Scotch Addict

Look at enough bottles of Scotch whisky and you’ll start seeing the same words over and over again. How many distilleries have “glen” in their name? Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Glengoyne, Glenfarclas, Glen Grant… you get the idea. Many of the distillers have names that describe where they’re located, which is why glen (which means valley in Gaelic) is so prevalent in so many names.

I started looking for common syllables in distillery names and come up with this short list.

• Ben: It’s Scottish for mountain.
• Burn: It’s Gaelic for fresh water but it’s also the name for a watercourse, artificial or natural, from large streams to small rivers.
• Cairn: It’s a man-made pile of stones.
• Dhu: The sgian-dubh, or skean dhu, is a small single edged knife that’s part of traditional Scottish Highland dress.
• Duff: Duff is a surname
• Glen: Gleann, and thus Glen, is Scottish for Valley with a river and is typically narrower and deep.
• Knock: It’s another term for clock.
• Loch: Loch is the term used for a lake or an inlet (Loch Ness? Lake Ness).
• Strath: It’s a large valley that usually has a river and is wide and shallow.

I found it kind of fun to see what the origins of some of those syllables. For example, I thought it was interesting that there were different terms for a valley. You have strath for wide and shallow valleys and glen for narrow and deep valleys. Were there any that surprised you?

One of my favorite Scotches is The Balvenie’s 12 year old DoubleWood. It spends most of its live in a traditional oak whisky cask and then spends a little vacation in a Spanish oak sherry cask. It spends a little time first with bourbon and then with some sherry. It seems that a lot of whisky producers are starting to offer wood finishes as a way to add a bit of variety and spice to their selection (according to Wikipedia, the late 1990s was when they started doing this… but I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it!). While I doubt the DoubleWood was the first, it’s certainly the one I appreciate most often (I also enjoy their PortWood, but as a 21 year old Scotch, it’s not something to enjoy every single day!).

Oak Cask

All scotches spend most of their life maturing in an oak cask that once held either bourbon or sherry. The Macallan, for example, relaxes in an American Oak cask that once matured Jim Beam bourbon. The oak itself can be of the American variety or the French variety, with each imparting different characteristics as a result of the tightness of the grain. By Scottish law, all Scotch must be matured for a minimum of three years and one day in order to be called Scotch whisky.

Here are the various wood finishes you might expect to see (notice how many of them finish in casks that once held sweet wines?):

• Sauternes: It is a dessert wine from the Sauternais region (which is in Bordeaux) of France. Glenmorangie Nectar D’or is finished in a Sauternais cask.
• Madeira: Madeira is a fortified Portuguese wine (port) made on the Madeira Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. The Balvenie as a 17 year that’s finished in a Madeira cask.
• Moscatel: Moscatel is a variety of grape and it’s used to make Muscat wine (port). The Arran Malt has a whisky that is finished in Moscatel de Setúbal wine cask (many distillers offer this, include Edradour, Benriach, and others.
• Tawny Port: Tawny Port is a type of port using the Solera process.
• Virgin Oak: Take a cask that was designed to hold bourbon or sherry and skip the bourbon or sherry. The Balvenie New Wood, 17 years, is an example of this.
• Oloroso: A type of sherry, Glenmorangie Lasanta is finished in Oloroso Sherry casks from Jerez, Spain.

The above list is by no means a comprehensive list of all the finishes out there but it’s probably a good start. Note the absence of any Islays… their smokier character probably doesn’t lend itself to finishing.

It’s very difficult to mass categorize the wonderful spirits of Scotland’s myriad collection of distilleries but if one were forced two, the easiest buckets to put them in are based on smokiness. On one side, we have the heavily “peated,” smokey stylings of Scotch produced on the island of Islay. On the other, we have absolutely no smoke and no peat and the most popular area for that is a toss up between the Highland region and Speyside.
Read more…

I received an email from Laphroaig about two weeks explaining a new Scotch Whisky Association rule that requires all cask strength single malt Scotch whiskies to display a bottling date and batch number on each bottle. Laphroaig used to bottle all their cask strengths at 55.5% ABV but with the new rules, they’ll be bottling each batch individually with varying strengths and expressions. Since the cask strengths will no longer be blends of several casks, each will have slightly more distinction from bottling to bottling.

I’m not entirely sure why the rules were changed but it’ll certainly add a small little twist to each, here are the stats of Batch #1 of Laphroaig’s Cask Strength:
Batch 1 Facts
ABV: 57.8%/115.6 proof
Batch Date: February 2007
Tasting Notes: A full blast of massive peat smoke and seashore salt leads to a fading sweetness at the finish.
Batch Quantity: 5,100 bottles

The math of this is quite simple – there are 7 calories per gram of alcohol. To find out how many calories are in a shot of whisky, we simply need to convert that into grams, then calculate the grams of alcohol based on it’s proof, and multiply by seven. Simple right? A shot of anything is generally 1.50 fluid ounces, which is 41.7 grams.

Whisky can range in proof, starting at 80 proof, but we’ll stick with some simple math. Let’s go with 80 proof, or 40% alcohol, which gives us 16.68 grams of alcohol. If each gram has 7 calories, we know now that a shot of whisky has about 116.76 calories.

If you have a 43% ABV whisky, that’s 125.517 calories.

And if you drink a cask strength whisky at 60% ABV, then you’re talking a whopping 175.14 calories.

When people refer to Scotch whisky, they spell whisky without an ‘e.’ When they refer to the same golden or amber elixir produced in the United States, they spell whiskey with an ‘e.’ What gives?

As it turns out, the original spelling of the spirit is whisky without the ‘e.’ However, sometime in the 1800s, American distilleries wanted to differentiate their product, produced in similar fashion, from the Scottish version. In general, Scotch Whisky is spelled without an ‘e’ and any other whiskey (Canadian, Irish, etc.) is spelled with an ‘e.’ It’s unclear where the Japanese single malts fit in as they go without the ‘e.’ (Yamazaki for example)

Of course, this is not a rule followed universally and there’s no way to enforce it. In fact, a Boozin’ Blog they looked at the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms guidelines, to see if they required any nomenclature rules, and saw no consistency either.

In the end, tradition and ceremony dictates that Scotch is whisky without an ‘e’ and everything else has an ‘e.’

When I first started enjoying scotch, I was like every novice, I thought that more was better. The older the bottling, the better the scotch, right? The higher the alcohol by volume, the better the scotch, right? But like many things, older doesn’t mean better and neither does more.

When whisky is made, it’s stored in casks, or barrels, for many years. This new make whisky, as it’s called, can have an alcohol content anywhere from 60%-75%, depending on distillation. It’s potent stuff. As it matures, it loses some of its potency, known as the angel’s share. When it’s removed, depending on how old it is, it can still have a fairly high percentage of alcohol.

Normally distilled water is added to normalize the alcohol content to the standard bottling levels, however sometimes they normalize it at a might higher alcohol content for cask strength bottlings. For example, The Macallan Cask Strength, which has no age statement, has an alcohol by volume of 58.5%.

Is cask strength better? That’s debatable. At 58.5%, the burn of alcohol overpowers many of the subtle flavors in scotch. However, some people like the idea that you can get a taste of what it’s like straight out of the barrel, before water is added to bring it down to more pedestrian alcohol by volume levels. You can adjust it to your liking, instead of accepting the more standard levels of 43% or 40%.

I think it’s worth a try but unless you like your nose hairs singed off, I’d avoid getting a whole bottle.

If you’re like me, your ability to buy scotch far outpaces your ability to drink it. Every time I go through Duty Free at Heathrow, I seem to leave with a handful of bottles and now I have at least a dozen I haven’t even opened yet! Fortunately, like wine, the rules for storing Scotch are simple and it is far less delicate than wine!

Avoid Light, Air, Heat

The enemies of Scotch, like its younger cousin beer, are light, air, and heat. The key to storing your Scotch so that it remains unchanged is to minimize its contact to all three: Read more…

Do you know how to pronounce Lagavulin? Glenfiddich? Glenmorangie?

If you know those, you’re in pretty good shape. How about Bruichladdich? Caol Ila?

Now, visit this website and play all the names. They have an audio file for a lot of distilleries (many of the majors, most of the smaller ones too) in both .wav and .au, though some are only in .au file format.

How many did you get right? If you got the pronunciation right did you accent the right syllable? Glenmorangie is easy to say but I bet you accent the wrong syllable like I did.

Learn how to pronounce scotch whisky names from an expert.

One of the most entertaining parts of the Macallan Distillery tour was the section on the art of coopering, or barrel-making. I always implicitly knew that the barrel played a significant role in the taste of whisky but until the tour I never had a name for the art, coopering, nor any basic understanding of what led to what.

One of the biggest factors, besides the maturity time, has to do with the type of wood the barrels are made of. The wood itself is almost always oak, though at times spiritmakers have experimented with other hardwoods. With oak, you have two options – French Oak and American Oak. In many years past, the differences between the two were more pronounced as French Oak, with its tighter grains, imparted its flavor more slowly. However, as American coopering started adopting some of the French coopering practices (splitting staves along the grain and air-dry seasoning for 24 months), the differences have diminished over time.

Having sampled Macallan’s new make whisky (what goes into each barrel), I can definitely say that the aging process in the barrels really gives scotch its depth of flavor.