over your lunch hour anyway?

  Whiskey by the Glass

  I was asked to do about 40 reviews for the book 1001 Whiskies You Must Taste before You Die by the editor, Dominic Roskrow. I had most of the whiskeys in my cabinet and was able to request samples from the distillers on a few others. But there were three I didn’t have, and their makers didn’t either. I didn’t worry; I just hopped on the train and went down to Village Whiskey, the whiskey bar in Philadelphia, and ordered a glass of each. It wasn’t cheap, but there they were.

  Plenty of bars have a half-decent selection of whiskey these days. It’s part of the growing appreciation for whiskey; more people ask, more bar managers and bartenders are aware, and the next thing you know, your local has a Classic Malts display, some Four Roses Single Barrel, and a bottle of Redbreast. Life is good.

  But there are an increasing number of whiskey specialty bars. There’s Bourbon’s Bistro in Louisville, Delilah’s in Chicago, d.b.a. in Manhattan (and New Orleans), Rickhouse in San Francisco, Jack Rose in Washington, Char No. 4 in Brooklyn, the stunning Dundee Dell in Omaha, and many, many more. Just yesterday I was in Kybecca, a wine bar in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that had opened an adjacent whiskey room only a few months before, and they already had over 50 whiskeys of a variety of types (I had a Yamazaki 12-year-old in celebration of its merely being there).

  It started in the centers of whiskey: Scotland, Ireland (behind the curve, but catching up), Kentucky, and Japan. But you’ll also find whiskey bars in centers of finance and power: New York, London, Toronto, Washington, D.C.; in centers of culture and fine dining: Paris, San Francisco; and, well, other places, like Omaha, Prague, and Philadelphia.

  Unfortunately, whiskey doesn’t yet have a resource like BeerAdvocate.com, where you can find thousands of specialty beer bars, searchable by area, with ratings and mapped directions. Whisky Magazine’s website (www.whiskymag.com) does have a section for finding whiskey bars, but because things are booming so much right now, it’s hard to keep up; similar issues limit the list at the WhiskyCast site (http://whiskycast.com; see above).

  As a former librarian, I suggest using Google like this: [type name of city here] “whisky bars” and be sure to include the quotes around “whisky bars”; it forces Google to look for them in that order. Use “whiskey” or “whisky” as appropriate for the country you’re searching for.

  That will actually yield reasonably good results, which can lead you directly to Step Two of the Finding Good Whiskey Bars program. Try one of the whiskey bars from your Google search, one that’s well reviewed and shows a good menu (a low number of misspellings, whiskeys in the right classification and region). Then comes the fun part: talk to people who are also drinking whiskey, or the bartenders, about where else in town they drink whiskey.

  That may seem rude, or not likely to yield a great result, but you’ll soon learn that when you’re truly a whiskey aficionado, you have more loyalty to the whiskey than to the venue. Smart bar managers realize that sharing knowledge is a positive strategy; when there are more good whiskey bars, there is more good whiskey business, because we tend to talk about whiskey, and spread the whiskey gospel, and that means more people thinking and drinking whiskey. So strike up a conversation.

  Making Friends

  You could also skip Step One, the Google search, and go directly to Step Two in your other whiskey resource: your favorite liquor store. Find the local store with the biggest selection of whiskey, a really deep one, and I guarantee you that the whiskey expert at the store will be able to tell you where the best whiskey bars are. Of course, at the really great whiskey stores, you may be able to sample right there — don’t abuse the privilege! — which is the whole idea, right? Tasting to see what you want to buy and take home and taste?

  Not quite. Remember, this is about tasting whiskey, and learning about it, and as I’ve already said, tasting it with other people is the best way, the most enjoyable. There are benefits to whiskey bars (and samplings at stores) that you won’t get at home, like perspective, like comparison, like the benefit of someone else’s experience. Just as a fencer doesn’t get better by fencing beginners, you won’t learn by tasting with people who know no more than you do.

  The best way to do that is to find (or start!) a whiskey-tasting club. Again, ask at the store (they’ll often sponsor or run one), or hit the web, or just find four or five whiskey lovers and start one. It’s a great way to learn about whiskey, and a great way to share what you have and taste what someone else might have. As the distillers say about collecting, they make the stuff to drink.

  You can also join a more formal tasting club: the Scotch Malt Whisky Society (there are chapters for a variety of countries; check the home website at http://smws.com). They’re a combination club and independent bottler. Membership gets you their very special single-cask bottlings and access to member benefits like distillery travel deals, tastings in “partner bars,” access to the society’s headquarters in Edinburgh, and the magazine.

  There are no rules about whiskey clubs, just that they’re about whiskey. They can be as simple as five friends getting together every so often to share whiskeys; they can be as elaborate as uniform shirts and organized holiday dinners for 50-plus members. Whatever suits your desires and purposes. But it can be a lot of fun. There’s something invigorating about being around people who are just as interested in whiskey as you are; we’re still a relatively tiny group, and it’s good to know that there are more of us out there.

  That’s the feel you’ll get at a whiskey festival. I was at one of the very first: WhiskyFest New York, 1998. Hundreds of people in a ballroom in New York, served whiskeys by the master distillers and brand managers, the people who know the most about them. It was an eye-opening experience, and it’s only gotten better. More festivals have cropped up; they are held around the world now.

  The price quite often seems high, until you consider what you’re getting. You’ll have the chance to sample from literally hundreds of different whiskeys, poured by people who are eager and able to tell you lots of information about them; the chance to mingle with folks who are just as excited about this as you are; and the opportunity to make friends and expand one another’s knowledge. It’s a fantastic time.

  Birthplace

  Whiskey festivals can only be equaled by going directly to where the stuff’s made. Touring distilleries puts it all together. I drank Scotch whisky for years before I stepped into my first Scottish distillery, and I remember the way things I’d never really understood suddenly locked into place in my head. The sights, the sounds, the people, and, perhaps most importantly for me, the smells are all wonderfully exciting additions of knowledge you can get only by visiting a distillery.

  These are popular tourist sites: The Midleton distillery gets 150,000 visitors
a year, and the Jameson “experience” at the old Dublin distillery gets another 250,000. Even the distilleries out on remote Islay get tens of thousands of visitors.

  There are organizations to help get you on your way. The Malt Whisky Trail will take you to eight Speyside distilleries and the Speyside Cooperage (www.maltwhiskytrail.com). Rather go peaty? Islay is waiting at their official website, and they know how many people want to see their distilleries (http://islayinfo.com). The Ireland Whiskey Trail is relatively new but makes up for it by offering a guide to Ireland’s whiskey pubs and whiskey museums as well as tours of the distilleries (www.irelandwhiskeytrail.com). The Kentucky Bourbon Trail’s ready to welcome you to Bluegrass Country (http://kybourbontrail.com), and Bourbon Country offers more information about whiskey bars and restaurants (www.bourboncountry.com).

  The organizations don’t cover all the distillers, though. If one you’d like to visit isn’t on their lists, find more information through the distillery’s own website; almost all the distilleries offer tours these days. The craft distillers are especially great about it; they know it’s their best way of making friends.

  If you can swing it, visiting a distillery is the single most important thing you can do toward furthering your understanding of whiskey. You’ll see it, hear it, smell it, feel it in a way you just can’t do by reading about it.

  Final Toast

  Thanks for joining me. I’ve enjoyed writing this; the memories it stirred were fantastic. Which brings to mind, as promised, one last story.

  I was visiting the Glenlivet distillery recently and talked to Ian Logan, the global brand ambassador. An affable guy, a big man, and cheerful; he knows a terrific amount about the whisky, the distillery, and the industry. We were done walking about the place and were standing there in the new stillhouse, which has these fantastic floor-to-ceiling glass walls looking across the valley where this whisky’s been made for 200 years, legally and nonlegally.

  We were doing that guy thing, just enjoying the moment without saying a word. I don’t know what Ian was thinking about, but I was relaxed in being where a major landmark in Scotch whisky history took place, and still was taking place.

  Then I asked him, thinking ahead to writing this book, thinking about just this place in it: “Would it be possible for a person to taste a whisky without knowing any of this? Not knowing where it was from, or who made it? Not knowing what went into it, how it was made, what made it that whisky, not even knowing the name? Would you get much out of it?”

  He answered pretty quickly. “Oh, aye. You could, the whisky’s that good.” He paused, then looked out across the valley again. “But why would you want to?”

  That sums up for me — why there are whiskey books, whiskey magazines, whiskey blogs and podcasts, whiskey festivals, whiskey tours. You could just drink whiskey, go through your whole life without learning more, and you know, you’d probably have a good life. But it takes only a little more to really enjoy it, because it’s true what folks say: The more you know, the better it tastes.

  Kermit Lynch, the wine importer and writer, has been known to have some strong opinions. One of them is that blind tasting is to wine (let’s substitute whiskey) as strip poker is to love. I read an interview with him years ago — unfortunately I cannot find the exact text, though I had it taped to the wall by my desk for quite a while, until I moved and misplaced it — where he said that you should pick a wine and learn everything you can about it: where it was made and what the countryside is like, and taste the grapes, and ask who made it and how, what they’re like and what other wines they make, and how long wine’s been made there, and what the other wines in the area are like . . . and then you will know that wine, and what it tastes like, better than you ever can by simply drinking a glass of juice.

  You could just drink whiskey. But why would you want to? Continue to learn, and taste your whiskey to the fullest. Cheers!

  Acknowledgments

  This is my first book on whiskey. I’ve got a number of beer books to my credit, so writing a book didn’t throw me. But it wasn’t until I undertook writing a whiskey book that I realized how little — and yet how much! — I knew about whiskey. It’s been an experience, and the people I’ve met were there when I needed to ask more questions.

  Naturally, I didn’t get here on my own. There are three people who got me here more than any other. John Hansell was the guy who made me drink whiskey in order to keep my job — imagine that — and created the magazine that gave me the job in the first place. The late Michael Jackson opened the category; there were whiskey writers before, but he popularized it, and did it so very well, and was good enough to give me lots of advice. And John Holl was good enough to think of me when his editor at Storey asked him if he knew anyone who might be able to write a whiskey book for them.

  Then there are the writers and drinkers and mixologists I learned from, and discussed with, and drank a bit with. Foremost are Dave Broom and Chuck Cowdery, both of whom led me to insights on whiskey. But I also owe thanks to Jonny McCormick (who gets a special thanks for his huge help with the collector’s sidebar), Mike Veach, Jim Anderson (for the hospitality and fun we had at the Anderson in Fortrose), David Wondrich (who gave me more confidence in mixing my own cocktails; I’m getting better), Davin de Kergommeaux (the best friend Canadian whisky ever had), Gaz Regan (bless your bushy face, sir), Phoebe Esmon, Gavin Smith, Fred Minnick, Max “Manhattans” Toste, Jim Murray, and Gary Gilman, possibly the greatest amateur drinks writer around.

  I was helped immeasurably by the folks in the industry, and it’s a long list that I know is incomplete: Jimmy and Eddie Russell at Wild Turkey; Parker and Craig Beam, Max Shapira, Larry Kass, and Josh Hafer at Heaven Hill; Chris Morris and the late Lincoln Henderson (miss you, you angry wonderful guy) at Brown-Forman; and at Buffalo Trace, Harlen Wheatley, Mark Brown, Kris Comstock, the incredible public relations team, and the late Elmer T. Lee, Ronnie Eddins, and Truman Cox — I’m so sad to know you won’t be reading this. Thanks as well to my man Fred Noe at Beam, Greg Davis and Bill Samuels Jr. at Maker’s Mark, and Jeff Arnett at Jack Daniel, as well as Tom Bulleit and Dave Scheurich, who is, I believe, the funniest man in the bourbon business.

  The Scotch whisky industry helped me in my ignorance; I’ve learned a lot about Scotch whisky in the past 15 years, largely thanks to folks like George Grant at Glenfarclas, Dr. Bill Lumsden at Glenmorangie, Ian Logan at Glenlivet (thanks for a great philosophical moment), Richard Paterson at Dalmore (who taught my son a couple things about Scotch whisky as well), Willie Tait at Jura (who says I’m a great girl’s blouse), Jim McEwan of Bruichladdich, Eddie McAffer and Rachel Barrie at Bowmore, Diageo’s Dr. Nick Morgan, Rosemary Gallagher from the Scotch Whisky Association, and Highland Park’s superwoman, Steph Ridgway, who pinned me.

  In Ireland, it’s a small list, but just as important. I’m indebted to Dave Quinn, who took the time to meet me at his brother’s bar in Philadelphia (For Pete’s Sake, and you should visit) to teach me about the Jameson range, to Fergus Carey . . . for a lot of things, but here it’s for giving me my first sip of Redbreast, to Barry Crockett for making fantastic whiskey, to John Teeling for a great interview, to Ger Buckley for explaining coopering so it made sense, and to Colum Egan for a great laugh at WhiskyFest.

  Canadian whisky is a short list too. Dr. Don Livermore taught me an amazing amount in just a few hours at the Hiram Walker plant, Jan Westcott got me in where I needed to be (though rarely by the most direct route), and Dan Tullio . . . well, hey, Dan makes Canadian cool. I’ll tuck in Japanese whisky here: many thanks to Mike Miyamoto of Suntory for a great “Yamazaki Time.”

  Craft whiskey is impossible to cover, there are so many people. The standouts are Fritz Maytag, Bruce Joseph, and David King at Anchor, true pioneers along with Steve McCarthy at Clear Creek; Darek Bell at Corsair and Chip Tate at Balcones (always with the new ideas, those two); Dave Pickerell, who brought solid experience over from the mainstream to cross-fertilize with craft�
��s mad innovation; David Perkins at High West, who has an amazing ability to keep things on an even keel; and my local hero, Herman Mihalich, who makes Dad’s Hat Rye from the grain I drive past on my way to work . . . which is pretty cool. A special shout out to Scott Spolverino, an underappreciated distilling chemist who’s destined for good things.

  Now, some special thanks. My uncle Don Harnish was the person in my family who showed me that it was okay to drink, and really okay to drink whiskey. Thanks, Don, it’s an important lesson. Mike Burkholder, who gave me my first Jack and Pepsi — Mike, look me up, I owe you a drink! My boon companion, Sam Komlenic, who proofed this manuscript with a whiskey lover’s eye, and bucked me up during some dark moments — Sam, you’re the best. My agent, Marilyn Allen, found me by looking at my picture and thinking, “He looks like a good guy to do a whiskey book.” I’m glad you reached out when you did, Marilyn; it’s been great. My editors at Storey, Margaret Sutherland and Nancy Ringer, who were ever so supportive, and more than patient when I ran over deadline (mind you, ladies, I nailed the editing deadlines!). The staff at Whisky Advocate: Melanie, Kathy, Joan, and Amy are the best friends a guy could have at a job. They didn’t help with the book, which was an independent project, but they were very supportive, every day. Thanks!

  Finally, my family. I want to thank my mother, Ruth, and my late father, Lew, for their support of a son who wanted to make a living out of writing about booze (which some of the family still doesn’t mention). My wife’s whole family has always been very supportive; now if I could just get more of them to drink whiskey . . . these samples won’t drink themselves! My kids, Thomas and Nora, who are now not just my supporters, they’re my critics, and fair ones (and Thomas is drinking good whiskey, too!).