Whiskey: A Drink-Along Guide

Yes, just in time for St. Patrick's Day, a post that has nothing to do with beer!

Wait... what?

I love whiskey.  Which is why it pains me to hear (as I often do) people say something along the lines of, “I just don’t get whiskey,” or, “How can you drink that stuff?”  On a rare occasion, I may get a genuine, “I’d like to learn more about whiskey, but I don’t know where to start?” This isn't a surprising reaction, since whiskey is a sadly misunderstood drink, something only old men and hardened gamblers drink, when, in fact, whiskey presents a journey of discovery unparalleled in the beverage world.

 So, with that in mind, sit down.  Make yourself comfortable.  You’re here to learn something about whiskey, that golden elixir that has built and shaped much of Western Civilization as we know it.  This is an interactive experience, and I encourage you to follow along at home.  You’ll need some supplies.

- Several glasses (snifter glasses are best, but old fashioned or highball glasses will also do).
- Chilled (but not ice cold) spring or filtered water.  (More on this in a minute.)
- A beer (ale, preferably homebrew)
And a bottle of each of the following:
- Bushmills
- Johnny Walker
- Macallan
- Laphroaig
- Maker's Mark
- Crown Royal (or similar)

Stand tall, laddies.  This is our big number.

 Now, before we dive head-long into the history, philosophy, and spiritualism of whiskey, a couple of disclaimers and words of wisdom.  First, let’s look at how we choose our liquors.  You’ve heard terms like “top shelf” and “bottom shelf,” and that’s a good place to start.  Liquor stores are set up to have the cheapest stuff on the bottom, the most expensive at the top.  When choosing a whiskey, price is one consideration.  Generally speaking, the more expensive the whiskey (the closer to the top shelf), the better the quality.  A fifty dollar bottle of whiskey will almost without fail taste superior to a ten dollar bottle.  However, will a three hundred dollar bottle of whiskey taste better than a hundred dollar bottle?  Probably, but not so much that you’d notice.  Eventually, price becomes a status symbol, rather than an indication of quality.  The second indicator of quality is age.  Whiskey is aged oak barrels, which contribute significantly to its taste, its complexity, the overall enjoyability.  Most whiskey must be aged at least three or four years just to called itself whiskey.  Many brag about how long they’ve been aged right on the label.  If it doesn’t brag, it’s younger, probably between four and eight years for an average whiskey.  So what’s the difference between twelve years, twenty years, or thirty years?  Well, without going into too much detail, a twelve year aged whiskey will be richer, smoother, and more complex than a younger whiskey, while a twenty-year-old whiskey will be richer and more complex than a twelve-year-old.  (If this is making you think you accidentally signed up for a wine course, you’re getting the idea.  Many wines are aged to improve their taste and complexity in the same way, and many whiskeys are aged in barrels that once aged wines.  Having no patience for words like “playful” or “nuanced” when it comes to beverages, this will be the last time I reference wine culture, I promise.)  But does the difference in taste correspond to the difference in price between a twelve year-old and, say, a thirty year-old?  Not in my opinion, though I’m sure many people will argue with me on that point.  (Please, try to convince me!  You’re buying!)  Like with price, you want to stick with the middle of the road, at least until you’ve gotten your feet wet and are ready to become more adventurous.  So find something in the $20 or $50 range, aged more than ten years, and you’ll be alright.

Now, we come to the question of neat versus on the rocks.  Ah, the age-old debate.  Here, I have no absolute answer.  I like to drink neat when I’m enjoying the whiskey, or on the rocks  (literally: my wife got me whiskey rocks for Christmas) when I’m just enjoying sitting back and relaxing with a drink in hand.  The cold of the ice tends to hide some of the flavor in the whiskey (by numbing the tongue).  Instead, add an ounce or so of chilled water, just to cut into the alcohol taste and open up the other flavors to better enjoy them.

And where do we start this world tour education of whiskey?  Why, in Ireland of course!  (Admit it, you’d guessed that already.) 

"Wait...what?" - Scotland

 

 So grab yourself a pint of ale and join me at the bar!

 Excuse me, did I say this post had nothing at all to do with beer?

I lied.

Just sit back, enjoy the beer, and consider what beer is.  Beer is one of the oldest fermented beverages in the world.  It is made from fermented barley malt, spiced with bitter herbs, most commonly hops.  Beer has played a vitally important role in society in Ireland (and England, and northern Europe) for centuries, and for very good reason.  When people started getting together in larger communities, namely cities, for the first time thousands of years ago, they quickly ran into a very simple problem, but one with no simple answer: What to drink?  Because they usually settled near a source of fresh water, often a river or stream (good), and because all the waste from the people, and the animals the people kept with them, went into the water (bad), and because there were other cities sprouting up upstream that did the same thing (very bad), they quickly found drinking the water made them sick.  They didn’t know why drinking the water made them sick (germs would have to wait a millennia or two to be discovered), they just knew the outcome, and they knew they needed to find something else to drink.  Around the Mediterranean, grapes were turned into wine, and wine was found to be by and large safe to drink.  Further north, like, say, in Ireland, grapes were not abundant, but barley grew well, and barley that was allowed to malt and fermented into beer was also safe to drink.  And, by the way, got you good and drunk!  Slainte!

So check this out: without the benefit of alcoholic beverages (and later drinks like tea and coffee, based on boiled water), humans would have never been able to form large communities without literally making each other sick.  So when I say cities like Dublin or London could never have existed without beer, I’m not exaggerating.  At some point, distillation came over to the Emerald Isle.  When, exactly, this happened, no one is exactly sure.  What is sure is this:  Distillation of alcohol was invented by Arabic chemists in the 8^th century, and became a staple of alchemy.  It was used primarily to create medicinal mixtures, mostly from wine, which were considered so strong that they were referred to as aqua vitae, or “water of life.”  This technique was eventually picked up by monks in Europe and it spread from monastery to monastery.  In time, it came to Ireland, where it was used to distill beer (wine being in short supply).  The resulting distillate was also called the “water of life,” or, as it was rendered by the native celtic speakers, “uisce beatha.”  A few rough and tumble translations into English, and that soon became known as whiskey.

But let’s start with the beer.  Take a nice, long sip.  Taste the malty sweetness, the bitterness of the hops, and the refreshing effervescence of the carbonation.  Now, kiss most of those flavors goodbye.  Focus on the malty taste.  That’s the first basic taste of Irish whiskey. 

Now, pour yourself a glass of Bushmills.  

 Here is where the magic happens.  Whiskey is made, most basically, from the distillation of beer.  Beer is warmed in a pot still until the alcohol evaporates (which happens before the water).  The vapor travels through a tube until it reaches a kind of water-submerged roller coaster called a worm, which cools the vapor back to liquid which has a much higher alcohol content than the beer.  The resulting clear liquid is then aged in oak barrels, where is takes on the second major characteristic of whiskey: oak.  So, why would anyone do this?

Well, at first distilled alcohol was used strictly for alchemical or medicinal purposes.  The transition to social beverage has as much to with simple economics of barley farming as anything else.  Imagine you have a few acres of barley you just harvested and you want to sell it at market.  The market is some miles away, and you have one wagon and a horse.  An old, sick horse.  The trip will take at least two days, and it will be nearly impossible to transport all your harvest in one go.  But, cook the grains and let them ferment, and those acres of grain become a few barrels of beer, much easier to pile into the cart and bring to market.  But the real economic revelation was that you could distill the beer, and turn a few barrels into one barrel, and it will fetch more money at market than the barrels of beer or the raw grain.  Furthermore, this likely led to the greatest innovation in beverages since the invention of distillation.  Imagine you’re carrying a barrel of whiskey (a colorless, fiery distillate) to market, and you stop at a tavern, have a few too many pints, sleep late, get caught in a freak storm, then get lost a few times, and a trip that should have taken a couple days ends up taking a month.  When you get there, you offer a sample of your whiskey, and are surprised to find the colorless liquid is no longer colorless, and is a lot less fiery.  You’ve just discovered the benefit of aging.  And your whiskey is suddenly worth more.

Now, for those of you who neglected my advice against drinking on the rocks, the ice in your glass should be pretty well melted after that informative, but ultimately pointless, historical tangent.  Good.  On to the whiskey!  First, take a sniff.  Inhale deeply, but slowly; snort too fast and you’ll smell nothing by the burning odor of alcohol.  Detect the other notes in the glass.  Now, take a sip.   

Whoa!  I said a sip, contrary to another common and popular drinking habit: shooting.  Shooting, I don’t have to tell you, involves drinking the full tiny amount of whiskey at once, in one gulp.  It’s intended to minimize the amount of taste you get of the whiskey, and tends to emphasize the least desirable tastes, like the fiery, burning alcohol taste.  No doubt about it, this stuff tastes serious, and strong.  But take another sip, and start to taste the malty sweetness of it.  Reminds you a little of that beer, doesn’t it?  (Well, okay, very little, but the taste is still there nonetheless.)  And that oak aftertaste that lingers in the mouth, that’s from the aging.    

This is the beginning of the celtic “water of life,” in all its splendid forms.  The glory of whiskey is that it has always taken on unique characteristics of the region where it is produced.  And as whiskey makers move, they take their knowledge with them and apply them to the new regions where they end up.  The Celts of Ireland have a long history of fraternity with the Galls of Scotland, so it is no surprise that whiskey-making eventually passed on to the Scots.

Pour yourself a glass of Johnny Walker.  And here, we need to have a quick spelling lesson. Johnny Walker is a brand of Scotch Whisky, whereas Bushmills is a brand of Irish Whiskey.  So what does that “e” have to do with the differences between the drinks?  Absolutely nothing, except for geography.  To simplify things a little, I will be referring to Scotch Whisky as Scotch for the rest of this lesson.  If I lived in Scotland, I’d just call it “whisky,” but I’m not that lucky.  If I called it “whisky” here in America, I’d have to risk including Canadian Whisky, and I’m not quite there yet.  That’s a digression for another time.  Why did the Canadian’s adopt the Scottish spelling, while the American’s took the Irish?  To quote They Might Be Giants, “People just like it better than way.”

Take a sip of the Scotch.  You’ll immediately notice that stronger taste.  Call it more smokey, or more oakey, or whatever you want to say.  I’m not going to get all wine-snob on you now, but just realize that they taste different.  Very different.  Most Scotch is distilled twice, while most Irish whiskey is distilled three times, causing the Scotch to have more malt taste.  Also, many Scotch makers utilize barrels for aging the Scotch that were previously used for aging wines or bourbons, lending very different flavors than are found in most Irish whiskeys. 

 Whiskys made in Scotland are considered Scotch.  But even within Scotland, Scotch from different regions can have very different and unique characteristics.  For me, one of the greatest benefits to Scotch is the sheer variety and depth of flavors that one can encounter while just casually tasting a handful of different labels.  Johnny Walker is a blended Scotch, and blended Scotches are the most common, but many distillers now produce single malts that show off the different tastes of each distillery, in each region.   

Pour yourself a Macallan.  While every single malt has its own flavor profile, and an exhaustive list of the flavors in each distillery’s single malts would go on for pages, each region also has its own defining characteristics common in Scotches made in the region.  Many of these are the result of local variables, like the water used or the way the barley is malted.  The Macallan, for instance, is from the Speyside region, where many of the world’s most popular Scotches are from.  Take a sip.  Speysides are well-known for their smooth finish, generally attributed the mineral-rich mountain water used to make them.

Now, to understand how different geography within the same country can impact the flavors of a Scotch, pour yourself a glass of Laphroaig.  Laphroaig is from the Isle of Islay, off the western coast.  Islay is known for its peat, which is used to dry the barley during the malting process.  Peat, by the way, is a kind of partially decayed layer of vegetation usually found in bogs and wetlands.  Sounds just like the kind of thing you’d like to put in your drink, doesn’t it?  But peat, in lowlands where trees and firewood scarce, is a valuable asset that can be burned, kind of like coal, and has kept people warm for generations.  Using it to dry germinated barley is just one more use it’s been put to, and the unique, earthy, smoked taste it adds to the barley, which is retained in the Scotch, is just an added benefit.

Take a sip.  Yep, that’s the peat!  Sure, it’s got a strong, almost overpowering taste, especially when compared to the smooth Speyside Macallan.  I’m guessing, as a Scotch novice, you’re inclined toward the Speyside yourself.  You probably think the peat of the Islay is a little too strong.  But then again, if you spent your day working in a peat bog, you’d probably want a strong whisky to drink afterwards.  As with all whiskeys, Scotches, bourbons, or what-have-you, accept it and understand it for what it is, where it comes from, and what it represents.  You might never enjoy the peaty taste of Laphroaig (though you might, as I do), hopefully, you will at least be able to respect it.

 As with many poor residents of the British Isles, looking to start a better life, Scotch and Irish distillers crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the 18^th and 19^th centuries to try their luck in America.  Distilling was hardly new to America, even then.  But before the American Revolution, the prevalence of cheap molasses streaming in from British sugar plantations in the Caribbean led to distillers focusing on producing massive amounts of rum.  But after the break with Britain, rum fell out of favor with Americans, and they turned once again to grain alcohol, turning to the locally grown grains, namely rye and corn.  Rye whiskey was the most popular immediately following the Revolution (so popular, no less an American than George Washington owned a distillery making rye whiskey), and it was rye whiskey that got the nation in trouble early on when a tax on distilleries caused a revolt in Western Pennsylvania.

Following the quashing of the Whiskey Rebellion by George Washington in 1794, some, though by no means all, rye distillers moved south and met up with corn distillers.  We'll get to them in a minute.  But rye whiskey was still being produced in northern states like New York and Pennsylvania, up until Prohibition.  Following Prohibition, the distillation moved further north and met up with Canadian distillers, creating a class of Canadian Whisky.  Here, again, we run afoul of some confusing legal distinctions.  Rye whiskey (with an “e”) in the U.S. must contain at least 51% rye (similar to Bourbon requirements).  Canadian Whisky (no “e”) is any whisky made in Canada, but many contain rye, and some are therefore called “Canadian Rye.”  But no minimum rye percentage is required for the designation, and in fact, Canadian Whisky can contain any number of grain alcohols blended together.  This makes my patented form of broad generalizations very difficult, but pour yourself a glass of Crown Royal, and we’ll do our best.  Canadian whisky has something of a bad rep among whiskey snobs, because of the loose definition for the appellation, but the way I see it, that also provides a huge range of potential flavors of whisky.  In the Crown Royal, you’ll find tastes reminiscent of Irish whiskey.  It has a stronger bite, not as mellow as a blended Scotch, but a distinctive taste that some people are fond of blending into mixed drinks.

But, as I said, following the Whiskey Rebellion, some rye distiller went south, where they met with other distillers who were making whiskey out of corn.  As time went by, the whiskey evolved, mixing in other grain, but keeping a majority of corn in the mix.  It was aged in American white oak barrels, and they soon found that charring the inside of the barrel improved the aging process.  (I’d love to shake the hand of whoever first decided to char the inside of oak barrels.  That guy should've been given a Nobel Prize.)  And in the wilds of what was at the time the Kentucky frontier, a new kind of whiskey, named after the region where it was being made, was born: Bourbon.

 Pour yourself a glass of Maker’s Mark.  Bourbon whiskey is defined and protected by law, to meet certain exacting standards.  Considered the national alcoholic drink of the United States, Congress has deemed that Bourbon, by law, must contain at least 51% corn, must be aged in charred new oak barrels, and must be aged for a minimum of two years, along with several other more esoteric guidelines.  Many of the best bourbons still come from Kentucky, where the climate contributes to a faster aging period.  Before you drink, look at the bourbon, compare it to the scotches.  Note the reddish-amber hues.  Now, take a sip.  You’ll notice the enormous difference in taste between the corn-based whiskey and the barley-based whiskeys you’ve tried thus far.  You’ll find a corn sweetness, and also a sharp alcohol tang, but with a fairly classic whiskey oak finish.  Bourbon has developed a reputation as a quality liquor, the legitimate and respectable cousin of the burning, unaged mountain moonshine that is the true American classic “corn likker.”  Bourbon barrels, since they cannot be used over again, are prized for aging everything from scotch to brandy to rum to even beer, imparting a subtle flavor from the bourbon whiskey in countless other liquors produced the world over.

Sidenote about "Tennessee whiskey":  Tennessee whiskey is, essentially, Bourbon (he says after surreptitiously looking around for lurking Kentuckians ready to pound his head in for saying so).  Both are made primarily from corn and both are aged in charred new oak barrels.  The difference between them is the Lincoln County Process (Lincoln County being where Jack Daniels is made), in which the whiskey is filtered through sugar maple charcoal before aging.  That's the only difference, and it's one I don't think you can taste (Sorry, Jack.)          

 Bourbon, having a somewhat stronger taste than prized single-malt scotches, and having an underlying sweetness missing from the all-barley whiskeys, is commonly added to whiskey cocktails, most famously the mint julep.  And while the mint does compliment the delicate corn and slightly burnt taste, how can anyone is good conscious take something that has rested and matured usually for more than half a decade in the darkness of a warehouse, giving up its angel share (that’s what they call the small amount of alcohol that evaporates away through the barrel) to mellow and take on the flavor of the charred oak, and just add sugar to it to mask and subvert the complex flavors it developed?  It should be a crime.  Yet judging from the one hundred and twenty thousand mint juleps served just during the Kentucky Derby, it’s not.  God Bless America!

 Although these major styles of whiskeys have strong regional roots, each based on the materials distillers in a particular environment had to work with, they have managed over the years to reach across those regional lines and become beloved by whiskey drinkers all over the world.  So there you have it, Irish alchemy distilling the essence of life from malted barley, oaked aged to perfection in the Highlands of Scotland, traveling across the Atlantic to create not one but two (three, if you consider true rye whiskey in a class of its own) unique whiskey styles; proof positive (in any were needed) that good whiskey can be found anywhere!

All thanks to the Irish!

Wait...what?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!