Appreciating Whiskey

Total Whine runs classes for customers and the curious to better appreciate the things they sell.  I had taken one on beer a few years ago.  Informative but pretentious.  My wife gave me a gift card for another, leaving me the choice of a class on wine or on whiskey.  Having gotten interested in the variations of the product from some sampling stops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, I opted to continue my education on spirits.  Much less pretentious this time, indeed rated top-notch when they asked for my feedback a day or two later.

When I go to food and drink classes, the product or taste, or pairings interest me much less than the manufacture, distribution, history, their place in modern culture.  While the folks in Kentucky convinced me that there really are gustatory differences that differentiate the brands, firewater still serves as a useful generic class.  Of the nine samples offered, enough to require a designated driver, I could discern differences and even preferences.  I liked bourbon better than scotch, at least the automated part of my sensory system did, with the more rational part recognizing that I had two or three of each amid hundreds of competing tastes.  Were the samples different might the three scotches been of greater sensory pleasure?  Could I tell the difference between single malts, which they served, and blended, which is the more common and within budget?  Probably not.  Others might. I could distinguish the smokey tastes of peat from those distilled in the highland regions.  I might be amenable some day to visiting Scotland for their Scotch trail, as I did Kentucky.  But bourbon seemed sweeter.

I tasted some rye, some made from sour mash, some from a barley industry adopted to Japan.    Yes there is taste.  As I become more familiar, it is easier to compare one to another at a single tasting, though unlikely to remember if these same liquids were offered to me blindly a week later.

For the amateur like myself, it is really more the experience than the oral effects.  We have the glass.  I purchased one at a boutique on the Bourbon Trail that gives me purpose when I treat myself to spirits at home.  There is the ice in the glass, the measurement of amount.  At home, it's 50ml over ice.  At kiddush after services, a tradition dating back to the days at the JCC of Spring Valley when I was underage, the amount drops to 15ml in a disposable polystyrene cup served at room temperature.  This gets one sip with a little mucosal sting.  The iced liquid gets multiple small sips with some swishes.  At kiddush I banter with somebody right after the schnapps.  In My Space I savor the taste and coldness alone.

At the class, different liquids had different colors and scents.  That's the purpose of the tasting.  At kiddush it's to maintain a decades old minhag, at home it's to demarcate my late afternoon while I write, or at least think.  And there is the buzz, which needs the 50ml or the Total Whine's series of nine 15ml samples.  I think Manhattan was traded for that buzz.  And I would trade Kentucky

Certainly, the master distillers have the right combination of discernment and talent.  Marketers can figure out what will give their brand an advantage among novices, as there are likely too few sophisticated palates to shift market share.  The bottle adds to the experience.  More often than not, a purchase is made in a bottle more attractive than a simple cylinder.  That's part of the appeal, as is the label, and for Scotch, perhaps even the cardboard sleeve that covers the bottle.  

My own collection now alternates between a sweetish bourbon, barely off-sweet scotch in an elongated bottle with rectangular cross-section, and a rye in an interesting bottle that would have an elliptical cross-section.  It is unlikely that I would ever buy another bottle of any of them in appreciation of the favorable experience that they bring to my late afternoon.  It is not the taste that attracts me, or even the slight CNS jolt that follows.  Instead, it is the adventure of a different experience to the last one.  And for the amount that I consume, let alone seek out, I will never really have to choose a favorite brand, which would be an impediment to sampling the next unfamiliar brand.