Members Log-in
26 June 2007
what we talk about when we talk about whisky
By
Tom Morton
The water of life was a reviver and anaesthetic, not an aesthetic, cultural or collectable experience. But men (and let's face it, it is mostly men) will have their anally retentive way with things. The estimable Redmond O'Hanlon once defended his obsession with photographic gadgetry in an extraordinary section of his book Trawler. During an extended piece of cod anthropology, he invoked ancient hunter-gatherer societies and the need therein to categorise, assess and maintain weaponry essential for survival. His love for Canon and Pentax was, well, the same thing. Sort of.
The compulsion some of us have to collect and ruminate on many different malt whiskies, could, at a pinch, be seen as a throwback to primitive agricultural tribes where it was crucial to know exactly what you were planting, harvesting, processing and eating. Or you might get poisoned.
Heavens, that ability you've cultivated over the years to sniff out overtones of aged Adidas or the athlete's foot niff of Nike in that dram
of cask-strength Glen Insole may come in handy! One day, when an aggrieved lover has dropped some cyanide in your Talisker, the hint of bitter almonds may save your life. Unless, of course, it's some obscurely daft expression of the mighty Skye malt which some eejit has aged in a barrel made from laminated almond shells. Nuts!
The truth is, if there are to be different single malt whiskies, we have to be able to describe them in a meaningful way. And of course, The Scotch Malt Whisky Society helped pioneer for the public palate an approach to this. Based on smells and tastes used by professionals within the whisky industry, with a hefty dose of oenophile enthusiasm, a set of standard, familiar reference points became common currency among sniffers and slurpers. Useful terms like phenolic, easily discoverable flavours of caramel, pear drops, vanilla, oak and sweaty socks became helpful pointers to identity and value.
Mouth feel? We grew used to having our mouths felt. And then it all went absolutely stark, staring doolally.
Over the past decade, there has been an explosion in interest in malt whisky, and a bewildering, cashfuelled proliferation of weird and occasionally wonderful finishes: flavoured whiskies, fiddles and faffs which are now facing, quite rightly, a bit of a backlash. They were special, you could flog them at a premium, and there was a collector's market. But how to talk and write about them?
What happened was the confusion of flavour with literary conceit, objective description with often highly personal verbal inventiveness. Suddenly whiskies were tasting of stewed underfelt and shaved guitar strings, the residue of sucked school desks and used flashbulbs. In an attempt to bring some hard and fast objectivity, people began scoring (no, not, uh, like drugs, man) whiskies. They were awarded points and percentages. People had begun doing the same thing to movies and records, admittedly, but not, interestingly, to books. You can just imagine it: Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea - three stars; Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon, two and a half. Zadie Smith, White Teeth - five and a half. It's daft. It's almost blasphemous.
But it is fun. And it's very human. The flights of fancy and the Calvinist calculations. For me, it's more enjoyable to talk about places and
people, to seek out the stories and the history. I'm much more interested in the distillery and its past than the final piece of bonkers barrelisation. Others may want to count the rivets on a still or the planks of a washback - more power to their Palm Pilots. And banjos. Such people always play the banjo. But what I like to do is this: I like to drink the stuff, and I like to do it in convivial, human, company.
For solipsism is not a good mixer with whisky.
What do we talk about when we talk about whisky? We talk about ourselves. And we talk about other people. And we listen.
Unfiltered on Facebook