Typography by Jon Contino Esquire

We may be approaching Peak Whiskey. As with anything so fashionable, though, there's suddenly a great deal of bullshit to wade through. The pufferyhas to do with things you can tell about a whiskey only from its label. It'll tell you about a distillery founded in 1803, but not the Bahamian corporation that has owned it since 1997; about the master distiller, but not the fact that he doesn't have a still; about 150-year-old traditions, but not the 20-year-old technology they're actually using; about the forty-seven whiskeys in the blend, but not the cheap one that makes up 80 percent of it; about the rolling, stone-walled fields of barley (which they buy premalted from the same company everyone else uses) and artesian well water (deionized and demineralized) and famous namesakes (dead eighty years before the distillery was founded).

Once you put aside label matters, even including where a whiskey is made—the fundamentals of distilling and aging don't change just because you cross a border—and what it costs, you'll see that all whiskeys are put together from three basic building blocks: the grain, the still, and the barrel. Each requires choices to be made. It's these choices (some of them mandated by law) that define the actual whiskey that's in the bottle. There are at least eight different ways you can combine them to make whiskey, but only four of the ways are widely used, producing malt whiskey, grain whiskey, straight whiskey, and blended whiskey. No country has a monopoly on any of the four, and most whiskey-distilling countries make at least three of them.

1. Malt Whiskey

Tasting note: Honey, apricot; dark chocolate and smoke.

Texture: Rich and creamy.

Prime age: Ten to twenty years.

The oldest of the styles is made from 100 percent barley malt; distilled in pot stills, generally to around 70 percent alcohol; and aged almost exclusively in used cooperage. This is where you'll find your single-malt Scotches (single here meaning that all the whiskey in the bottle is from the same distillery) and so-called blended-malt Scotches (from different distilleries, but all malt whiskey), but you'll also find whiskeys from Ireland, Japan, France, India, and the U. S. When the malt hasn't been heavily peated and there aren't too many sherry casks involved, a fully-aged malt whiskey, such as the Glenlivet ($39) or the Yamazaki 12-year-old from Japan ($65), is like pure alcoholized honey on the palate: sweet-tasting (but not sweet), soft, and creamy—indeed, malts are the richest-textured whiskeys. Bump up the sherry-cask component, as the bottled-at-cask-strength Scottish Aberlour A'bunadh Batch 47 ($82) does, and you add notes of unsmoked cigar. If you turn up the peat, you've just lit that cigar: A whiskey like the Laphroaig 18-year-old ($85), also from Scotland, can be overwhelming—a full-court press of smoke and iodine—but there's still that barley sweetness riding underneath to balance out the fug. That rich texture also means that in a cold climate like Scotland's, a malt whiskey can reach an extraordinary age. The Glenrothes 1992 ($250), for example, is only now, after twenty-two years in oak, hitting its prime—indeed, there's still a layer of clean barley under all the barrel-derived dark chocolate and leather. A lighter whiskey, such as the Irish Knappogue Castle 12-year-old ($42), which is distilled (at Bushmills) three times rather than two (the global norm for malts), peaks considerably sooner, after which the woody barrel notes choke out the grainy sweetness. At twelve years old, however, it's a sweet delight. Finally, Kavalan'sConcertmaster ($100) is distilled and aged in Taiwan. In such hot conditions, extraction and oxidation are sped up, so at only four years old, Concertmaster is very close to being fully mature.

2. Grain Whiskey

Tasting note: Fumey, lightly spicy, smooth.

Texture: Light, clean.

Prime age: Four to ten years.

At the other end of the whiskey spectrum lie grain whiskeys. Distilled mostly from raw grain (and never pure malt) in column stills to as high as 94 percent alcohol and almost always aged in used cooperage, these light whiskeys are nearly always made for blending, in which capacity they serve as the big, quiet partner of the louder malts or straight whiskeys. Despite their reputation for being mere filler, though, they're occasionally bottled on their own and can be surprisingly pleasant to drink. Take Greenore's 8-year-old ($50), a single (i.e., one distillery) grain from Ireland. Although a bit spirity on the nose, as grain whiskeys tend to be, it's sweet and clean and goes down very smoothly. Compass Box's Hedonism ($115), a blend of Scottish grains, is a little more assertive, with intriguing herbal notes, but it shares the Green-ore's pleasant balance and creamy texture. Then there's the Koval single-barrel millet whiskey ($49) from Illinois. Although not destined for blending, it's distilled to as high a proof as the grain whiskeys that are. Nonetheless, it has considerably more grain character than the others, if grain, in fact, is the source of its light, gamy funk—not many other millet whiskeys to compare it with.

Why Age Does Not Mean Quality

With too much time in oak, whiskey can get woody and even mouth-puckeringly astringent. In a hot climate like Kentucky's, that can take as little as ten years. In Scotland and Ireland, it's more like twenty (used cooperage helps). It's not like every whiskey older than that is bad: The 25-year-old Talisker ($575), a Scottish malt, and 21-year-old Redbreast ($250), and Irish blend, are two of the best we've ever had. But they are the exceptions. Two of the others are Jim Bean Black ($23), which is eight years old, and the ten-year-old Bushmills Irish malt ($46).



The Esquire Rainbow of Whiskey

A new vocabulary of whiskey color.

Top, left to right: Knappogue Castle 12-year-old, Greennore 8-year-old, Laphroaig 18-year-old, Hibiki 17-year-old, The Glenrothes 1992. Bottom: Wild Turkey Russell's Reserve Rye, Elijah Craig 23-year-old, Bulleit 10-year-old, Aberlour A'bun Batch 47.

3. Blended Whiskey

Tasting note: Variable but balanced; as you go up in price, smoothness increases dramatically.

Texture: Medium.

Prime age: Six to eighteen years.

We're not going to spend a lot of time on these. In every whiskey-making country but the U. S., blended whiskey is what you get when you mix one or more rich flavoring whiskeys with a certain amount of aged grain whiskey—and the more you pay, the less that amount tends to be. (In the U. S., you're allowed to cut the straight whiskey essentially with vodka; we don't recommend American blends.) Once you get out of the bargain brands, however, things get good quickly. Canada, where the flavoring comes from straight whiskeys, is a haven for blends, and sipping Crown Royal XO ($50) you can understand why: Every edge has been sanded smooth, yet there's still enough spice to make it interesting. In Scotland, Ireland, and Japan, the flavoring comes from malt whiskeys. Bushmills Black Bush ($39), for example, is a fine sipper, smooth and fruity and very pleasant. Rather more complex (and expensive) is Japan's 17-year-old Hibiki ($150), although the grain whiskey helps it to avoid the ponderous richness pure malt whiskeys take on at this age. Johnnie Walker Blue Label ($225) avoids this as well, as it does almost anything that would make you dislike it in any way. At its best, blending is an essay in balance, and Johnnie Walker Blue is blending at its best.

4. StraightWhiskey

Tasting note: Woody, spicy; sweet, toasted coconut when old.

Texture: Bitey when young; thicker, oilier with age.

Prime age:Four to twelve years.

In the late 1700s, when the British government began taxing distillers according to how much malt they used, Irish distillers learned they could still make whiskey from a mash that was no more than 15 percent malt and make up the rest with raw barley, rye, oats, and wheat. To tame the extra-wet-dog pungency the raw grains brought, they added a third distillation and made their pot stills as large as possible, thereby increasing their efficiency. They ended up with a spirit that came off the still at around 85 percent alcohol: lighter than the Scottish malts but still with plenty of flavor. They ditched the rye, oats, and wheat in the 1950s but kept the rest of the process, including aging in used barrels. The Green Spot single pot-still whiskey ($50) is a fine testament to this tradition: On the nose, it offers a slight and pleasant muskiness that you won't find in a malt whiskey; on the palate, it has a forthright bite, with lots of cinnamon, a pleasant graininess, and a texture that puts it in a sweet spot between the viscous malts and the featherweight grain whiskeys.

This texture is shared by most North American straight (i.e., unblended) whiskeys, which are also made from mixed grains. A standard-grade bourbon such as the 86-proof Old Forester ($21) is a fine advertisement for the process: It's got the bright woodiness of a fresh-split log on the nose. Leave the bourbon in the barrel for another six years or so, as is done with the 10-year-old Bulleit ($50), and everything turns to pecan pie. Bourbons older than this can get far too woody to be pleasant, but there are exceptions, such as Elijah Craig's 23-year-old single barrel ($200), heavily redolent of coconut and dill.

Whereas bourbon uses mostly corn, rye uses mostly rye, and rye is spicier, dryer, and darker in flavor. Too young and rye is gamy; at four years old, it makes bright, incisive cocktails; at six years old, like Wild Turkey Russell's Reserve rye ($42), it starts to get good for sipping: grassy, but spicy. At thirteen years old, like the bottled-in-the-U. S. Canadian pot-still rye Lock Stock & Barrel($120), it's redolent of dark chocolate and has an endless finish.

The So-Called Whiskey Shortage: An Update

Whiskey is hot these days, but twenty years ago it wasn't and nobody thought it would be. Ten years ago, a few people thought it might be. Five years ago, things looked to be picking up but not this much. Unfortunately, whiskey needs its Rip Van Winkle time, slumbering in wood. That means today, with increased demand, older whiskeys are going to be harder to find and more expensive. That gets collector types excited, driving up the prices even more. But it's not like the stuff is rationed, and as long as you're not chasing down that rare bottle, there's still plenty of good whiskey out there to drink. Eventually, supply will catch up with demand and then, inevitably, outstrip it. Buy your old whiskeys then.

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