The perfect analogy is coffee. You can start with a cup of instant coffee or you spend $10,000 for a state of the art coffeemaker that will absolutely blow you away. The problem with starting at $10,000 is twofold:

• What if you don’t like coffee? If that’s the case, you just wasted $10,000 on something that a $1 cup could’ve taught… that you don’t like coffee.
• You won’t appreciate the coffee from the $10,000 as much as you would if you started drinking $1 cups of instant coffee and worked your way up.

So at the heart of this there’s a bit of frugality involved because you want to enjoy the things in life but you don’t want to spend all your money on just a few things. This extends perfectly into the enjoyment of Scotch, and other spirits, because you can’t appreciate just how good a dram is unless you’ve had a chance to start at the beginning.

So don’t run out and buy an 18-year or 25-year bottle, start with something from the lower end of the price spectrum so you know what you are getting for your money. You’ll learn to appreciate different aspects about a 10 year that you won’t get in a 25.

For example, I recently purchased a Glen Morangie 10 Year after a visit through Costco. Despite it’s seemingly younger age, it’s only slightly cheaper than a 12 year Glenlivet (I attribute that to production size), yet it’s a relatively smooth dram for not yet being a teenager.

Start with something cheap and slowly graduate yourself as you learn to appreciate.

Without knowing how good the food is, the price is a bit high. The Celebrate the Macallan tasting event I went to in DC was free, though they overbooked and we didn’t get a chance to make it into the actual tasting. The food was OK and they gave us tickets to the next night’s Celebrate event (and glasses of the Macallan 18!), which was more than enough of a compensation.

I looked online and couldn’t find any reviews, just event listings for every Morton’s steakhouse location, but at first glance it seems like a lukewarm deal.

I usually drink scotch out of a Glencairn glass (souvenirs from our visit to Scotland last year, including a Macallan Distillery Tour) or a Riedel Vinum Single Malt glasses, though a flask is handy when you’re on the go.

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:

• Why does light affect Scotch? Unlike beer, which is usually bottled in dark brown bottles, Scotch is generally stored in lighter colored bottles, usually clear, to show of its amazing radiant color. Beer is stored in dark bottles to protect it from light, which changes the chemical composition of hops. When you boil hops, it releases/produces isohumulones, aka isomerized alpha acids, which produces the same chemicals that skunks spray when they come into contact with visible or UV light (hence the term “skunked beer”). Scotch is less affected by this but it still is a factor.
• Why does air affect Scotch? The reason air affects Scotch has to do with oxidation, the same reason it affects wines and other spirits once they’ve been open.
• Why does heat affect Scotch? It’s really a mixture of heat and humidity but it has to do with evaporation. Scotch, unlike wine, doesn’t mature in the bottle so there’s really not an “ideal” temperature (unlike wine, which is said to mature best between 55° and 60°F). You want to keep it fairly cool because a higher, dryer temperature will result in faster evaporation if the seal of the cork is not 100%.

How to Store Scotch Whisky

Knowing that light, air and heat will all change your spirit, the key is to find a cool dark place to store your Scotch. I keep mine in glass cases in the basement and I store my bottles upright. The reason wine is stored sideways on racks is because you want to keep the wine corks in contact with the wine. As wine ages, the corks will crack and keeping them in contact with the wine will help them retain moisture. With Scotch, it’s recommended that you store it upright because the higher alcohol content can degrade the cork.

Once a bottle is opened, you introduce air into the mix and oxidation begins. In general, you can keep a bottle of scotch around for about a year (though I wouldn’t toss it unless it tastes bad) after it’s been opened, longer if you suck the air out of the bottle. If you get down to the last few drams, be aware that there’s more air inside now and the timeline shortens.

So keep it dark and cool (and sealed!) and you should be fine however you store it.

(Photo: darklife, I know it’s not technically Scotch but I liked the presentation in the photo.)

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.

Richard Paterson, whose blog I read regularly (though recently it’s been a bunch of Twitter update posts), said that they could replicate that blend if they could analyze the bottles.

Here’s a video about the conservation efforts surrounding the huts themselves:

Very cool stuff. Paterson has said that the style of the day, for the “Rare and Old” whisky, was for it to be heavy and peaty. If they’re able to replicate it to their satisfaction, I’d love to give it a try. There’s something very fun and magical about going back through time like this, especially knowing that, at the moment, it cannot be accurately replicated!

It turns out that Bruichladdich is building an anaerobic digester to turn yeasty waste into methane gas, which can be burned for electricity! Bruichladdich is an Islay, which means it’s on the same small island as its more well known Islay bretheren – Ardbeg, Laphroaig, Lagavulin, … the list goes on. As is the case with islands, the waste needs to go somewhere and right now it’s being pumped into the Sound of Islay.

Each year, the distillery spends about $35,000 ferrying the waste to the pipeline for disposal and they’re going to replace it with a digester that could produce as much as 80% of the power the distiller needs. When you combine these savings with the renewable power credits, it’s a win win. It’ll take only 3-5 years to recoup the cost!

So this weekend, in a trip to New York, we stopped by Viscount Wines and Liqours with some friends to pick up wine for their wine tasting party. As they shopped for wine, i wandered over to the scotch section and took a look. I wasn’t specifically looking for Glenmorangie but when I saw the unmistakable amber box, I noticed there were several right beside it.

As it turns out, Glenmorangie has about half a dozen special finishes:

• Lasanta – Finished in Spanish Oloroso sherry casks
• Quinta Ruban – Finished in Portugese port pipes/casks
• Nectar D’Or – Finished in Sauternes casks, Sauternes is a French dessert wine
• Sonnalta PX – Finished in Pedro Ximenez Sherry casks
• Astar – Matured entirely in “Artisan casks”

Several other distilleries offer finishes in sherry and port pipes, after years in a bourbon cask, but Glenmorangie is the first one I’ve seen that offers a version finished in Sauternes casks. (upon further research online, I see now that several distilleries offer Sauternes finishes)

(Photo: rollanb)

At almost every liquor store I’ve been to, there’s always been a bottle of Japanese whisky available and I’ve never had the opportunity to try it out. I think part of me is hesitant because it’s Japanese, whose whisky making tradition is but a toddler compared to the Scots. However, I think it’s fun to try something new so the next time I go to the store, I might take one home with me. One difference, which I’m eager to see how it affects the spirit, is that the distillation process is coal-fired, which is unique nowadays.

One thing that is the same… whisky in Japan is spelled without the E.

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.