Single Malt Scottish Bliss

I went with a friend to a scotch tasting the other night: a local wine shop offered a discounted rate to my friend’s coworkers, and I was invited to tag along.  I had a great time!  The tasting was in a cozy room that was all but filled with the table in the center.  The wine shop had set out nuts, shortbread, and dried apricots to complement the alcohol, and the dozen other scotch fans proved to be entertaining company.

The tasting was run by the Balvenie brewery (owned by the same folks who founded the Glenfiddich brewery, which is more familiar to most).  It was clearly an attempt to make loyal customers of us, but you can’t fault a company for advertising.  The employees they sent were charming and well-informed; I learned a lot about scotch.  Not that this was hard: I started out knowing only two facts.  First: scotch is a form of whiskey made in Scotland.  Second: whiskey is something I approve of.

In a little more detail, then: whiskey is distilled beer.  Whiskey in general can be distilled from beer made from a broad variety of grains: wheat, barley, rye, corn, &c.  There are many options available, limited only by the creativity of people for whom putting something different into their whiskey is considered a form of creativity.  It is our good fortune that such people exist!  Single malt whiskey is a variety that’s made by a single distillery out of a single type of malted grain: barley, typically, but wikipedia tells me that rye can be used as well.  The significance of single malt whiskey is that the majority of a given batch is generally too harsh to drink alone.  It has long been the industry’s practice to blend whiskies from several distilleries in order to mellow them out.  A single malt whiskey is generally the best of the batch; the only stuff that’s worth drinking untainted.

The liquid comes out of the distillery as a perfectly clear, highly alcoholic liquid.  The brewers pack it into oak barrels and let it mellow for several years before it’s drinkable.  The barrels are where much of the variety in flavor and coloring comes from: they have typically led prior lives as barrels packed with other things, and those other things lend their flavors to the whiskey.  These days, that usually means that the barrels stored other types of alcohol.  You can find whiskies that taste slightly of rum, port, or many other things for the simple reason that they soaked up trace amounts from their barrels.

The tasting process itself was very carefully described to us.  Tasting follows a very careful algorithm that’s a little different from simply drinking the alcohol.  One starts by holding the whiskey up to the light and observing its color, viscosity, and surface tension.  There is a lot of information to be gleaned from these details, but I am embarrassed to report that I’ve forgotten most of them.  The second part is where most of the action is: nosing the whiskey.  Your nose can provide a lot more information about the contents of a drink than your tongue will reveal.  You have to be careful, though, not to overload it with the alcohol’s scent.  There are several strategies: you can waft the glass from side to side under your nose, so you’re not directly above the alcohol.  It’s also common to put a little water into the scotch: this helps separate the flavors and reduce the harshness of the alcohol.  Scent is what differed most among the varieties we tried, and what we spoke of most often.  One variety was light, and smelled of honey (after cut with water and left to mellow for a few minutes).  Another had an almost leathery scent to it, and a third reminded me somewhat of flowers.  The interesting thing about nosing whiskey is that if you take your time and pay attention, you can start to pick out several different scents.  It took some concentration for me; my friend said he only smelled alcohol.  I imagine it’s a skill one has to learn, like most worthwhile tasks.

Finally, you actually taste the alcohol.  We started with the tiniest of sips: barely enough to taste, and not enough that one needs to swallow.  This is particularly important before you’ve had a bit of scotch, so your tongue doesn’t rebel against the strong flavors involved.  After that, your goal is to just coat your tongue and mouth so that the taste buds in all the various regions have a chance to offer their opinions.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and left with a strong respect for scotch in general and Balvenie in particular.  The company has been family owned for a century, and they do a lot of work on site that most distilleries outsource in order to preserve the quality of their product.  They have a coppersmith of fifty years, and a team of coopers to assemble and maintain their barrels.  The man in charge of the operation has been in that position for forty years, and has been intimitely involved with all the varieties of whiskey that they’ve produced.  There is much to respect in a company that values hard-won craftsmanship, holding onto employees for their entire lives, and resisting the dilution of their recipes with cheaper modern techniques.