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| APPRECIATING
WHISKY Pip Hills PART I — THE THEORY Writing is a dull business for the most part. I spent much of last year writing a book about Scotch whisky, and I can think of a lot of things I would rather have done: drinking whisky, for example. However, the writing gave me an excuse to do a fair bit of the latter, and the research was more enjoyable than most. The book is to be published in May, under the title of Appreciating Whisky, by Harper Collins. In it I have set out to address a number of issues, of which the one most likely to be of interest to customers of Loch Fyne Whiskies is the matter of taste. It is rarely these days that one comes across a malt whisky—or a good blend, for that matter—which does not have a description of the whisky. The description is usually in the form of tasting notes which suggest that the taster will experience some rather remarkable flavours, few of which bear much resemblance to what he or she knows as whisky. Tasting notes are one of the current fashions in whisky marketing: their purpose is to impress the consumer, not to enlighten him. The result is merely to confuse a public which is already pretty hazy about what it should be looking for in a whisky. There are a lot of people out there who genuinely want to learn about Scotch whisky; but putting daft tasting notes on (often indifferent) whiskies is not the way to educate them. This is a matter which has concerned me for some years now, as I have watched flavour descriptions become the preferred way of selling malt whiskies. My concern has been on behalf of both distillers and consumers. On behalf of the good guys among the distillers, as the less-scrupulous employ mendacious tasting notes to promote indifferent whiskies. And on behalf of the reasonable consumer, as flavour descriptions become the playthings of nerds and enthusiasts. The main purpose of my book is to equip the reader with the information and the techniques he requires in order to be able to make the judgement for himself. If he is to do that, he must know what flavours he is to look for, and how to find them. With the help of friends and colleagues, I have identified those fifteen flavours which are most likely to be encountered in a Scotch whisky. There are hundreds of others, but there is no point in seeking subtleties if you don’t have a grasp of the basics—and I find that the basics are what an awful lot of folk don’t have. The problem is how to show them those basics. Some are easy and some not so easy to detect. And a lot depends on the concentration at which the flavour is present in the whisky. Anyone can detect the smoky flavour-elements in an Ardbeg or a Laphroaig, but to discern them in a whisky which uses lightly-peated malt is by no means simple. Or, to take a different example, cereal aromas. These are among the commonest flavours in a well-matured malt, but few people recognise them. It is possible to show most whisky flavours in synthetic, concentrated form. We do this in our Malt Masterclass, using essences, but it is not a course normally available to the amateur. My problem was to devise a DIY method, using readily-available materials. One course, given the list of flavours, is simply to expose oneself to natural sources of flavour. That means going round sniffing things. If you haven’t done it before, people may think you a bit strange, but I can guarantee you will find the experience interesting. For smoky flavours, obviously, you should sniff all sorts of smoke. There are lots of different smoke smells, depending on what was burnt. Bones are not as nice as sandalwood. And of course you ought also to sniff all the smoke-related smells you can find, such as tar boilers and lavatory cleaners and the insides of old boats. Ditto with flowers and fruits—only for preference don’t use the flowers from the florist, which mostly won’t smell of much, or the fruits from the supermarket, which will have as little smell as they do taste. You have to go to the sources—and for tropical fruits such as mangoes, that means you must go to the tropics, for the scent doesn’t travel. Gathering smells is not easy, and how well you can do it depends a lot on how you live your life. Cooking helps a lot: probably the easiest way of exposing oneself to a large range of natural flavour elements is to take an interest in cooking. I keep a jar of caster sugar in my kitchen, in which are immersed two vanilla pods. Their aroma comes as something of a surprise to folk who have never met it, and it is a smell which they will never forget. It is easy to lead a well-practised nose to whisky odours. But what about the great majority, who don’t have any such background? How do we show them what is in a whisky? The method is known as a difference-analysis. This sounds fancy and scientific, but really it is quite simple, being based on something which almost everyone can do. If I present you with a whisky and ask you to look for the nutty flavours in it, chances are you will find it difficult, for you won’t be able to see past all the other flavours to something as subtle as nuttiness. But if I give you two whiskies which are broadly similar, save that one is nutty and the other is not, then by sniffing them alternately and comparing and contrasting the aromas, you should be able to discern the flavour to which I refer when I say that one smells nutty. And I can tell you that it works: we have run this method before lots of people who have neither experience of smells nor interest in liquor. Most of them leave quite astonished, having discovered a faculty of which they were almost unaware, and having used that faculty in a context—the appreciation of fine liquor—which they had assumed would forever be a closed book to them. Having devised the method, the problem was then to find readily-available materials. Happily, malt whiskies have such a range of flavours that it is not too hard to find all you want in a small number of them. The perceptibility of a particular aroma depends on several things. Firstly, on whether it is present at all—for no whisky is likely to exhibit all of the odours a whisky might have, and some will show only a few. Secondly, on the concentration at which it is present. There is a threshold, which varies with the individual, below which scents are not discernible at all. Technique helps with this, for you can enhance the perceptibility of smells by going about nosing in the right way, and under optimum conditions. Thirdly, on the presence of other aromas. Some smells mask while others enhance. Peatreek, for example tends to mask other, more delicate odours; vanilla typically enhances sweet scents. Technique and experience are again valuable, for they allow us to see what is behind the mask.
The aromas listed are those most likely to be met with in any Scotch whisky. I have put them in two ranks: the first being scents easy to detect, the second less so. The examples given alongside each category are intended only to give you an idea of the sort of flavour. In practice, most flavours are encountered in combination with others, as compound tastes or smells. Thus caramel and vanilla are commonly experienced together as the odour of toffee or honey. (There is a difference, which is contributed by other flavours which are present in lower concentrations.) Or fruit cake, which may be both of the above together with fruity odours. Or a specific scent such as that of gardenias, which has a flowery fragrance together with slight sourness. PART ll — PRACTICAL |
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