by EllenJ » Mon Feb 26, 2007 2:52 am
Ooooh!! Are you ever going to open a can of worms with this topic!
Okay, I'll jump in and help.
First, I need to reassure my fellow whiskey-enthusiasts who are into producing and studying tasting notes...
Please understand that I do respect y'all.
I really do.
I fully understand that this forum is dedicated to whiskey-tasting. That the majority of folks here enjoy the hobby of tasting and comparing notes on various expressions of American bourbon (and rye) whiskey. I consider myself a guest here, and I certainly don't want to offend either my hosts or the other guests, many of whom are more appropriately involved in this forum than I.
So I DO hope y'all understand that the quasi-disrespectful statements to follow are offered in light of the fact that I'm only a visitor making (hopefully) humorous remarks with the intention of offering an (equally hopefully) acceptably deviant point of view...
I am neither Catholic nor Jewish, but I have friends who are devoutly Catholic and others who are Jewish. Their beliefs are as foreign to me as they are to each other, but I have no trouble accepting and respecting them. Likewise, I have friends who are True Believers in Flavor-Science-As-Applied-To-Bourbon-Whiskey. And I can accept the maxim that there is a lexicon of standard taste elements which can be used to communicate information about flavor. I have to admit, however, that I have some difficulty understanding the science behind why the elements most commonly used (caramel, oak, figs, coconut, chocolate, apples, peaches, are examples) are ones with at least as wide a range of flavors as whiskey itself.
"This bourbon has a strong caramel flavor, with ripe apples and oak tones". Wonderful! Would that strong caramel flavor be Halloween apples, or peanut brittle, or English candy cubes, or burnt sugar?
Would those ripe apples be Granny Smith, or Red Delicious, or Fuji?
More importantly, why would I place any validity at all in a description of whiskey made by someone who seems completely unable to distinguish the differences in the tastes of these elements?
And, outside of it's obvious role in flavoring whiskey, has anyone ever actually eaten oak?
And then, of course, we always see references to "dark, pitted fruit".
What is that?
Prunes?
Olives?
Avacados?
I don't want whiskey with any of those flavors. Do you?
And are those "pitted" fruits different from simply plain Dark Fruits (which, for me, usually means bananas by the time I get around to eating them).
When I hear a taster speak of "cinnamon", I want to ask, "Uh, would that be Indian cinnamon?
Mexican?
Vietnamese?
RedHots?
I applaud John Hansell, publisher of Malt Advocate Magazine, for (among many things) taking, and maintaining over at least the last year or so, the stance that numeric rating of whiskey is nothing more than hocus-pocus for ignorant followers of whiskey fashion. This despite the fact that his magazine's existence depends upon both those very subscribers and the distilleries who are being "rated". Both of those groups demand the numeric ratings, and John continues to publish them. Apparently the readers who skip immediately to the ratings pages rarely stop along the way to read John's editorial page.
The opinion of a qualified, professional wine-taster is important, because the better wines must be purchased (a year's consumption worth) some years before they'll be mature for drinking. People with wine cellars, may, for example, be looking this year for a cabernet that they'll actually be drinking in 2011 or 12. And that will be the only cabernet (or one of only a few) that they'll drink that year. That way, they're always enjoying (and serving, since this certainly also applies to restaurants) only wines that are at their peak of flavor. Since there are major variations among vinyards and locations from year to year, the advice of an expert is highly recommended.
To an extent, that also holds true for brandy, but for spirits distilled from grain it's not such a big deal. Corn quality, at least for good ol' Number 2 Yellow (otherwise known as pig-food) doesn't really change much from year to year, nor even from region to region, which is why we don't see Estate-Grown Bourbon. Any deviation in the quality or flavor of bourbon whiskey (and we've certainly come to know and expect such) is actually a negative as far as distillers are concerned. Whether we like to admit it or not, the consistancy that we find in Jim Beam, Old Forester, Ancient Age, and on a higher level, Maker's Mark and Buffalo Trace, is what distilling is all about. Not how different this year's such-and-such is from last year's. For standard whiskeys, just find the brand you want and keep buying it.
Of course, most of us conn-noise-ers don't waste our money on standard issue. We want the cutting-edge stuff. And the variations are what we live for. So, for that reason, we like to compare notes. But your take on tasting notes is totally the right way to think about it. Anyone who puts the same faith in someone else's tasting notes (or really, even their own from another tasting) is just asking to be disappointed. Worse... if the notes they're relying on say a bourbon wasn't worth drinking (that particular tasting), they may never try it again. Their loss.
There is, of course, another, more sinister angle. There always is.
For some people (too many, in my humble opinion) the whiskey one is seen drinking becomes a statement of the value of their opinion. That's bad enough, of course, but there's also a corollary: The opinions of those we are expected to respect must be accepted as gospel, lest we cast some doubt upon our allegiance and membership in the community. In my opinion, that's why certain brands (I'll use Michter's as an example, although it's certainly not unique in that respect) are singled out as being unassailable, while others (I'll use Thedford Reserve as the example here) are almost universally panned, even by people who have never actually drunk them on more than a single occasion (and we all know who they are, even as we praise them).
The fact is (as I see it; your mileage may vary) that most whiskey drinkers have one or two, maybe three, bottles open at any given time. Since any comparison they make must therefore be entirely by memory, and since we have maybe four people here who are actually trained experts on whiskey tasting (myself most assuredly NOT among them), I hold that none of the rest of us are any more qualified than you or I to make any statement at all that would be of real use in guessing what whiskey to invest a few thousand dollars worth of your hard-earned money in.
I think the best idea to come down the pike lately in that context has been the "partnerships" for buying whole single barrels. Pretty much, that's what "laying down a vintage" of wine would equate to. And you'll probably notice that some people wouldn't dream of doing such a thing without they get to sample from the various barrel choices themselves, while others are completely confident that someone else (who they respect because they read their postings on an internet forum) is qualified to make that decision for them. I have no quarrel with either group... but I'm not likely to solicit the opinion of the latter folks in deciding what's the best brand of whiskey for me.
You, either, I'll bet.
If I can't open a bottle and taste it repeatedly over a period of weeks, I sure can't say whether I really like it or not.
So, again I want to make it clear that this is not a put-down of people who find pleasure in discovering and identifying flavor notes in their whiskey. Such people have my respect, especially as regards their ability to do something that I'm not able (or particularly interested) to do.
Just as my fascination with how all this industry came about may not be of more than passing interest to them.
This forum is beneficial to all of us, and I applaud Mark and Chris for making that happen.
But that's the direction that I come here from, and I can see you've travelled that highway a time or two yourself.