Drink More Whiskey: Everything You Need to Know About Your New Favorite Drink

This is not your granddaddy’s whiskey book. It is a book for a new generation of whiskey drinkers. I don’t mean eighteen-year-olds who are raiding their parents’ liquor cabinet or frat boys who are celebrating their twenty-first birthday. I mean anyone who has fallen in love with the food revolution and liquefied it. This is for folks who are looking to drink better whiskey and attempt to understand it.

Back in the golden days, my grandfather had his CANADIAN CLUB whisky and would drink it the same way whenever he decided to reach for the bottle: a whiskey sour before his meat loaf or, on occasion, after a Jell-O salad. He was part of the old generation of drinkers. It was the generation that drank a Coke every day with lunch, ate spaghetti and meatballs every Wednesday night, and went to the local buffet every Tuesday.

That’s not us. Our generation wants to know the next best thing. We’re the sushi generation because we had never tasted anything like it, and we’re at a new restaurant every chance we get. Never had Burmese food? Bring on the tea leaf salad. We’re an eclectic and experimental bunch that marvels at international and local quality over familiar comfort. We’re the generation that will change careers every five years, start up the company of our dreams, and wave to llamas on top of Machu Picchu. Whether you remember it or not, we are the generation that welcomed Harry Potter jelly beans in such flavors as grass, earwax, and dirt, knowing that the point wasn’t to find your favorite flavor. The age of discovery has transformed into the age of sensory exploration.

We’ve finally stepped up from a low point on the American cultural palate. The 1970s and 1980s were marked by a surge of vodka consumption because people didn’t want to taste their alcohol. Things are changing. Going out is no longer about super-sweet grenadine cocktails and soda-laced Long Island Iced Teas. It’s about fresh thyme and knowing the name of the cow whose carcass was made into the truffled meatball you’re about to fork into your mouth. The mere fact that you’ve made it this far into the book means that you want to know more about whiskey. If you were just drinking to get buzzed, you could have already been shit-faced by now.

I’ve had an incredible whiskey journey chock-full of mind-blowing scenery and characters. I’ve visited more distilleries than I care to count, drank whiskey with distillers across the globe, and marveled as a 3-D drink became four-dimensional. That’s what this book is about. Sitting with people who have made their livelihood from whiskey, I’ve geeked out about yeast strains, the genus of oak trees used to make barrels, and how best to cut peat from bogs on Islay. It’s a trip to sit with a fifth-generation whiskey mogul and tell him that his Scotch tastes like rotten grass (to his delight). All of this has been a ton of fun—just the way drinking whiskey should be.

WHY ARE YOU READING THIS BOOK?

Millions of intimidated consumers feel as though they should open their mouths to drink whiskey rather than to ask questions about it. I believe it’s time for a new discourse about the spirit. I did not write this book because I’m an expert on whiskey. There are hundreds of people who could teach a college-level course on the subject. But we need to take whiskey off of its throne and bring it onto the playground. I’m tired of pompous old men telling me how to drink whiskey: Don’t add water. Add precisely two drops. Don’t ever mix this single malt. "You added what to it?" It’s confusing and it’s pretentious.

You don’t need to know everything about every bottle. I’m giving you the background information so that you can go out and learn for yourself. If you step back from all the chemistry, tradition, rules, regulations, and names, whiskey is simple and can be enjoyed without an encyclopedia in hand. Too often it is enveloped in dusty rhetoric and esoteric jargon that does little more than prompt blank stares. When it stops being fun, put down your drink, go for a hike, and then reach for an iced tea.

I’m not saying that you should turn to whiskey for everything, but the beauty of the spirit is that, like music, there is a whiskey for nearly every occasion. Perhaps you sip on a LAPHROAIG single malt one evening before a warm fire and pour BULLEIT bourbon over ice on a warm summer afternoon. You might have your favorite brand to crack open at a wedding, and a different bottle to confide in after a breakup. Ultimately, whiskey is a social drink; it always tastes better among friends.

I’m intentionally breaking the code of conduct and talking about whiskey the way I would if we were friends hanging out at a bar. This book does not employ all the traditional terminology. It’s here to help integrate whiskey into your life without having to spend a lifetime to learn every minute detail first. You don’t need to be a mechanic to enjoy driving fancy cars. You’re not a distiller and you’ll never need to know the optimal temperature at which column stills operate or the genetic makeup of the barley in your favorite Scotch. So for now, just learn enough to know what the hell you’re drinking and, more important, why you’re drinking it.

A NOTE BEFORE YOU DIVE IN

The following chapters are not a reference guide. You can find handbooks on the shelves of bars and liquor stores and enough second- and third-hand volumes on eBay. Not every brand in the world is included in this book, and the ones that don’t appear are not intentionally left out because I don’t like them. I’m not going to list bottles for you and tell you a hundred times over that you’re going to taste vanilla and oak in this bourbon and peat and ripe fruit in that Scotch. If that’s the kind of information you’re looking for, you’re in luck, because enough budding whiskey critics exist to fill a small country. Whiskey drinkers love to vocalize their thoughts, and volumes have been written on nearly every bottle. Your goal shouldn’t be to read through piles of CliffsNotes; instead, you should be writing your own. This book is a smattering of stories, history, anecdotes, and approachable ways to understand whiskey. It will help you visualize what you’re drinking and bring cultural relevance to a bottle of booze. Use this book as a jumping-off point.

WHY WHISKEY?

Any way you drink it, whiskey is one of the world’s most iconic spirits, with a tremendous character and history. It was there when the United States was fighting for independence. It has been poured down throats during celebrations and soirees and coveted during triumphant battles and historic moments. I can guarantee you that Winston Churchill wasn’t downing shots of cherry vodka and doing sake bombs while sending his men into battle.

Whiskey is a cultural celebrity everywhere from China to Brazil. It stars in shows like Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men, is a favorite drink of Lady Gaga, and has been memorialized by authors Hunter S. Thompson and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is poured in country songs and across hip-hop stages and has the kind of cultural cachet that the world hasn’t seen since the Pet Rock craze of the mid-1970s. Starting to learn about whiskey can seem more daunting than trying to analyze nineteenth-century Russian literature. Begin by simply enjoying it. You probably didn’t like your first beer, but if you’re anything like me, you crossed that threshold long ago and are now reaching for double IPAs and Belgian tripels. Whiskey can take you on a similar ride.

Whiskey tasting is not trial and error.

It’s trial and trial again. It’s a testament to the spirit that so many crazed whiskey fanatics are found around the globe. There are dozens of whiskey-only magazines and hundreds of elite clubs, blogs, Facebook fan groups, and Twitter feeds devoted to whiskey. I know more whiskey geeks than I know Star Wars geeks. But each and every whiskey savant went through a protracted process to get there. The more you taste, the more you know. Great whiskey drinkers are made, not born.

If you’re not sure how to drink whiskey, drink it naked. At least no one will tell you that you’re drinking it incorrectly.

I hated my first whiskey. I don’t remember what it was and it doesn’t really matter, but I think it made me sick. I was probably drunk at three o’clock in the morning in my friend’s college dorm room, and it’s not something I’d like to recall. Everyone has a story. The question I’ve heard a lot is what’s a good whiskey? Or rather, what’s the best whiskey? If my first whiskey made me sick, what’s a good smooth whiskey that won’t? Frankly, a good whiskey is one that you enjoy.

Many of the folks who have been working at distilleries their whole careers have plentiful answers for the curious consumer. As I toured the peat fields on Scotland’s island of Islay with Iain McArthur, who has been a warehouseman at the LAGAVULIN distillery for more than forty years, he looked me in the eye and said, his thick Scottish accent at full throttle, The best whisky is the one you get for free. Dozens of other Scotsmen have said, chuckling, that the best whisky is the one you’ve got in your hand. Hundreds of books are available to help you navigate the seemingly infinite library of whiskies that grows by the month. Dozens of competitions are popping up, judged by distillers, whiskey experts, and drinkers who have been tasting whiskies since before your mother was old enough to drink. These references can help direct your choices, but at the end of the day, it’s really all about what fits your taste buds at this specific moment. Flavors and aromas can vary depending on what you just ate, where you are, or who you’re with. The whiskey you drink on your wedding night might be the best-tasting whiskey you’ll ever have.

The whiskey curriculum continues to grow. The industry is constantly changing and adapting, and there exists a breadth of knowledge thousands of bottles wide. I’m sifting through the bullshit for you so we can get right to the good stuff. Before you stick your head into a bucket of booze, here is the information that you will need to make the rest of the book more digestible. In order to break the rules, you must know what they are. Understanding this small foundation will take you a long way. It will be your Swiss Army knife for a whiskey journey that will span your entire life.

Remember, this is just a beginning.

WHICH WHISKEY IS WHICH

Whiskey is the overall category and can be made anywhere. Subcategories are defined by where the whiskey is made and what it is made from. All bourbon is whiskey. All Scotch is whiskey. All Canadian, Japanese, and Irish whiskies are also whiskey. These are just descriptions of where your whiskey was created. Drink rye? That’s also a kind of whiskey. Here’s a little chart to make the naming oh so obvious. It’s totally acceptable to call any of these drinks whiskey, but if you order a whiskey at a bar, it could be any one of these. Whiskey, according to flavor, can mean a whole lot of different things.

YOU SAY POTATO(E)

For some reason, everyone gets caught up on the spelling of whiskey. It’s utterly unimportant, and no one should spend more than thirty seconds on understanding the rule. Ireland and most U.S. distilleries spell it with the e, while Scotland, Japan, Canada, and most other countries spell it without the e. A few American distilleries, including GEORGE DICKEL and MAKER’S MARK, drop the e to confuse you. You don’t get your arse all knotted up trying to analyse the British spelling of flavours and colours, so try to stay centred and know that we’re all speaking the same language. For the sake of this book, when I’m talking about Scotch, Canadian, or Japanese whisky, I defer to their spelling, and when I talk about U.S. or Irish whiskey or whiskey in general, I use the U.S. spelling, unless, of course, we’re talking about a U.S. brand that spells it without the e. That said, I don’t want you to worry about spelling whiskey. Instead, worry about tasting it.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Each chapter chronicles the trajectory of whiskey, and each story is a puzzle piece that fits with others to form a complex and beautiful history. Before you dive into Whiskey 101, it’s valuable to understand the basic story of how the spirit was born and why it became more popular than Pac-Man.

Distilling technology has been around for millennia and was originally used to make perfumes in the Middle East. In Europe, it was used to distill wine into spirits. The technology stayed in a religious realm and the knowledge spread from monastery to monastery. As the know-how made