How to “Refine” Your Palate

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Ever read the tasting notes to a whisky, try it, and realize you don't taste or smell ANY of it? You're not alone, you just need to work on your palate. :)Ever read tasting notes and think: “I am not getting any of those flavors…” ?

Here are Glenlivet 12 Tasting Notes from Master of Malt:

  • Nose: Sweet creamy vanilla, honey, pineapple, vanilla, pressed apples and a little cinnamon.
  • Palate: Apple cores, fresh and fruity trifle and creamy citrus.
  • Finish: Long and delicious, almonds and apple.

The first time I tasted Glenlivet 12, I didn’t get any of that.

My first thought? “My palate must not be refined enough.” (That and, “wow it’s spicy at the end, or is that alcohol burn?”)

When I first started enjoying whisky, that’s how I felt. “I don’t know anything, maybe I should read these notes as a guide or something.”

But it’s not that your or my palate isn’t refined enough, it’s that we aren’t experienced enough. We haven’t drank enough whisky!

Whisky is an Orchestra

Enjoying whisky is a lot like listening to an orchestra. You can enjoy it as the sum of its parts. You can enjoy it for its individual instruments. If you’ve never heard a violin on its own, you won’t be able to listen for it in an orchestra. Someone could tell you the first chair violinist is absolutely phenomenal but until you’ve heard a violin, you’d have no idea.

For instruments, it’s easy – fire up Youtube and you can hear a violin. You can hear how it differs from a viola and a cello.

Now go back to the orchestra, can you tell the violin from the cello from the viola? It’s a little harder now that you have all the other instruments going at once.

That illustrates the struggle with tasting notes and whisky. And you can’t download, as easily, the flavors of pressed apples, cinnamon, apple cores (vs. apples!) and trifle (what???).

The only real solution is to find those flavors and scents and experience them.

When whisky tasters, especially the seasoned veterans, talk about certain scents and notes, they’re talking about a very specific note. For orange peel, they’re usually talking about that bitter citrus note you get when you scrape the peel of an orange with your fingernail. That’s very specific. It’s not the pith, it’s not how the oil itself, but the intersection of the bitterness of the outer skin PLUS the oils.

What’s the difference between toffee and caramel? As someone who doesn’t eat the candies that often, it’s a subtle difference. Toffee is sugar and butter. Caramel is sugar and cream or milk… sometimes with butter too. The subtle difference is the creaminess of milk. Good luck buddy.

The short answer is drink more scotch. 🙂

Remember, it’s about enjoyment…

In end, it’s about enjoyment.

Some “expert” might say that he or she gets this note or that. Hint of lilac, avocadoes, and an unripe grapefruit! Whatever. It’s about enjoying it.

For some, the fun is in discovery. I’ll take a sip from a glass, taste one thing and five minutes later, taste something completely different. Part of that is the alcohol evaporating in the glass, part of that is just my palate acclimating, and part of it is that you can only focus on one instrument in an orchestra. If you tune into the violin, it’s hard to hear the flute at the same time.

Have fun and don’t take it seriously! (says the guy who tasted Big Red chewing gum in Four Roses Single Barrel!)

5 Tasty St. Patrick Day Cocktails

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St. Patrick's Day is a day of jubilation and celebration, here are five tasty cocktails made with Irish Whiskey and inspired by the celebration!When I’m sitting at home by myself or with a few friends, my drink of choice is a whisky of some kind, neat.

When I’m out with friends, at a restaurant, or at a party – my whisky is usually in a cocktail. I think the atmosphere of fun and friends lends itself to a fun and friendly cocktail. Whisky neat seems a little more reserved and serious, not fitting the environment. (there’s also the safety aspect, with a cocktail I can better regulate my consumption… it’s easy to sip whisky too fast and then who drives?)

So, as we near St. Patrick’s Day… my friends at Teeling (I wrote up tasting notes for their Single Grain a while back) sent along some ideas for tasty cocktails I should try as we celebrate the Apostle of Ireland.

We have five on the menu and what is intruiging about each is that they offer something different for each aficionado.

Not Ready For the Holidays to End? Hot Buttered Whiskey

  • 1.5oz (50ml)Teeling Small Batch
  • 4oz (120ml) Hot water
  • 1 Tbsp spiced butter mix (recipe below)
  • Aerated double cream with orange zest.
  • Ground Nutmeg (as garnish)

Spiced butter mix
Hot-Buttered-CoffeeePut ½lb (230grm)softened unsalted butter, ½lb(230grm) muscavado sugar, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground Nutmeg, 1 tsp ground all spice, and ¼tsp ground clove into food processor and blend it into a paste. Enough for 10-12 portions of Hot Buttered Whiskey.

Preparation: Use a heated heat-proof glass, add hot water and 1 Tbsp of spiced butter mix and stir until dissolved. Add whiskey and a layer of aerated cream. Garnish with ground nutmeg.

The Teeling Small Batch works well in this because it’s rum cask finished, so this is like a Hot Buttered Rum but with whiskey.

For a Pick Me Up Mid-Party? Irish Coffee

Irish Coffee

  • 1.5oz (40ml)Teeling Small Batch
  • 1.5oz (40ml) Rich Double Espresso
  • 0.75oz (20ml) Demerara sugar syrup
  • 3.5oz 100ml Hot water (Not Boiling)
  • Organic Fresh Cream infused with orange zest, lightly aerated
  • Sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg

Irish coffee is pretty simple to prepare, just mix the first four ingredients together and then top with some fresh cream and garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg, fresh if you have it.

Love Your Sours? Try a Liberties Sours

Liberties Sours

  • 1.5oz (40ml) Teeling Small Batch
  • 0.75oz (20ml) Draught Guinness
  • 0.75oz (20ml) Lapsang Souchon Tea Syrup (recipe below)
  • 0.34oz (10ml) Fresh Lime Juice
  • 0.75oz (20ml) Egg White
  • 3 dashes Angostura Bitter
  • 1 dash Chocolate bitters

Lapsang Souchon tea syrup
In a pot, put a Liter of water, 2.2 lb (1 kg) of Demerara sugar, and 1.76 oz. (50g) loose Lapsang Souchong tea. Bring to a simmer and infuse for 4-5 minutes and all sugars are dissolved. Strain out tea leaves.

Preparation: Once you’ve made the syrup, the rest is pretty easy. Add all the ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake for 10-12 seconds. Strain off the ice and dry shake without ice for 10 seconds. Garnish with butters.

Feeling Feisty? Redleg Rebellion

The Redleg Rebellion

  • 1.00 oz. (30ml) Teeling Small Batch
  • 0.75 oz. (20ml) Clement Creole Shrub
  • 0.34oz (10ml) Taylors Velvet Falernum
  • 0.75 oz. (20ml) Lime Juice
  • 0.75 oz. (20ml) Pineapple Syrup

Preparation: Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 10-15 seconds. Strain into a rocks glass with crushed ice. Garnish with a pineapple slice, mint sprig and cherry.

Sound familiar? This is a Mai-tai, but with whisky. 🙂

A Party Punch: The Tipperary

Tipperary

  • 50ml Teeling Single Grain
  • 20ml Sweet Vermouth (Carpano Antica, Dolin or similar)
  • 10ml Green Chartreuse
  • 2 dash Peychauds bitters

Add all ingredients into a glass with ice and stir until mixed. Garnish with a lemon peel. Drink with gusto. 🙂

Enjoy this St. Patrick’s Day, however you do it, and let me know what you did! 🙂

Are Whiskey Clubs Worth It?

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Do you ever buy a bottle of something, have one dram, and realize you absolutely hate it? It’s happened to me before. Twice.

To be fair, the price was worth taking a flyer on it. $30 for 750ml of 18 year old? Sure, why not.

Here’s the thing — I didn’t buy them because they were interesting. I bought them because they had high age statements and were strangely inexpensive relative to other whiskies aged that long. You get what you pay for. 🙂

I think part of the fun of whisky is the discovery process. I’ve long wanted to try more Japanese whiskies, especially since they’ve been collecting all the awards, but the price of a single bottle is too high to try something I might not like.

What if I spend $90 on a 750ml bottle of Yamazaki 12yo and discover I hate it? That’s a lot to spend to “try it out.”

Here’s where a whisky club might make sense and one that I recently learned about is called Flaviar. Flaviar sends you small samplings and private bottlings from a variety of craft and premium distilleries, giving you the opportunity to try small samples without committing to 750ml of something you don’t want to finish. That’s what they pride themselves in.

Flaviar sent me a box to help me understand what the service would be like – I opted for the Asia and Oceania Whisky package because if I was going to try something, it’ll be stuff that’s hard for me to find. I don’t need small samples of stuff I know. 🙂

flaviar-outside-box

Nice cardboard box with the package clearly labelled, and the inside consists of the samples a little introductory card about Flaviar, plus two pamphlets.

flaviar-package-contents

The two pamphlets are great – one discusses how to host a tasting (they recommend one pack per three people! might not be enough!) and the other talks about each of the whiskies in the package. The tasting guide explains how you should approach tasting whisky, what aspects of the production process contribute to which flavors, etc.

The guide to the whiskies is really fun. The five samples included in this kit were:

  • Kavalan – This is the one I wanted to try, Kavalan is produced in Taiwan; it’s where my parents emigrated from to the United States.
  • Milford 10yo – New Zealander done in the Lawland style, another one I’d never heard of and wanted to try.
  • Paul John Brilliance – Indian whisky that is made with Indian barley, matured in bourbon barrels and is unpeated… most Indian whiskies are usually molasses based, this one isn’t.
  • Lark – Rum Cask Finish – They are located in Tasmania!
  • Togouchi Blended – A Japanese blended whisky

Here’s a closeup of the five I received:
flaviar-45ml-sample-closeups

Flaviar bills itself as “a club for explorers at heart,” and I think this the only way a whisky club “works.” It needs to be more about discovery and trying new things and less about getting a good deal.

If you look at Caskers Whiskey Explorer club, it starts at $159.99 quarterly and gets you three full-size bottles a quarter (so a bottle a month). Is there a theme? Not that I can tell. You pay $53.33 per bottle, which can get you a fantastic bourbon or a decent scotch. It’s hard to know and with no theme, even harder to justify getting it. I’d rather just buy the bottles myself as I go.

Flaviar isn’t cheap though. If you try to buy their Asia & Oceania Whisky kit a la carte now (it was the kit from October 2015), it’s three samples (Lark Rum Cask, Milford 10yo, and Paul John Brilliance) for $42.

The membership itself is $60 per quarter and you get one package a quarter.

The most recent one (March 2016) is called The Canadian Lot and features McGuinness Old Canada Whisky, WhistlePig Straight Rye 10yo, and Crown Royal XR. Is that worth $60? I can’t find McGuinness anywhere here, WhistlePig is a $75 bottle (so the 45ml is “worth” $4.50), and the crown is an $87 bottle (45ml = $5.22). Strictly on value, it’s not. But as a premium for discovery, that’s up to you to decide…

The tricky part here is that you really need to bring obscure whiskies in each package for it to work. I look at The Canadian Lot and I only see one unfamiliar name – McGuinness. I was far more intrigued by the Asia & Oceania Whisky box – some Australian whiskies, an Indian whiskey, and one from Taiwan I always wanted to try? Bring it on!

There are some other perks to membership which are non-obvious and… depending on how they develop, might be really interesting. Flaviar, like many places, also sells harder to find bottles and membership also gives you 3 free package shippings a quarter. This could be a good deal if they get bottles you like. For example, one deal they have now is Kilchoman Machir Bay, a release from 2014 that is about $10 cheaper than anywhere else that has it. That’s a nice benefit but it’s hard to know how useful that would be on an ongoing basis.

They also have private bottlings under their Deer, Bear & Moose label. The first one was a 20yo single malt from Tobermory and the second is a Ben Nevis 18yo. They go for about $125. Here’s a photo of their first and second private bottlings.
DBM_1st_and_2nd_edition

THIS would be interesting… since members get first crack at it. But is it interesting enough to join?

What’s your take on whisky of the month clubs?

Four Roses Single Barrel Tasting Notes

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four-roses-single-barrelAs scotch whisky prices creep upward, I’ve been dabbling in the world of bourbons and other domestically produced whiskies. There’s a whole rich world of spirits here, a rapidly growing craft distilling culture, so why limit myself? I’m sure you’d all agree… whisky is good, whether it has an E in it or not! 🙂

On a recent trip state-side, my friend Rick asked me to pick up a bottle of Four Roses Single Barrel because he’d heard it was good and it wasn’t available in the UK. I decided that if it was good enough that he wanted me to pick one up for him when he came by, it was certainly going to be good enough for me to buy for myself… the logic is sound, right? And at just $43 a bottle at the local store, it was hardly a big bet.

This wasn’t my first meeting with Four Roses. I’d tried their Small batch, Single Barrel, and Yellow Bourbon back in May of 2011. Back then, I didn’t have the experience, vocabulary, or the palate to appreciate a 100 proof bourbon.

Fast forward five years, a lot of drams, and you bet I can appreciate it now!

The label of my Four Roses Single Barrel stated it was from Warehouse No. TS, Barrel No. 41-6E, for what that’s worth, and I suspect there will be small variations between all the single barrels from different barrels.

Tasting Notes

  • Nose: Cherry, plum, vanilla, maple syrup
  • Taste: Big red chewing gum (i.e. cinnamon), sweet
  • Finish: Medium, spicy

In my mind, they could’ve replaced the Four Roses logo with four cherries, that’s how pronounced that flavor was on both the nose and the palate. Cherry was the high note flavor while plum and vanilla rounded it out. Cinnamon presented itself like the chewing gum Big Red, it was unreal because that was my first thought and it’s been 20+ years since I’ve smelled or chewed that gum, and there was a sweetness ever present. Finish was nice, a little heat and spice, but complemented the cherries, vanilla, and cinnamon.

I wonder how much of the fun of this bottle was in the nostalgia of a gum I haven’t chewed in many years. I wasn’t even a big fan of Big Red too, I preferred spearmint gums over different flavored ones. But when I did get a stick of Big Red, the novelty was always fun and it reminded me of all the fun I had in the first few minutes of a Fireball (after the spice was gone, I usually spit those out!).

Thoroughly enjoyed it, would get again. 🙂

(photo source)

The Macallan Edition No. 1 Tasting Notes

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Photo Courtesy of Gregg Albert

Photo Courtesy of Gregg Albert

The Macallan is one of the most celebrated distilleries in all of Scotland and one I’ve visited before in the past. It’s a great tradition and most scotch aficionados make it a point to try their signature bottle, the 18yo.

In more recent times, Macallan has been leading the way in non-age statement whisky. If you go through any duty free store, you won’t find any Macallan with an age statement. They’re all NAS in travel retail.

Regardless of what you think about the general move in that direction (I am not a snob about age but I think something does get lost when nothing has an age statement), you can’t argue that distilleries still have to put out a good product. You may be swayed by the label on the bottle but you won’t be tricked by the dram inside (hopefully!).

Macallan’s latest entrant into the NAS whisky market is the Macallan Edition No. 1. 48% ABV and priced at around $100, Macallan says it’s aged in 8 different styles of European and American oak casks, hand picked by Macallan Master Whisky Maker Bob Dalgarno.

I didn’t try it but one of our intrepid Facebook members did, Gregg Albert, and this is what he shared with us:

  • Nose: Orange peel, vanilla, and a sweetness that reminded me of funnel cakes at the Fair a few days ago.
  • Palate: Full of spice and rich fruit, toffee. Hits with a punch.
  • Finish: Spiced! lingering and smooth.

He added – “This stuff is complex and changes with every sip. It’s going to the top of my list…” He has Edition No.2 also, which may make it into a future tasting note on the site (I hope!).