As I went in by Glasgow City, Nancy Whisky I chanced to smell

I went in, sat doon beside her, seven long years I loo’ed her well . . .

The mair I kissed her the mair I loo’ed her

The mair I kissed her the mair she smiled

Til I forgot my mither’s teachin’

Nancy soon had me beguiled

“Nancy Whisky,” Trad.

Whisky

When I first visited Scotland in 2004, someone advised me to avoid references to ”scotch whisky.” I came to see that most people here preferred to simply use the word “whisky” when referring to the water of life. Why? Well, because there is no other whisky of note, is there? Although I am fully aware that perfectly good expressions are now made in Japan, Wales, Germany, and France, I have come to agree that best in the world is distilled in Scotland.

 Whisky and New College

Although I loved single malt whisky before I ever moved to Edinburgh, I did try to learn more about it during the years that I lived here. By far the most that I consumed (publicly at least) was with post-graduate students from New College, which is the Divinity school at the University of Edinburgh. It may surprise many of you that the most passionate lovers of single malt I was to meet spent their daytime hours dissecting and analyzing fine points of scripture, but there it is. 

My malt mates, who were all exceptionally bright and articulate, relished nothing better than applying their imaginative minds and vocabularies to an open bottle that yawned before us. It was very typical for them to charge their Glencairn classes whilst splitting theological hairs about an article that they had just encountered regarding Pauline studies, or some point of disagreement they had with a lecturer who just spoken at Martin Hall. Most of these young men were at least half my age, and I learned more, much more about whisky from them than from any other source that I was to encounter in Scotland.

It is basic that most post-graduates and their spouses live on a very tight budget. I was therefore amused whenever I noticed that the same students who would fly speck the bill at an Indian restaurant in search of a mathematical error were perfectly happy to syndicate a bottle of whisky that would run from $80.00-$120.00. Fine by me. My pals were mostly inerrant in their ability to pick great single malt bottlings. 

Intermingled with weighty discussions about patristics or Christological matters, there inevitably would follow effusive descriptions about a bottle that we were consuming. It sometimes seemed as though the dram under consideration was being subjected to a malt-driven exegesis. “Legs for days, with notes of caramel and marzipan. A hint of tobacco that approaches after a medium-to-long finish. Smell of freshly opened Band-Aids–but in a good way!” A sense of competition usually ensued, as group members began to outdo one another in communicating their impressions of smell. I often wondered whether they were really serious about what they were saying or whether they were just putting me on. I do know this: I couldn’t keep up with them. 

Perhaps as an antidote to my shortcomings, I began to create my own grab bag of characterizations that I could deploy at tastings. Although these were deliberately inane, I quickly realized that they seemed to delight some of the spouses of my New College chums. This may have had something to do with them having had to endure their husband’s tendency to wax poetic about a new (and usually expensive) bottle. In any case, Evelyn Waugh, Robert Louis Stevenson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others have helped me source my collection:  

“It is a little, shy whisky like a gazelle.” 

“There is a sense of frustration, like a prophet in a cave.”

“It’s a wise old whisky.”

“Comfortable, like your favorite babysitter from childhood. Would you let this whisky   babysit you for an evening?”

“It’s a massive, exuberant whisky—like a neon-lunged Buddha chanting and vibrating in a vast temple.”

“Like the movement of a mighty ship. She how shears the flying sea with a great dip and rake!”

“The caramel taste appears frozen, like a mouse in the shadow of a hawk.”

“Brilliant and resonant whisky, like a tuning fork struck upon a star.”

“Noble, like the last unicorn.”

“This is a strand of pearls on a white neck.”

“A flute by still water.”

“A disturbing whisky, like the fractured world behind a seamless screen.”

“A fragrance of such enchantment that hereafter I shall search for it endlessly, as ghosts are said to do.”

I would encourage those of you reading this to come up with your own vapid descriptions. It is a lot of fun, and it can help diffuse the serious direction toward which whisky tasting can sometimes turn.

 Whisky, Marketing, and Conventional Wisdom 

I gradually came to reject accepted dogma about aged whiskies. There is, in my amateurish opinion, no magic year at which a whisky becomes great. Many people within the whisky industry in Scotland will tell you that the reason whiskies aged 16 years and up fetch such high prices is simply because of marketing and supply and demand. The same people would likely add that the longer whisky sits in barrel, the more that it begins to assume the taste of the wood that stores it. Stretched out over a period of 3 to 4 decades, this can turn out to be an unfavorable development. I repeatedly heard stories about 40-year-old whiskies that were paraded out at the end of a posh tasting. Instead of being the crown jewel of the evening, these bottles often turned out to be a big disappointment.

Independent Bottlers

A number of younger people in the good whisky shops around Edinburgh actually like the feistiness and vibrance of “younger” independently bottled whiskies, some of which are only 6 of age. The key here is the independently bottled bit. Scottish distilleries sell barrels of whisky to blenders and independent bottlers for additional income. These outfits often do not disclose the distillery of origin’s trademark for copyright reasons. 

Note that independently bottled whisky can be quite strong because it has been bottled at  cask strength. This means that it is not diluted from the alcohol level it had in the barrel. The whisky can be more full-flavored because the dilution of a whisky’s strength can also reduce its flavor. Independent bottlers may also choose not chill filter their whisky, a process which involves removing fatty acids, proteins, and esters to give the whisky a clearer appearance. Chill filtering can affect flavor, however, because these compounds have an impact on how whisky tastes. 

Another feature of independently bottled whisky is that it often has not had caramel coloring added to it. People associate a nice caramel color with age, smoothness, and quality. But coloring doesn’t really have any bearing on these issues. It is good to remind yourself of this when buying independently bottled whiskies because they are often more clear in their appearance than mainstream bottlings that sport a fake tan.  

Independently bottled whiskies are not cheap, if by cheap you mean less than $60.00. Yet they are frequently a much better value than the bottlings that “prestige” makers sell, which have been promoted through a lot of expensive marketing, packaging, and ad campaigns. I am talking here about Glenlivet, Glennfiddich, Macallan, Lagavullin, Glenmorangie, Bowmore, Highland Park, and others. 

Independently bottled whiskies also do not have the consistency of mainstream brands. This is because uniformity is not the main driver behind their creation and distillation. They are frequently sold in batches of less than one thousand, so that when all of the bottles are bought up, there will be no future ones by which the previous batches can be compared. In short, while dependability is critical to mainstream whisky makers, who invariably staff their distillery with a golden-nosed employee for purposes of quality control, that is not the main purpose or essence of independently bottled whisky producers. Regardless, the times that you will be disappointed with your purchase of an independently bottled whisky will be relatively few. By contrast, the instances where you proclaim what you’ve just bought as the best whisky that ever crossed your lips is much more common.  Seriously—it’s that good.  

If you want to spend a little bit more coin to explore some independently bottled whisky, here are a few examples that I thought were outstanding:

Carn Mor, aged 6 years, distilled at Blair Athol Distillery (Highland)

Carn Mor, aged 16 years, distilled at Auchroisk Distillery (Highland)

Provenance, Talisker Distillery, bottled in 2008 (Island)

Old Particular, 20-year-old, distilled at Inchgower Distillery (Speyside) 

Chiefain’s, Ardbeg Distillery, bottled in 2000 (Islay)

If you live in Edinburgh and wish to try some really wonderful independently bottled whiskies by the glass, consider joining the Scotch Malt Whisky Tasting Society. The SMWTS bottles its own whisky, and it has a large selection on hand that you can sample. The staff are typically knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their bottlings. There are locations in Edinburgh and Leith. It costs about $100.00 a year for a membership, and discounts are available for the purchase of bottles that are sold there. If you are in the right mood (and don’t mind dropping a little dough), it can be a perfect place to hang out for a few hours and enjoy some good pour. Sitting in front of the fire with friends and feeling a warm glow in your belly from a few nice drams can be a pretty timeless and contented way to pass an afternoon or evening.  

Sláinte Mhath!