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Understanding Winter Spirits
Beyond Knowledge is a Warming Truth
By Charles K. Cowdery
 The cold weather months traditionally are a time to enjoy straight
spirits, especially brown goods such as whiskey and brandy, but also
peppermint schnapps, coffee drinks, toddies and other warm, comforting
cocktails. Although the warming effect of drinking straight spirits
largely is an illusion, it is a pleasant (and for bar and club owners,
profitable) one.
To Mix, or Not to Mix?
With whiskey, the big question is always to mix or not to mix. The
customer is always right, of course, and if a patron wants a Rusty Nail
made with Highland Park or a Manhattan made with Pappy Van Winkle,
that’s what they’ll get. But when anything other than water or seltzer
is going to be added to a drink, a standard American whiskey (e.g., Jim
Beam, Jack Daniel’s, Maker’s Mark) or blended scotch (Chivas, Johnnie
Walker) will do just fine. This is important to remember when you are
planning drink features. Some fans of the finer whiskies consider it
offensive to see those beverages included in cocktails, even though
some of the producers (anything for volume) will promote them.
Single-malt scotches are very seldom mixed, and the better bourbons
(Woodford Reserve, Knob Creek, 1792) deserve similar consideration. The
price difference –– American whiskey being so much less expensive
than scotch –– makes the extravagance of a top-shelf bourbon cocktail
affordable, but that doesn’t make it right.
Besides, because of that warming effect mentioned earlier, winter is a
great time to introduce your patrons to the pleasures of sipping
straight whiskey neat, appreciating its nuances and experiencing the
differences between types and brands. Most places will treat whiskey
just like brandy and serve it in a snifter.
There is something soothing and strangely appropriate about slowly
rotating a snifter, resting it in the palm of your hand; and as your
body heat slowly warms the liquor, it returns the favor when you have a
sip. Knowing that outside the snow is falling and a cold wind is
blowing just makes it that much more pleasurable. (Tip: rinse the
snifter with hot water first.)
Singles, Straights and Blends
Although the brown spirits of Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the United
States all are whiskey (or “whisky,” as the Scots and Canadians prefer
to spell it), the flavor experiences are very different. Unless someone
already likes both, a regular scotch drinker usually does not respond
well to bourbon and vice versa. Whiskey in general is often described
as an acquired taste, and it seems the taste for each type needs to be
acquired independently. There is no quicker way to upset a customer
than to accidentally serve a bourbon drinker a scotch or vice versa,
whereas the Cutty Sark drinker usually won’t complain too much if all
you can offer him or her is J&B.
Even within the category of each national type, there is a big
difference between singles and straights on the one hand and blends on
the other. Blended whiskies tend to have a very mild taste because they
combine one or more very flavorful aged whiskies with a largely neutral
blending spirit, even though in some cases the blending spirit
technically is whiskey, too. All Canadians are blends. Seagrams Seven
Crown is an American blend. All scotches and Irish whiskies except
those labeled “malt” or “single malt” are blends as well. The most
popular and common names among scotches and Irish whiskey — Cutty
Sark, Johnnie Walker, J&B, Dewars, Chivas, Bushmills, Jameson —all
are blends. Among blends, the more expensive brands such as Johnnie
Walker Black or Crown Royal contain a higher percentage of flavorful,
well-aged whiskey and less of the more neutral spirit and are,
therefore, more flavorful themselves, but they still are blends.
Not to get too far into the technical stuff, but the main difference
between the whiskey that gives blends their flavor and the neutral
blending spirit that provides alcohol but little else is distillation
proof. If you distill something to 95 percent alcohol or higher, you
have vodka, i.e., not much flavor. Lower proof off the still means more
flavor, so bourbon, for example, cannot by law be distilled at more
than 80 percent alcohol — and many are lower.
Barrels and Branding
The other difference has to do with the barrel. American straights
such as bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye all are aged in new, charred
oak barrels. If you want to get the most flavor you can from a barrel,
new is the only way to go. Canada, Ireland and Scotland all age their
whiskey in used barrels –– in fact, used bourbon barrels more often
than not. Since they can’t be used again for bourbon, they’re cheap.
All of that flavor –– from the lower distillation proof to the new
barrel - is why many people consider the taste of American straight
whiskey to be strong. To many drinkers, the taste of a blended scotch
is plenty strong enough, thank you. No bourbon for them.
Usually if a customer wants to try something different, the safest way
to accommodate them is to offer a different brand of the same type. A
regular Dewars drinker might find Chivas a nice change of pace. The
next step would be to entice a blend drinker to try a single or
straight. In the case of bourbon drinkers, you can up the age ante,
moving a Jim Beam white label drinker up to the black label, for
example, or even up to Knob Creek. Only if the customer wants something
really different should you switch them to a whiskey of another
national origin.
That said, consider the venerable Irish Coffee, a very popular drink
especially during cold weather, that in most bars accounts for most of
their Irish whiskey volume. Would a regular scotch drinker enjoy a
Scotch Coffee even more? Maybe not, but substituting some other whiskey
–– any other whiskey will do –– for the Irish whiskey in Irish Coffee
is one of the easiest ways to create a signature winter cocktail for
your establishment. Kentucky Coffee, Tennessee Coffee, Canadian Coffee?
Nothing could be easier.
When the temperature drops and cold winds start to blow, that’s a great
time to review your whiskey selection and feature whiskey and whiskey
drinks. NCB
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