Whisky Party

When we started this blog we intended to focus on Scotch whisky, and primarily that is what we have done.  All three of us, I’m pretty sure, prefer to drink SMS (single-malt Scotch) over other types of whisk(e)y, but still thoroughly enjoy just about any brown liquor.  Dr. Whisky, one of my early and heavy influences on what to drink, how to think about it, and how to write about it, has just recently been in the middle of a “week” long run of reviews featuring whiskies other than scotch.  Some of them have been single-malts more-or-less modeled after scotch whisky, and some of them have been regional whiskies in styles all their own.  But its been an eye-opening reminder that there is a lot of whiskEy out there beyond the UK horizon.

With John Hansell posing the question, “is the Scotch whisky industry in decline?” (emphasis mine), I have been thinking about the primacy of SMS, at least within our little corner of the blogosphere, over its Irish, American, Canadian, and perhaps even Japanese cousins, not to mention Indian, Syrian, European, or other regional whiskies.

Well, one of my personal reasons for focussing on SMS (and giving up on my youthful pursuit of mastering the world of vin rouge) was that Scotch whisky, in particular, offered a much more easily-mastered assemblage of styles, manufacturers, and bottlings (or seemingly so).  SMS features a legally enforcible restriction of its ingrediants to just barley, yeast, and water.  True, flavor-diversity and nuance are  achieved through a complex but subtle combination of terrior (soil, water, air, etc.) and method of manufacture (eg, peated maltings, fat or slim stils, and various wood types).  But one not need to know anything about the ingrediants of a single-malt scotch in order to appreciate it.

With a nice wine, on the otherhand, if one knew not its varietal or blend, it would be a strange thing to have any kind of real appreciation for it.  And within those two categories there are a myriad of possibilities.  The same might be true, to a lesser degree, of the world’s other whiskies.  And because there is not the same kind of stylistic distinction (in my mind, anyway) between, say, Italian wine and French, or Californian wine and Australian, focussing on just one country, let alone one region of one country, doesn’t lend one the same kind of mastery and sense of satisfation as being a Scotch malt expert (who can easily ignore the rest of the whisk(e)y world).

And even though Scotch sales are down per capita, the industry continues to make money and forge ahead with new and exciting projects and products.  Ardbeg, which has produced some of my favorite whiskies (10 yo, Uigeadail, Airigh Nam Beist), lights up the tasting charts with new expressions seemingly every few months.  Its bretheren on the other side of Scotland, Glenmorangie, operates similarly.  There have been no shortage of expressions from Bruichladdich, and even my personal favorite, Highland Park, has been releasing older and older expressions (the 40 and soon a 50 yo).  While many of these were planned decades ago, the current trend within the Scotch industry is certainly premiumisation.  With less people purchasing Scotch, and the price per bottle increasing, it seems to be returning to its older status as an elite, luxury item just around the time the younger (and perhaps, at the moment, less wealthy) generation was starting to accept it.

So if the question is whether we at the Whisky Party should branch out a little bit during this odd sub-phase in the Scotch industry, a recent notice from the Friends of Laphroaig indicates that an answer may be forthcoming (to Chicago, anyway).  Simon Brooking, brand ambassador and all-around interesting dude, is headed to Lincoln Park’s Faith and Whiskey

to defend the honor of our fine Scotch whisky at Chicago’s Great Whisk[e]y Debate. I’d be honored to have you cheering me on as I go head to head with Knob Creek® Whiskey Professor Steve Cole and Canadian Club® Master Ambassador Dan Tullio in a no-holds-barred showdown for whisk[e]y supremacy. Of course, after going a few spirited rounds, we’ll be ready to share a few rounds with friends like you. It’s going to be an educational and entertaining evening you don’t want to miss.

I’ll be sure to attend the bout and blog the results.  And irrespective of those, we’ll be sure to pay more attention to whiskEy around here in the near future, if for no other reason than it rocks.

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