About a month ago, I led a Scotch tasting at Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. Over the next few days, I will be posting the notes I used, and ending with some of the questions people asked during the event.
This is the first set of common questions raised during the tasting.
Why did you pick the list?
I picked the list of Scotches as an attempt to cover a broad range of regions and styles. The main goal was as an introduction to the various kinds of Scotch one can expect at a well stocked bar or reputable liquor store. The last whisky, the Laphroaig 30, was what I considered to be Town Hall's best whisky, so that was the first whisky picked. Then the Auchentoshan as the best lowland on offer, and then the Cragganmore. The middle three were picked for their dominant traits: Highland Park for its dry fruitiness, the Glenfarclas for sherry, and the Talisker for being double matured.
Lowlands are lighter than Highlands?
It's a generalization, but yes. The three remaining Lowland distilleries have very light offerings compared to their brethren to the north. There's nothing intrinsic that causes that, since these are preferences of the master distiller. But generally the regions will produce a unique single malt that conforms to what people expect from a region. Distilleries have an incentive to do that because many of their customers have regional preferences. Making something in the highlands that tastes like a Highland will ensure those customers are not disappointed.
What do you mean by "Bourbon" casks?
This means that the first thing to fill the cask was American Bourbon. Casks are classified as to what filled them first, be it Bourbon, sherry or Port. Scotch cannot use "new oak" barrels and therefore must re-use someone else's barrel for aging. Most Scotch produced today uses Bourbon barrels, primarily because American law requires that all Bourbon be aged in new oak. This creates a unique relationship between Bourbon and Scotch, since they are excluded from using casks that each require by law.
Is there something that defines what can be called Scotch?
The Scotch Whisky Order of 1990 is quite clear on what can be called "Scotch Whisky". Additionally, the European Union has stepped in recently to protect the regional terms of Scotch, so that anything referred to as "Highland Whisky" would need to be from Scotland. But ultimately Scotch must be:
-Made from water and malted barley (though grain can be added to this)
-Processed into a mash (a soupy mix of the above two)
-Grains converted to sugar naturally from the enzymes created during malting
-Fermented with yeast
-Distilled to less than 95% alcohol, so as to preserve some of the original flavor
-Aged in oak casks smaller than 700 liters
-Bottled at an ABV of at least 40%., and
-Only water or caramel color added to the final bottled product.