Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Whisky Classified - David Wishart

As I may have already mentioned several times - I love a good whisky (by which I will always mean a Scottish single malt, I accept that other people make excellent whiskey/whisky/rye/bourbon and so on but it's scotch that really works for me and I'm sticking with it) and I love reading about it just as much as drinking it. Maybe more, there is after all no hangover from reading. 

For a long time I was faithful to the Micheal Jackson guide but it does no harm to be promiscuous with books and I've been flirting with David Wishart's 'Whisky Classified' just recently after spotting the 10th anniversary edition. What grabbed my attention was the sub title 'Choosing Single Malts By Flavour' - this is a terribly fashionable way to approach Whisky at the moment (and may seem obvious to the uninitiated) but ten years ago it would have been revolutionary. Back in October I spent a whole day re arranging the malts at work along flavour profiles (defined by our buyers and I'm inclined to argue with some of their classifications - but that's another story) before this Whisky was arranged and marketed by geography which has it's advantages but struggles to accommodate the huge variations in style you can get from distilleries pretty much next door to each other.

The Jackson guide is excellent but at its heart it's a catalogue which assigns each malt a score that's purely the result of one man's personal opinion. Jackson's was a learned, generally reliable opinion, but in all the years I used the book I don't remember seeing any break down of how he reached a score. Wishart's system is different - he breaks down a dozen flavour profiles - convenient once you work out what he means (this was for me the hardest thing about learning how to taste wine, but once you break the code it's a really useful tool), divides distilleries into clusters, and uses a plethora of charts - all designed to help you identify what you like.

He also has a pronunciation guide for each whisky; Gallic is a tricky language so I'm grateful to have it confirmed that Allt A Bhainne is pronounced owlt-ah-VAN-ya or that Dailuaine is dal-YOO-in for example (also I've just amused myself and the Scottish one by confirming the pronunciation of Springbank, Longmorn etc). It's a little thing but I like attention to detail. After that each whisky gets an entry about it's history,a tasting note, and a break down of it's flavour profile. Honestly I'm impressed - there's a lot of information for the reasonably knowledgeable (such as myself) with plenty of room for debate, but for the novice I can't imagine a better place to start. I like this book so much that I'm going to phone our training department tomorrow and suggest that this is the book we should be using (it's far better than the one we have).

7 comments:

  1. Blimey - never heard of those two Gallic ones! I don't drink whiskey any more, but when I did I was an Islay fan - Lafroaig when I still smoked, then I moved onto Bruichladdich.

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    1. Islay is lovely - wonderful scenery, great people, and the best whisky. Had a brilliant morning at Bruichladdich a few years ago, the sea was the colour of their turquoise livery and they gave us fudge and whisky. It was magic.

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  2. Very happy to see mention of the great, and late, Michael Jackson. I can’t say I’m much into whisky, but I’ve got a few of his beer books on my shelves. Books and alcohol are two of the great pleasures in life - there should be more booze-related posts in bookblogging world, I think!

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    1. Michael Jackson was a legend. I've read more of his whisky writing than the beer stuff but should put that right. He had such an engaging voice and is someone I wish I'd met.

      I agree about the books and booze but apparently people don't buy books about drink in any great numbers and I can confirm they don't read blogs about the either (although that won't stop me).

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  3. I'm very fond of malt whisky too and was certainly a fan of Jackson. I note with interest your comments on this book. I do buy books on drink (exclusively wine to date) but I'll have a look at Whisky Classified next time I am in a bookshop.

    Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Noting the comment of "Jim Morphy", perhaps I'll put up something wine related on MCS one day (though it's a weblog which is only sometimes about books.)

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    1. would like to hear your thoughts on it if you pick a copy it.

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  4. Whisky Classified is a great book. It provides a validated statistical analysis of single malt-style whisky flavours (through cluster analysis, followed by principal component analysis). The result is the most appropriate (and justified) way to classify single-malts by flavour. Highly recommended for those wanting to understand how whiskies truly compare to each other.

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