Intangibles

Welcome to the latest incarnation of my blogging, once again called Seen Through A Glass. I already have a podcast by the same name, and now there’s a new website and, once again, a blog by that name.

But my new book has its own name: American Whiskey Master Class. It isn’t about bottle picks, or unicorns, or the secondary market, or any of the things that make whiskey drinkers (or whiskey collectors…) crazy.

It’s about how whiskey makers create flavor and aroma in whiskey. It all comes from something master Scotch blender Dr. Bill Lumsden says: “If the barrel gives a whisky 50% of its flavor...that just means that the other 50% doesn't come from the barrel.” The book is about all the flavor in whiskey, including the barrel-sourced stuff...but what I really wanted to learn about, and then write about, was that other 50%.

If you’ve already read my previous book, Whiskey Master Class…yes, that’s what it was about. But my publisher came back to me early last year, and said, ‘Look, interest in American whiskey is smoking hot. How about we tear out all the Scotch and Irish and Canadian stuff, and you dig even deeper into American whiskey?’

How could I say no? So I laid waste to almost everything that wasn’t about American whiskey, and dusted off all the material on American whiskey that didn’t make it into the previous book — like some neat stuff on warehouse thermodynamics — and went a bit nuts on gathering even more details on how Americans make whiskey and create those flavors and aromas that make it so good.

I wrote about the traditions of whiskey making, the different grains, and all the different legal definitions of whiskey allowed by American regulation (there are so many). I looked at mashing and fermentation, the various techniques and equipment of distillation, the barrel – how it’s made, how it’s filled, and now with American single malts, how it’s refilled – the warehouse, the years of aging, blending, packaging, the input of people at each step of the way.

And there’s one more thing…one of my favorite chapters in the book: The Intangibles. My wife, a retired scientist, always likes to say that if you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen. Except…she admits and agrees that we definitely did fall in love with each other 37 years ago, and although you can see the effects, there’s no real way to measure it. It’s intangible, unable to be touched, grasped, or measured, but it’s no less real. I maintain that this happens in whiskey, too.

The big one, and maybe not entirely intangible, is terroir, the effect of place on whiskey. Does where the grain is grown have an effect, or where the whiskey is made, or where it’s aged?

I have a colleague, Robin Robinson, who is adamant that terroir has no effect; whiskey is too processed for terroir to be noticed, he says, and it’s a good point. Where wine is minimally processed grape juice, whiskey is subject to a lot of processing that involves physical and chemical changes: milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation with the cuts that involves, barrel aging, proofing. Isn’t it a completely new thing, heavily influenced by that barrel aging?

But I also talked to the late Dave Pickerell, a hugely experienced master distiller, who was working with a lot of small distillers in the last years of his career. He had the opinion that we don’t think there’s terroir because we haven’t been using grain from discrete, small farms. Big batches of whiskey mean big grain orders that come from all over, and get blended together before they even get to the distillery. How could we possibly find terroir?

Dave was working with small distillers using grain from individual fields, and he did believe that he was finding differences. His work continues.

It’s also not just about the grain. John Cooper, over at Dad’s Hat in Bristol, PA, told me about a batch of barrels they got in from Minnesota that unexpectedly gave their rye a distinct minty character. Oak terroir?

I think there are several examples that indicate terroir IS real, if more in the sense that French winemakers use it. For them – and they created the term – terroir, or ‘gout de terroir,’ literally ‘the taste of the earth,’ includes everything that goes into an individual wine: the soil, the sun, the rain, the slope, the methods, and most definitely the people and the traditions.

The real test would be if you could blind taste two whiskeys made in identical ways with the same grain from two different farms...which you can do, with Waterford Irish whiskey (before it closed, sadly). I have, and found clear differences. Since then, I’ve also run into people who say, essentially, that Waterford cheats...but never want to say how exactly, in writing, which really makes me wonder about how much people have invested in terroir NOT being a factor.

Experience is another intangible. Can you taste it when your whiskey is made by someone who’s been making whiskey a long time? This one would be hard to put your finger on, but I would argue that there are two sides to the coin. Experienced whiskey makers give you quality and consistency. But new whiskey makers are much more likely to give you innovation, new flavors...while occasionally dropping a bad one. It’s like watching a streak home run hitter that powers a team...but who also strikes out a lot.

Perception is reality. If a whiskey is rare, or old, or in a great package, or has a great story...does it taste better? That depends on the drinker, but I’d argue it has a definite effect. I mean, placebos work shockingly well sometimes as medicine. There have been several studies done that show people think cheap wines taste better when they’re presented in fancy packages with higher prices; do we think whiskey drinkers are immune to that?

I would submit to you – a favorite phrase I picked up from Anchor Distilling founder Fritz Maytag – that the very existence of blind tasting as a valued check on such influence proves that such influence exists. What’s more, it exists in both directions. Put a good whiskey in a plastic bottle with a screwcap, charge 20 bucks for it, and I guarantee there will be people who will tell you it’s crap, rotgut.

I would further argue that this harms no one. To quote an eminent authority (it’s me, ha!), “When you approach a whiskey that you know is expensive, rare, elegantly packaged, or particularly old, it's natural to have expectations. You can rely on your objectivity, you can rely on blind tasting…or you can simply enjoy the whiskey. After all, if all that stuff is combining to make the whiskey taste better to you...exactly who is being hurt in that transaction?”

Here’s a real intangible: the truth. If you’re drinking a whiskey you like, and have liked for a while, a brand you’ve bought again and again...and you find out that the whole backstory is made up, maybe even flatly untrue? How does that whiskey taste now? Like lies and disappointment.

I’m not saying that if a whiskey is ‘sourced,’ selected from an existing distillery’s stocks and bought and bottled under a different label, that it’s not good. That’s down to the individual whiskey. If something is sourced from MGP in Indiana, for example, or from Dickel, I’m definitely going to sample it: plenty of good whiskey coming out of there. But tell me the truth about it.

One last intangible: the glass. I did a presentation for Glencairn crystal once, going through how their different glasses – the standard, the copita, the mixing glasses – affected the flavor and aroma of Johnnie Walker Black. Now, those are three quite different glasses, that deliver the whiskey to you in different ways: more or less hand contact for warming, different size ‘chimney’ for nosing, and even a different lip.

But then I addressed the Glencairn Cut Crystal glass: the standard shape and size, but in heavier, fancier glass with a slightly different refraction index, and facets to catch the light and the amber flashes of a lively whisky...does any of that really make a difference in how a whisky tastes?

Well… Do you want it to? Is that why you spent the extra bucks and got the glass?

Do you maybe pour a better whisky in this glass, or did you get this glass because you were buying a better whisky and felt your glass deserved an upgrade as well?

Do you wait for a more perfect or more demanding moment to pour whisky in this glass? Is it a moment that deserves something more?

I would submit … that if you own the Glencairn Cut Crystal Glass and actually drink from it, that you already know the answer to these questions.

It does make a difference, because whisky is such an intimate, personal experience. Drink from the fancy, expensive glass… My God...is that really the same whisky? Of course it is. It’s just that the glass has brought it to your fullest attention.

And that, my dear friends, is exactly why I wrote American Whiskey Master Class. To bring whiskey your fullest attention, to remind you of every little thing that went into that glass. To make your whiskey taste better. You’re welcome!