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How Sherry Became the Secret to Great Scotch

115 points by bcaulfield 8y ago

toomanybeersies 8y ago
It's interesting how simple coincidences and accidents can become such a fundamental part of the character of a product. The peat smoke in Scotch is another good example of this. They only used peat to dry the malt as coke was too expensive and hard to source in Scotland.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
The Macallan is kind of a special case of sherry barrel aging nowadays. Because of US laws that require aging bourbon in new, freshly charred, American oak barrels, a large quantity of the barrels sold to distillers across the globe are "ex bourbon." So, now, an awful lot of booze out there -- and not just whiskey, but also American brandy and some Caribbean rums -- tastes sorta like bourbon.
- hinkley 8y ago
  Glenmorangie and Balvenie, off the top of my head.
- tptacek 8y ago
  It tastes sort of like American oak, but not so much like bourbon. To a first approximation, everything not aged in Sherry butts has basically always been aged in ex bourbon casks, and lots of Scotch varieties have never been sherried.
  - HillaryBriss 8y ago
    > To a first approximation, everything not aged in Sherry butts has basically always been aged in ex bourbon casks ... What historical evidence supports the notion that rum and brandy were, even to a first approximation, basically always aged in ex bourbon casks?
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Scotch. All the scotches. I'm not talking about rum and brandy (I am however at this minute getting tipsy on a pretty amazing Plantation rum aged in cognac barrels, so I guess I could nerd out on rum a bit too --- though all I know about rum is "buy the Plantation rums that are aged in interesting barrels").
      - voltagex_ 8y ago
        Which Plantation rum?
- dluan 8y ago
  It's kind of crazy just how much cheap swill gets sloshed around at minimum time just so that it qualifies the bond - only then to ship the barrels around to other producers for re-aging. IIRC most of barrels from Beam and Brown-Forman? Lately it seems like there's so many sherry-aged whiskies and whiskey-aged something or other, or first-fill, second-fill, ends up traveling over three continents. Seems like the barrel coopers are the ones doing the best, but even then the wood itself is pretty contentious in terms of quality versus hype.
fraa-orolo 8y ago
I've got a bone to pick with the article - it makes it sound like the Scottish only invented whisky in the beginning of 19th century: > So it was only a matter of time before the Scots started storing their local moonshine, a clear distillate called uisge beatha (“water of life”), inside them. “Around 1800, distillers in Scotland realized that putting this clear spirit in a barrel not only made financial sense, but also made the liquid look and taste better,” whereas Scotch whisky has been around for at least 500 years. In the second half of 18th century and early 19th century making distilled spirits was outlawed in Scotland, so, naturally, people turned to moonshining - much less risk in that than storing casks for decades to mature into proper whisky; that's the reason for the prominence of clear spirits.
tptacek 8y ago
Sherry is the reason people like Macallan, but: * lots of Scotch has no sherry, and, particularly, the smokey peaty Islays tend not to be sherried at all. Sherried Scotch is a distinctive style, mostly centered in Speyside. * There are better, cheaper sherry bomb whiskies than Macallan; try Aberlour A’bunadh (cheap, excellent) and Glendronach (still substantially cheaper than Macallan, and I think much better). The big trend in Scotch is towards “no age statement” (NAS) bottlings, because Scotland is not keeping up with resurgent global demand. NAS bottles are younger spirits, but tend to have more interesting casks, which is a bonus if sherried whiskies are what you’re into. For what it’s worth, my mental model is that ex-bourbon casks add basically no flavors other than the wood; I think of them as “neutrally casked”.
- vowelless 8y ago
  > Aberlour A’bunadh Where are you getting cheap Aberlour A'bunadh?? It's my favorite scotch but I cannot find it for less than 2 to 3 times the price of Macallan 12. Also, Glenmorangie is a delicious sherry scotch. Tastes a lot like Macallan and usually cheaper. > The big trend in Scotch is towards “no age statement” (NAS) bottlings, because Scotland is not keeping up with resurgent global demand. NAS bottles are younger spirits, but tend to have more interesting casks, which is a bonus if sherried whiskies are what you’re into. Interestingly, Macallan in the US still has an age statement. This, however, is not the case in other countries. They have names instead (like "Ruby").
  - dhd415 8y ago
    Or cheaper Glendronach for that matter? It's 40-60% more expensive than Macallan here.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Than Mac 12! Yeah, sorry: Mac 12 is probably a good value. The comparison I’m always seeing made is to Mac 18. (Actually, Binny’s current Mac 12 price in Chicago appears to be higher than Abunadh or Dronach 12 [which is fantastic]).
peterwwillis 8y ago
Sherry is definitely underappreciated in the US. One of my favorite aspects of it is how it is poured in Spain. A Venenciador uses a long rod with a thin cup to dip into a cask and pour the sherry into a small glass from high up in the air. This is a regular part of the sampling process in bodegas, but it is also performed at parties, weddings and fancy restaurants. It takes a lot of practice to get good at it, so good Venenciadors can make a living just pouring sherry. Really good Venenciadors can pour accurately over a meter in distance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcmhtGvsc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcmhtGvsc4
- jackhack 8y ago
  Interesting it's so firmly a part of the ritual of serving sherry. But then aeration is known to improve the flavours of many types of spirits and even electronic wine bottle toppers are available to spin the air.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    A classic trick in restaurants for serving older red wines that need to breath a bit is to just pour it through a sieve when pouring it into the decanter (it should be poured into a decanter to pour it off the sediment in the bottle) to aerate the wine.
- yawgmoth 8y ago
  At 2:02 the woman deliberately shakes a bit out of the glass. Fascinating. Why?
dustinkirkland 8y ago
I do love single malt scotch whisky. But I will say...Sherry by itself is totally underated. I spent a week in Jerez a few years ago studying Sherry and it is truly an art. If you like Single Malt and Sour Beer, you owe it to yourself to seek out a Sherry bar and explore the magic of Fino, Amontillado, and the ever evasive Palo Cortado.
- tptacek 8y ago
  The tough thing about sherry is that it doesn’t keep. I can keep 5-6 different interesting whiskeys in my house for months, but a sherry bottle has to get drunk within a week. We had a restaurant in Chicago, Vera, with a huge sherry list. It was kind a of a miracle; I’d rather go there than to Longman with their equivalently long whiskey list. Gone now though :(.
dboreham 8y ago
One thing to know : I had always had the idea that Whisky tasted basically of the barrel, with the implication that the stuff put in the barrel doesn't taste of much -- like pure ethanol. This turns out to be not the case. I happened to visit a distillery where they let you drink the liquid straight out the still (that, in turn, because this particular distillery hasn't been in business long enough to have final product ready to sell). I was surprised to find that the distillate liquor tasted very much like Whisky.
- maaarghk 8y ago
  Harris?
  - dboreham 8y ago
    Unfortunately no. It turns out there's a distillery in Fife now : https://www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com/ https://www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com/
- lox 8y ago
  I mean, that’s because it’s only ~65% pure ethanol. If you ran it through a column still a few more times, it would taste exactly like pure ethanol.
taurath 8y ago
Some of the most lovely bourbons I’ve had recently are port barrel aged, so this isn’t a surprise!
- tptacek 8y ago
  Which one? The only wine barrel bourbon I've had is High West's Midwinter. I'd be interested in other ones. Kilchoman's port cask Scotch is really amazing.
  - wavedynamics 8y ago
    Angels Envy - port barrel finished - is one of my favorites.
  - stock_toaster 8y ago
    Balvenie also has a 21yo portwood.
  - taurath 8y ago
    Local one in the Pacific Northwest - Cadee distillery Cascadia
seanhandley 8y ago
For me, a great whisky is "spirit led" i.e. the flavour is dominated by the flavours present in the spirit itself before maturation. It's difficult and expensive to make a really good "spirit led" whisky so many distilleries use casks as a way to imbue more flavours. Of course, a good cask helps (and you can't have whisky without casks) but beware of marketing departments trying to bamboozle you with fancy barrels. The real art is in the distillation itself.
beilabs 8y ago
For those interested in an Irish version check out Green Spot and Red Breast. Some of my favourites...

115 points by bcaulfield 8y ago

It's interesting how simple coincidences and accidents can become such a fundamental part of the character of a product. The peat smoke in Scotch is another good example of this. They only used peat to dry the malt as coke was too expensive and hard to source in Scotland.

HillaryBriss 8y ago

The Macallan is kind of a special case of sherry barrel aging nowadays. Because of US laws that require aging bourbon in new, freshly charred, American oak barrels, a large quantity of the barrels sold to distillers across the globe are "ex bourbon." So, now, an awful lot of booze out there -- and not just whiskey, but also American brandy and some Caribbean rums -- tastes sorta like bourbon.

hinkley 8y ago
Glenmorangie and Balvenie, off the top of my head.
tptacek 8y ago
It tastes sort of like American oak, but not so much like bourbon. To a first approximation, everything not aged in Sherry butts has basically always been aged in ex bourbon casks, and lots of Scotch varieties have never been sherried.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > To a first approximation, everything not aged in Sherry butts has basically always been aged in ex bourbon casks ... What historical evidence supports the notion that rum and brandy were, even to a first approximation, basically always aged in ex bourbon casks?
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Scotch. All the scotches. I'm not talking about rum and brandy (I am however at this minute getting tipsy on a pretty amazing Plantation rum aged in cognac barrels, so I guess I could nerd out on rum a bit too --- though all I know about rum is "buy the Plantation rums that are aged in interesting barrels").
    - voltagex_ 8y ago
      Which Plantation rum?
dluan 8y ago
It's kind of crazy just how much cheap swill gets sloshed around at minimum time just so that it qualifies the bond - only then to ship the barrels around to other producers for re-aging. IIRC most of barrels from Beam and Brown-Forman? Lately it seems like there's so many sherry-aged whiskies and whiskey-aged something or other, or first-fill, second-fill, ends up traveling over three continents. Seems like the barrel coopers are the ones doing the best, but even then the wood itself is pretty contentious in terms of quality versus hype.

fraa-orolo 8y ago

I've got a bone to pick with the article - it makes it sound like the Scottish only invented whisky in the beginning of 19th century: > So it was only a matter of time before the Scots started storing their local moonshine, a clear distillate called uisge beatha (“water of life”), inside them. “Around 1800, distillers in Scotland realized that putting this clear spirit in a barrel not only made financial sense, but also made the liquid look and taste better,” whereas Scotch whisky has been around for at least 500 years. In the second half of 18th century and early 19th century making distilled spirits was outlawed in Scotland, so, naturally, people turned to moonshining - much less risk in that than storing casks for decades to mature into proper whisky; that's the reason for the prominence of clear spirits.

tptacek 8y ago

Sherry is the reason people like Macallan, but: * lots of Scotch has no sherry, and, particularly, the smokey peaty Islays tend not to be sherried at all. Sherried Scotch is a distinctive style, mostly centered in Speyside. * There are better, cheaper sherry bomb whiskies than Macallan; try Aberlour A’bunadh (cheap, excellent) and Glendronach (still substantially cheaper than Macallan, and I think much better). The big trend in Scotch is towards “no age statement” (NAS) bottlings, because Scotland is not keeping up with resurgent global demand. NAS bottles are younger spirits, but tend to have more interesting casks, which is a bonus if sherried whiskies are what you’re into. For what it’s worth, my mental model is that ex-bourbon casks add basically no flavors other than the wood; I think of them as “neutrally casked”.

vowelless 8y ago
> Aberlour A’bunadh Where are you getting cheap Aberlour A'bunadh?? It's my favorite scotch but I cannot find it for less than 2 to 3 times the price of Macallan 12. Also, Glenmorangie is a delicious sherry scotch. Tastes a lot like Macallan and usually cheaper. > The big trend in Scotch is towards “no age statement” (NAS) bottlings, because Scotland is not keeping up with resurgent global demand. NAS bottles are younger spirits, but tend to have more interesting casks, which is a bonus if sherried whiskies are what you’re into. Interestingly, Macallan in the US still has an age statement. This, however, is not the case in other countries. They have names instead (like "Ruby").
- dhd415 8y ago
  Or cheaper Glendronach for that matter? It's 40-60% more expensive than Macallan here.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Than Mac 12! Yeah, sorry: Mac 12 is probably a good value. The comparison I’m always seeing made is to Mac 18. (Actually, Binny’s current Mac 12 price in Chicago appears to be higher than Abunadh or Dronach 12 [which is fantastic]).

peterwwillis 8y ago

Sherry is definitely underappreciated in the US. One of my favorite aspects of it is how it is poured in Spain. A Venenciador uses a long rod with a thin cup to dip into a cask and pour the sherry into a small glass from high up in the air. This is a regular part of the sampling process in bodegas, but it is also performed at parties, weddings and fancy restaurants. It takes a lot of practice to get good at it, so good Venenciadors can make a living just pouring sherry. Really good Venenciadors can pour accurately over a meter in distance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcmhtGvsc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kcmhtGvsc4

jackhack 8y ago
Interesting it's so firmly a part of the ritual of serving sherry. But then aeration is known to improve the flavours of many types of spirits and even electronic wine bottle toppers are available to spin the air.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  A classic trick in restaurants for serving older red wines that need to breath a bit is to just pour it through a sieve when pouring it into the decanter (it should be poured into a decanter to pour it off the sediment in the bottle) to aerate the wine.
yawgmoth 8y ago
At 2:02 the woman deliberately shakes a bit out of the glass. Fascinating. Why?

dustinkirkland 8y ago

I do love single malt scotch whisky. But I will say...Sherry by itself is totally underated. I spent a week in Jerez a few years ago studying Sherry and it is truly an art. If you like Single Malt and Sour Beer, you owe it to yourself to seek out a Sherry bar and explore the magic of Fino, Amontillado, and the ever evasive Palo Cortado.

tptacek 8y ago
The tough thing about sherry is that it doesn’t keep. I can keep 5-6 different interesting whiskeys in my house for months, but a sherry bottle has to get drunk within a week. We had a restaurant in Chicago, Vera, with a huge sherry list. It was kind a of a miracle; I’d rather go there than to Longman with their equivalently long whiskey list. Gone now though :(.

dboreham 8y ago

One thing to know : I had always had the idea that Whisky tasted basically of the barrel, with the implication that the stuff put in the barrel doesn't taste of much -- like pure ethanol. This turns out to be not the case. I happened to visit a distillery where they let you drink the liquid straight out the still (that, in turn, because this particular distillery hasn't been in business long enough to have final product ready to sell). I was surprised to find that the distillate liquor tasted very much like Whisky.

maaarghk 8y ago
Harris?
- dboreham 8y ago
  Unfortunately no. It turns out there's a distillery in Fife now : https://www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com/ https://www.kingsbarnsdistillery.com/
lox 8y ago
I mean, that’s because it’s only ~65% pure ethanol. If you ran it through a column still a few more times, it would taste exactly like pure ethanol.

taurath 8y ago

Some of the most lovely bourbons I’ve had recently are port barrel aged, so this isn’t a surprise!

tptacek 8y ago
Which one? The only wine barrel bourbon I've had is High West's Midwinter. I'd be interested in other ones. Kilchoman's port cask Scotch is really amazing.
- wavedynamics 8y ago
  Angels Envy - port barrel finished - is one of my favorites.
- stock_toaster 8y ago
  Balvenie also has a 21yo portwood.
- taurath 8y ago
  Local one in the Pacific Northwest - Cadee distillery Cascadia

seanhandley 8y ago

For me, a great whisky is "spirit led" i.e. the flavour is dominated by the flavours present in the spirit itself before maturation. It's difficult and expensive to make a really good "spirit led" whisky so many distilleries use casks as a way to imbue more flavours. Of course, a good cask helps (and you can't have whisky without casks) but beware of marketing departments trying to bamboozle you with fancy barrels. The real art is in the distillation itself.

beilabs 8y ago

For those interested in an Irish version check out Green Spot and Red Breast. Some of my favourites...