Author ScotShot Scott is an NRA and USCCA certified Instructor and Training Counselor in a range of firearms, and home and personal defense disciplines. In an Alternate Universe, he is a husband, father, grandfather, scientist, musician, educator and grumpy old professor. Just your average reactionary, short, fat, old, bald guy!
What is “Scotch”? Scotch whisky is simply whisky that is distilled, matured and bottled in Scotland. It’s not complicated and like anything else, can taste anywhere from sublimely good and complex, to downright nasty. To be clear, they key definition of “good” is: “Do I like it when it’s in my mouth?” I’ll leave it for you to imagine Ricky Gervaise saying that….
What is “Single Malt”? Well, this is in two parts.. “Malt”, meaning that it is all derived from germinated (and sprouted) barley – the starch in the grain is turned to maltose, hence “malt”; and, “Single”, meaning that it is from only one distillery. Unlike Scotch Whisky generally, a single malt cannot contain any grain whisky and cannot be blended, and so one will always see the name of the distillery – Oban, Lagavuilin, Glenlivet and so on.
Here’s where it gets interesting! To meet the standard to be called Single Malt Scotch Whisky, a whisky must be presented at 40% alcohol (“80 Proof”; cask-strength spirit can be 60-65% alcohol) and be matured for at least 5 years in cask. That’s a pretty lax standard. For example, distilleries can choose to add a coloring agent (people tend to think a darker color will taste better). More insidiously, distilleries can, and DO, chill the whisky to the point that “long-chain esters” (which provide subtle, long-lasting flavors) begin to cloud out and can be filtered away. They do this because of a perception that a dram that goes cloudy when ice is added is less appealing than one that does not. Hence the methodology of “Chill-Filtering”. So, it’s perfectly legal for distillers to present their whisky to the consumer as an anemic spirit that has had important flavors removed, and unnatural color added, all in the name of consistency.
What to look for on the bottle. A whisky bottle label has all the information you need and increasingly, distillers are sending it to you. Is the alcohol content at least 43%, and preferably 46%? This is important because the higher alcohol content supports the presence of these long-chain flavor esters, that can be revealed with the addition of a little water. Does it say “No added color” or “Natural color”? If so, that tells us that the distiller wants to let the whisky speak for itself. Finally, does it say “Non-Chill-Filtered”? That tells us that the distiller is focusing on *flavor* rather than appearance, and in the end one must refer to Mr G, as above.
What to look for in the mouth. It’s all about taste. You’ll spot the presence of these much-maligned long-chain flavor esters immediately, because the whisky will have a viscosity in the mouth. It will have “mouth feel”, meaning that it will feel “thicker” than water. It will taste spirity from the higher alcohol, and the taste will change, and have ‘length’; you’ll be able to taste changes and echos of the up-front taste after several minutes.
The cask, the whole cask, and nothing but the cask. In the old days, oak casks were used to ship sherry from Spain to Bristol in England, and Scotch whisky producers would buy these to store their whisky in. Nowadays, new oak casks are commissioned in Spain that are conditioned with fresh sherry. At some point, barrels were introduced from Bourbon manufacturers here in the USA. If you’d like to see the difference that these two barrel types make to the final bottle, then compare “Machir Bay” and “Sanaig” from the Kilchoman distillery on Islay. Each is widely available for around $60.00.
New versus Old casks. It’s easy to imagine that when one puts newly distilled spirit into a new sherry or bourbon cask, the cask will have a lot of its previous use to contribute to the whisky and, after 10 years for example, this will lead to a complex chemical reaction. The second fill will have some of this, and the third fill much less. What this boils down to is that a spirit held in second or third-fill casks for 10 years will have much greater characteristics of the new spirit, than one put into first-fill casks, and so will taste “young” (green, grassy, pear-droppy), compared to a first-fill one. This is not required information and is a question that your palette will tell you about.
“It’s an Integrity Bottling, Malt Mates.” A prominent YouTube whisky reviewer, Ralfie, coined the phrase “Integrity Bottling” to define a whishy bottled at ~45%, at its natural color, without chill-filtering. You should be looking for this to spend your precious Dollar on, and eschew those presented at the basal 40% without reference to added color or chill-filtereing. You’ll be surprised.
OK -so let’s ‘Sally Forth”, as they say! We know what we are looking for and now it’s time to explore what our mouth and nose likes! Leave your comments and recommendations in the comments section!!
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