![]() There are a plethora of different bourbon cocktails, but there are a few that are very popular and have stood the test of time. Bourbon is mixed with other liquors and wash, a nonalcoholic liquid that will help tame down the intense flavors of bourbon. Here are the basics on the best ways to enjoy bourbon as a beginner.Ĭocktails are probably the most user-friendly way for people to begin enjoying bourbon. As with any liquor, you can choose to be simple or complicated when drinking your bourbon. Don't overthink it, just get a plan and some bourbon and start sampling. Despite its popularity, some interested in bourbon have no idea where to start. With single-cask Scotches, each limited-edition collection comes from just one container, which allows real devotees of a given distillery to taste a much wider variety of its expressions.A BEGINNER'S GUIDE Bourbon has been around for hundreds of years and is as popular now as it's ever been. ![]() Single malts have the distinction of comprising whisky from just one distillery, but they can represent a blend of many different ages and batches. The latest in high-end Scotch connoisseurship is single-cask editions. If you like single malt, try single cask. This is due to the physics of how molecules travel through the still, colliding which each other and the copper surfaces at different rates and angles, and forming distinct flavor compounds in the process.ħ. The precise shape of the copper apparatus used in distillation is specific to each distillery, and actually alters the taste of the whisky on a molecular level. Scotch gets its flavor not just from the barley and barrels, but also from the stills. New make was supposedly the tipple of choice because it would render employees less dazed the next morning than older, barrel-aged whisky, owing to its greater purity.Ħ. Back in the 19th century, distillery employees were given a couple shots per day of so-called "new make," the clear spirit that comes straight out of the stills, as a perk of the job. Scottish folk wisdom has it that younger whiskies give you less of a hangover. The larger the head of bubbles that forms and lingers on the surface of the liquid, the more potent the whisky.ĥ. Shake your bottle: The bubbles show its alcohol content. Alcohol evaporates faster than water in the mild Scottish climate, meaning Scotch doesn't get stronger as it ages it mellows.Ĥ. At the cult-favorite Longmorn distillery, for example, most of the finished spirit goes toward blends, despite a strong demand for the distillery's single malt.ģ. "Blend" doesn't mean "bad." The flavor of a good blend is just as carefully calibrated as that of a single malt, and some of Speyside's best stock is held back from being bottled as single malts in order to play its part in blends. ![]() Water actually opens up the flavors of Scotch, which is why professionals like Winchester add in a few drops before tasting.Ģ. You can toss out any notion that real men drink Scotch room-temperature and neat, or that a splash of water will somehow mar a single malt's perfection. Herein, some of the most surprising and edifying lessons I gleaned from the Master.ġ. During that time, Winchester tossed off a near-constant stream of Scotch wisdom. I recently spent a few days nosing around the home of Glenlivet with Winchester, observing his distillation process, learning about the intricacies of barrel cooperage, traipsing across the windswept hillsides, siphoning 30-year-old liquid from casks to taste - you know, that sort of thing. Winchester's glinting, ice-blue eyes always seem to know something you don't, and on the subject of whisky, that is practically always true: He's a 34-year veteran of the Speyside whisky industry, and as The Glenlivet's Master Distiller, currently defines and controls the taste of the second-best-selling single-malt Scotch on earth. He has hiked every major peak in Scotland, a fact of which I'm keenly aware as we jauntily tackle a minor local summit in an early May hail shower. Winchester speaks in a thick highland brogue that's mostly intelligible to a New Yorker, unless of course one of you happens to be drunk. He wears a kilt with disarming nonchalance. He has never lived outside Scotland's remote Speyside region, and doesn't care to. I'm ankle-deep in good, cold, highland water when it occurs to me that if Scotch whisky were to take human form - to rise up and solidify into a two-armed, two-legged, living creature - it would probably resemble the man striding dry-footed through the heather and gorse ahead of me.
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