Whisky Wheel
From: Whisky Magazine

I found this over on Whisky Magazine the other day, and thought it was both informative and nice to look at. There are tasting wheels out there for other spirits (such as tequila), and there are other whisky tasting wheels, but I found this one to be the combination of form and function that works best for me.

It’s a funny thing about scents, for some reason, women seem to have a finer sense of them. The same is true of color. Here’s a representation of the range of colors women can see and between which they can differentiate, and the same spectrum for men. Click here for the interactive version which puts a label to all the colors, and here for the discussion.

Gender differences in color perception
From: Stephen von Worley

I haven’t seen a presentation like this for scents, but I’m guessing the gender gap is similarly large. Why?

At any rate, according to Whisky Magazine, some of the best noses in the business for whisky belong to women. I wish I could claim to be one of them, but I’m just fumbling along for the moment, enjoying the advent whisky calendar as best I can.

Whiskies that make you wonder why you ever liked whisky.

Whiskies that, if a friend served them to you and you’d never had whisky, you would have to wonder what you had done to make your friend dislike you enough to give you such nasty brew.

Just the questions we were asking ourselves yesterday when our run of delicious whiskies in the advent calendar hit a bit of a snag with two samples that we didn’t even finish.

The first was so strong, so potent and at 67%, so flammable that we were afraid that either it or we would spontaneously combust from the fumes alone. We worried about nearby lightbulbs igniting our glasses. We could have used it to power a mouse-sized chainsaw, or disinfect a wound. We could have mixed it with water, but the taste just didn’t warrant it. Maybe we’ll use the rest to light a flambé, or if we run out of kerosene some dark winter night.

As my husband said, you could power an entire flock of hummingbirds on the stuff. My grandmother told me tales of Prohibition-era moonshine that made the occasional drinker go blind – I imagine it tasted something like this, even though I’m sure the whisky sample we had meets all current safety standards and wasn’t brewed in a bathtub.

In contrast, second sample was so bland, so lackluster, and so sad that even with 18 years of aging, it hadn’t reached even the minimal level of maturity you might expect from an adolescent. I’m still so bored by the taste that the thought of it’s making me drowsy the next morning. Unsweetened oatmeal would be a thrill ride by comparison.

On a brighter note, I did find this thoughtful and thorough and maybe even historically accurate description of the difference between alcohol ‘proof’ and ‘percentage’ on an answer site:

“In the United States, the proof of an alcoholic beverage is twice its alcohol content expressed as percentage by volume at 60°F. So an 80-proof whiskey is 40% alcohol. Recently the United States has begun to label bottles containing wine and spirits with the percentage of alcohol by volume, instead of proof.

In Europe a different proof system, called Gay-Lussac, is used; it is also the percentage of alcohol by volume, which is half the American proof. The European Union has adopted Gay-Lussac proof as its standard.

In Great Britain the situation is much more complicated. A distilled spirit was originally “proved” by one of several methods.  One method involved dissolving gunpowder in the spirit and trying to ignite it. If it wouldn’t burn, there was too much water. If it burned evenly and steadily, the spirit was “proven.””

Thank you, contributor harl12345, whoever you are. There’s more, but I won’t reprint all of it here. I mainly liked the use of gunpowder in determining the alcohol level of a beverage intended for human consumption. The notion that if it lights, but doesn’t explode or fizzle, you’ve reached the Goldilocks standard of alcohol. You can go here if you are interested in more.

We’re hoping these samples were in the advent calendar just to elevate the other samples, and to remind us of just how lucky we are most of the time.

And no, I will not be listing the names of the perpetrators here. I will save that for my upcoming whisky cartography and let people figure it out. I just can’t quite bring myself to name names.

The bar at Keen’s

Full disclosure: It’s December 7, and I haven’t opened my Whisky Advent Calendar yet.

Oh, I want to. But I’ve been showing admirable self-restraint.

My husband and partner in whisky tasting has been in New York on business, and I just didn’t feel it was fair to try new whiskies without him, so I’ve been patiently opening the doors of my other advent calendar, the pretty one with all the pictures from the Oxford Bodleian library, instead.

However, I had a bit of comfort while I was in New York City myself over the weekend. Together with a friend, I stepped back in time when we decided to go to the bar at Keen’s Steakhouse (on 36th St. near 6th Ave.), an unprepossessing location that offers no outer hint of the time travel that rests within. We didn’t go for the steaks, although next time I will. We went for the bar, which boasts 270 whiskies. One of them, picked at random by me at the bar, turned out to be Day 2 of the Whisky Advent Calendar. How do I know? My friend has the advent calendar as well, it was Dec. 2, and she’d already opened that day although she hadn’t yet tried the bottle because she was out with me.

Before I get to the whiskies, let me just say that if you like whisky and you are not a vegetarian (or you are a vegetarian who doesn’t mind the insinuating scent of cooking meat), you might try stopping in at Keen’s. I had the feeling the last major change allowed at the place, besides basic modern technology, was the admission of women to the deeply masculine cove back in 1905. And perhaps a wider array of whisky than was locally available back then. We had a couple of small plates of bar food – a small kale salad and crab cakes – both delicious. So I can attest that the non-beef food is good.

The bartenders were relaxed, friendly and knowledgeable, the atmosphere unpretentious, with people very dressed up for a special meal mixed in with people like us, who were having a couple of whiskies before heading out to a late movie.

Now, the whiskies we had were 1) a 12-year-old Auchentoshan and 2) a 12-year-old Glenrothes. Both neat, although I did finally try adding a few drops of water to the Glenrothes at the suggestion of the bartender.

The Auchentoshan was the advent calendar whisky. It’s from the west of Scotland, a Lowland single-malt aged in old bourbon and sherry barrels, as well as being triple distilled. Smooth, honey taste with a bit of a tangy note, I really enjoyed this delicate whisky. It was easy and warm to drink neat. Both my friend and I liked it a lot.

The Glenrothes was another story. Apparently the Speyside single-malt is bottled according to vintage rather than age. I assume this means anything in a given bottle is from one specific vintage rather than a mix of differently-aged casks, but I’m very open to clarification on this point. The whisky was more pungent than the Auchentoshan, and had a distinct peppery, spicy edge that my friend didn’t like at all. I thought it was interesting, and as we let it sit in the glass a bit, it rounded out. Then the barkeep suggested a couple of drops of water, and that did the trick – the spiciness mellowed into the rest of the flavors rather than overwhelming them. I would try this again, just for kicks.

And I will go back to Keen’s when I get back to New York City, and have more than the whisky and the crab cakes.