Whisky tasting: Heady flavours put whisky on the map
There is a single malt for everyone, you just have to find it and then stick to it.
12:00PM GMT 04 Mar 2009
Never one to rush things, I came late to the charms of uisge beatha. Indeed, it took several decades for me to develop any sort of taste for whisky (or even whiskey). Single malts are still hit-and-miss and just when I think I’ve cracked it, managing to identify my all-time favourite, I get stopped in my tracks by some overly medicinal, iodine-laden, tonsil-tormentor.
“Don’t panic and don’t give up,” says Dave Broom, editor of The Scotch Whisky Review and author of the Handbook of Whisky. “There’s a single malt for everyone.”
I challenge Broom to convince me. Not only that, I challenge Broom to convince my wife, Marina, who professes to loathe the stuff. “Every bar worth its salt has a fine range of malts these days,” says Broom when we meet in his local, the Ginger Pig in Hove. “But since there are currently 92 working distilleries in Scotland with around 2,000 different malts between them, it can be deeply confusing finding a substitute if your favourite isn’t there.”
To help the whiskily-challenged, Broom, in association with multi-distillery-owning drinks giant, Diageo, has devised a Single Malt Whisky Flavour Map. This grid is dotted with scores of whiskies, their coordinates determined by how light, smoky, rich and delicate they are.
Glenlivet 15 Year Old, for example, in the bottom right-hand corner, is judged to be delicate and rich. Ardbeg 10, in the top left, is light and smoky. Mannochmore 12, slap in the middle, is a balance of all four.
To the untutored eye, it looks like a game of Battleships, but here, Broom assures me, is a plan onto which every malt whisky can be plotted. He points out that the Highlands stretch from Wick to the suburbs of Glasgow: there is no shared terroir among the distilleries of Scotland. Unlike with grapes, where one might favour the style of wine produced in Pauillac, say, or Pommard, there is no common thread between the whiskies produced in, say, Speyside.
Although the basics of whisky production are the same, each distillery does things differently. The peating levels, the mashing of the barley, the length of fermentation and distillation, the shape and size of stills, the length of maturation and type of oak, will all lead to very differently flavoured malts.
Just as following one particular area cannot be relied upon, nor can following one distillery the way one follows a wine producer. If you like the wines of Château Cissac it’s odds-on you will like them every year, relishing the variations of successive vintages on the house style.
Not so with single malts, where the differences between each expression can be vast. I greatly enjoy Highland Park’s 18 Year Old, with its rich, dark fruit, sweetness and smoke. I don’t enjoy HP’s 21 Year Old, which is far too smoky for my taste and too oily and dry. So, with no regional characteristics and no continuity of style within any one distillery, what the heck does one do?
The answer, says Broom, is to identify a flavour profile and stick to it. This is where the map comes in. Knowing that I like bourbon, he sticks a glass of Glenmorangie 18 Year Old under my beak. It’s lemony, with hints of coconut and I really like its long, sweet finish. He picks Glen Elgin 12 because he reckons I’ll like the fruitiness and toffee character. He’s right, I do.
We’re in the mid to left of the quadrant and we head further towards smoky/rich with a Talisker 18 Year Old. I’m overwhelmed with iodine and if aromas are a hotline to memory, I’m back in the san at school, circa 1973. It’s a step too far: I was happier with the two Glens.
Broom then turns to whisky-loathing Marina and asks what she usually drinks. Her reply of wine, namely New World sauvignon blanc or Old World pinot noir, sends him scurrying to the shelves.
“It’s a common thing to say 'I don’t like whisky’ when you just don’t like that whisky. Try this,” says Broom, handing her some Glenmorangie Lasanta, finished in sherry casks. This, he reckons, will appeal to someone who likes the finesse of old red Burgundy.
Marina, complete pushover that she is, gives it a good sniff and swirl and declares it delicious. “I had no idea,” she says. “It’s wonderful.” She likes it even more after Broom encourages her to add water, which allows the fruitiness to flood out. A nip of Mortlach 16 and of Clynelish 14 and she reckons she’s hooked. “Oops, I’ve finished it,” she says.
A slurp of Glenrothes Special Reserve, though, reminds her of her previous antipathy, and the penny drops. “It’s like going into a record shop to find something new. Browsing the CD covers doesn’t help, but telling the assistant that you like early Nina Simone might. I now know what I like and what I don’t,” she adds.
Lucky her. My problem is that I can never remember what I like, especially when I like it.
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