So if you think you’re getting something that reminds you of green apples… there are no green apples in Jameson. Now the woolly clouds had scurried on their way; soon they’d be replaced by new ones, but for the time the sun warmed the grounds and the forested campus was awash in birdsong. Gear Patrol participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. Proper nosing form is to cover the glass with your hand and agitate the liquid, then uncover the glass and stick your nose right in. This was Glenfiddich distillery, producer of the world’s best-selling single malt whisky, and cited as the first distillery to market single malt whisky — as opposed to blended — to individual drinkers in the modern sense. Most whiskey drinkers admit that in the initial phase they couldn’t even stand its taste in their mouths. 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In fact, it is temperature and pressure fluctuations throughout the years that drive the whisky into and back out of the barrel wood and lend flavors of wood and bourbon. ©2020 Group Nine Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hence younger whiskey, and very few age statements above 20 years, which is about the agreed-upon age at which bourbon’s flavor begins to be wholly taken over and (some say) ruined by oakiness. Here, the right whisky, picked young for its unique flavor profile and kept aside in a previously used bourbon barrel, can age for up to 30, 40 or even 50 years without becoming overwhelmed by barrel flavors or a heavy loss through evaporation, which distillers call the angels taking their share. It is the color of spring, of youthfulness, and smelling of a beautiful orchard and an alcoholic river. One writer set about describing number three and four using different types of apples. The Glenfiddich employees agreed. But here we were, the glasses now filled, all of us amateurs seated in front of our tasting mats, flanked by pitchers of water at room temperature. Superlative whiskies must be bursting.”. The rest of my group — a handful of journalists of varying degrees of whisky knowledge, one Christie’s wine expert, two Glenfiddich brand ambassadors, one Glenfiddich master cooper, and a friendly conservative Jewish whisky savant and collector named Akiva — settled into chairs positioned in front of a glass wall facing two enormous copper wash stills two stories below and watched the last of the whiskies being poured. Light blue sky poured into the tasting room, turning our glasses and their wizened liquids into a shimmering glass menagerie. I was less than 10 years out from sipping my first of the brown stuff, a pour of Maker’s Mark that my best friend and I stole from atop my family’s fridge when my parents were away. This procedure can significantly improve the final taste of the product since your brain function takes signals from multiple sources. When you keep your whiskey in the same oak cask for years, then you are adding to its flavor and giving it a more smelly character. Whisky, especially at this age, can smell pretty odd thanks to the personalized nature of the barrel they inhabit, and even outside factors; professional noser Nancy Fraley claims in an article published in The Atlantic that she once identified curry flavors in a whisky imparted by a nearby staff break room where employees were eating their lunches. Each was the shade of spring, youth, nectar-like, really. These barrel warehouses smell like the past, moldering wood and the sweet alcohol so strong in the air that guides carry meters to measure the vapor content, lest a tourist flash a picture and turn the whole place to very good-smelling ash. You’re just relating to what you would have had in the past to use as a descriptor as what you’re tasting now.”. You wouldn’t know by looking that each was 37 years old. These differences give bourbon and Scotch slightly different taste profiles. I took a final sip and, somewhere, the part of me that’s decided what tasted good my whole life made the decision. He looked nervous. Describing scotch is really hard. What Does a $3,500 Scotch Taste Like? You don’t need to be an expert to know this; you need only drive twenty or so miles along the windy main road, every two minutes passing another distillery with a name you know: Aberlour, Glenfarclas, Glenlivet, Macallan. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but he seemed good at it. Whisky Will. Scotch is a WHISKY! I made another connection, too, to all those whisky employees “walking the dog” and taking their devil’s share out after a long day of work. Later, he regaled us with the Robin Hood-esque tradition of warehouse employees stealing whisky using copper “dogs”, replete with cool terminology (“walking the dog”, or slipping home with the dog in your pant leg, and “the devil’s share”, what employees took, as opposed to the “angel’s share” of evaporation) and managers, who didn’t want to catch anyone, signaling their arrival with a whistle. Honey and caramel and a bouquet of fruit; if you want to smoke your drink, look to Islay. (We poured it down the sink after each trying a horrid-tasting sip.) Was it the best whisky I’d ever tasted? Some oak casks give a pleasant wooden flavor, while some give fruity ones. However, when you learn how to drink it, whiskey can be transformed to the most flavorful spirit you have ever tried. Fruity flavors are accentuated, so you get the maximum out of your whiskey flavor. WhiskyGrotto.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. If you are allergic to something in the beer, be aware that some Whiskies are made from some of the same grains and other ingredients. What the hell was I writing in my notes anymore? And we were all chatting again, naturally now and more ordered, each of us offering our opinions, whether that was a breed of fruit or just that the fruit taste existed. It was a strange overlay of surgeon-like specificity and a machete killer’s broad hacking slashes. A New Yorker story about the difficulty of scent cognition recently cited a study in which participants were given the task of identifying the smell of lemon. The barrels, American oak previously used to hold bourbon as well as larger ones made of European oak that previously held sherry and port, laze atop each other on their sides, low walls in corridors, many weeping dried, sticky booze concentrate, all bearing painted ends marked by stenciled years. But I did steal a moment, still mine I think, or at least some version of it that I’ve molded as I often do with memories. This I noted on the paper tasting placemat under “sample 1”, with a connoisseur flourish I couldn’t avoid — “more timid bouquet”. I tried again on glass one. So, keep sipping your drink and have a good time! A whisky is transcendental to one person and disappointing — or disgusting, like rubbing alcohol — to another. But butterscotch is usually cooked a little longer to get a different consistency and hardness. My eloquence fell short on number five: “less hot”, I wrote. I realized for the first time how hard picking an individual whisky, collectively, was going to be. All Rights Reserved. It is a weird combination of bitter and sweet flavor notes that finally give you the chance to spend some quality time with your friends. Summary. My girlfriend liked to point this out, especially when I nosed Natty Light while getting hammered at a football tailgate. Not to mention that in the flavor procedure there are also other factors interfering, like the smell of the whiskey vapors. Though higher age doesn’t always mean better whisky, these ancient bottles have worked in the world’s more affluent markets because both sides win: superfans and collectors get to try strange, rare liquids that exhibit singular flavor profiles, and distilleries get to show off their best and brightest whiskies — and make heaps of money. This means that what is already a nasal struggle can, at the 37-year-old level, become a Sphynx’s riddle for the nostrils. Whisky experts say barrel aging gives a whisky over 50 percent of its flavor. I had heard this recently from Dave McCabe, Head of the Irish Whisky Academy at Jameson, a school where enthusiasts go to learn the science and art behind their love of whisky. This is what many bar tenders do to attract many people: they create new cocktails based on whiskey. By Chris Wright. Bourbon tends to be sweeter, while Scotch tends to have a more intense smokiness. He would, he said: one for himself to drink; one to keep, because he didn’t have any “memento” bottles; and one “for a friend”. The room was pungent with whisky, but not like a cowboy bar, where sweet cheap bourbon’s breath mixes with sour beer and sawdust and piss. Let the whisky sit on your tongue. There were experts in our group — one or two journalists were quiet whisky addicts, and I had made the mistake of asking Akiva whether he liked bourbon or Scotch better and had gotten a 20-minute lecture so packed with information that at times I felt like a teetotaling Tom Cruise to his Rain Man — but the rest of us were whisky-sipping schmos with far less expertise than the people who would buy these bottles. We were not yet allowed to smell any of the individual whiskies, because Glenfiddich had brought us here to not just drink them, but to choose one, and that requires careful process. (See, for example, the much-worshiped Pappy Van Winkle line’s 23-year-old, which many pass up for the younger 15-year-old.) My first taste of peaty whisky was Talisker 10, and like they say with other things, you never forget your first. Drinking lots of craft beer had ingrained the practice of smelling before sipping, often at inappropriate times. And our sense of taste is largely based on what we smell.”. All we knew about the five whiskies on the paper mats before us was that since their distillation in 1978 they’d been stored in bourbon barrel oak casks.