Removing the barriers to whisky tastings

Whisky tastings can be a serious business. With five differing dimensions of golden yellow lined up and ready for the get-go, there’s a certain pressure to perform, say the right things, and above all, add the right amount of water. Even the most light-hearted whisky socials cannot discount a sense of underlying apprehension amongst the less experienced.

Why does tasting whisky bring an unspoken pressure to perform and not commit any flavour faux pas? Keep reading to find out. Plus why this pressure has been detrimental to the image of scotch whisky, and persistently deploys invisible hurdles along the path of casual fun.

Behave like a professional whisky taster

The look of I-have-no-idea-what-I-am-doing can have deleterious consequences for one’s dram credibility. Even those with skills, knowledge, and experience suffer from an inkling of imposter syndrome from time to time. What actions do we naturally take when wanting to appear proficient? Copy the actions of those we view as being proficient. It’s a common tactic that enables us to blend in and avoid the embarrassment of finger pointing and sniggering.

In the world of distilled spirits, when we follow the ladder of proficiency high enough, we arrive in a laboratory surrounded by bubbling concoctions, white coats, and mysterious bottles of new make. The industrial cousin of whisky tastings, aka sensory analysis, relentlessly slams the door in the face of hedonism to create a sterile environment ready for the objectivity of Quantitative Descriptive Analysis or QDA.

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), which uses costly equipment to separate and identify the different compounds within a spirit sample, is often used in conjunction because even trained professionals are not as reliable as we would like to think. However, while GC-MS can provide detailed chemical compositions, only a human nose can describe the real-world odours and flavours in a meaningful way.

To provide an impression of how far removed industrial sensory analysis is from simply tasting whisky, the following considerations draw a thick line between the laboratory door and your whisky tasting social.

• Panellist selection. As we are all uniquely different when it comes to the senses, selecting participants that can detect key odour congeners and tastes at low thresholds is important. For example, some people have blind-spots for certain aromas and coriander tastes soapy to a great many people.

• Panellist training. Panellists must also be trained to identify specific odours and tastes using standardised tests such as those offered by FlavorActiv. These include not just the nice things such as honey, vanilla and coconut, but also off-notes such as decay, sulphur and cheese.

• Pre-selected flavour attributes. Rather than just being a free-for-all when it comes to describing flavour characteristics, standardised lists of flavours are used for the panellists to choose from. A well-known example is the Scotch Whisky Research Institute’s flavour wheel. Standardised lists help to create specific data that are comparable, as opposed to a complex mish-mash that cannot be easily organised.

• Controlled environment. All aspects of one’s environment have the potential to influence sensory assessment. From colours, lighting, and furniture, to sounds, movement, and background odours. Minimising such influences is therefore of the utmost importance.

• Standardised processes. Every aspect must be standardised to minimise inconsistencies. This includes the samples themselves such as the abv of spirit samples (normally reduced to 20% for nosing and 30% for tasting), the temperature of the samples, the randomised order of the samples, and the actual volume of each sample. The process itself is standardised too, such as the amount of time the sample should be held in the mouth, how it is ‘chewed’ within the mouth, and timed palate recovery periods between samples.

Assessing whisky

When seeking proficiency in whisky tasting, such extreme methods are at the upper echelons of analysis, but the important point is that it’s a different tool for a different job. The purpose of QDA is reliability and replicability to produce clean and tidy data. Hence the processes are tightly controlled, and panellists are trained in a way that’s appropriate for the objectives.

It's a far cry from the pontificating and deliberating of your local whisky tasting. While mimicking some of the tactics and techniques may instil a sense of virtuosity, they can be detrimental to the hedonistic assessment of a dram. For example, reducing the abv of the samples to 20% or 30% is necessary when assessing many samples in a single session. Why?

Firstly, higher abvs cause a more rapid decline in olfactory performance, put simply, the nose gets tired faster. Secondly, such assessments take place at work where potentially dangerous machinery and chemicals may be present and there’s a good chance that people will be driving home at the end of the day. These are practical considerations that do not apply to the vast majority of people in a five or six dram tasting. There’s also the matter of flavour wheels.

The flavour wheel effect

Flavour wheels are handy tools that organise the common groups of flavours into a meaningful circular structure. Each group is subdivided into a second ring of more specific flavours, followed by a third ring that provides more detail again. Flavour wheels were developed for the industrial assessment of samples. If you recall, providing a list of flavours enables panellists to be aligned during their assessments and provide comparable data.

For general whisky tasting purposes, they can be helpful as a general guide, but they contain a great deal of information that can be befuddling. Outside of the laboratory it is not necessary to limit oneself to a fixed list of flavours either. Part of the fun of tasting whisky is gained from the expressive and entirely subjective nature of flavour. We each have a different brain, different genes, and different life experiences. Using sensory blinkers when describing flavour is not what it’s about.

In addition, flavour wheels do nothing to help a common syndrome – the I-don’t-want-to-say-the-wrong-thing disorder. Providing a list of flavours points towards a right or wrong approach as opposed to anything goes. The more we can do to enable whisky fans to express themselves anxiety-free, the better it will be for everyone.

The problem for whisky fans

Entrenching oneself in the technicalities of technique, in my mind, is only detrimental for the fun-facing end of scotch. If we are to remove the hedonism from whisky tastings we may as well construct single person tasting cubicles in which samples of whisky are sprayed directly into the oral cavity under the instruction of an AI generated tax advisor. Where’s the fun in that?

Sensory assessments are scientific, whisky tastings are hedonistic. Following the antics of others in the pursuit of competency can in fact be bad for delight. Whisky does not necessarily nose better at 20% abv. Selecting from a list of permitted flavours is restrictive. And why on earth does everyone insist on nosing before tasting? There is sound science to support why we should taste then nose. Heresy I know.

To mis-quote Fight Club, ‘stuffing feathers up one’s bum does not make one a chicken’. And besides, with regards to whisky tastings, who wants to be a chicken? So what’s the answer for those seeking to up their game and fit in amongst all the other tasters, who incidentally are also experiencing imposter syndrome too?

Flavour education

Rather than geeking on technique or revolving around a flavour wheel, the road to enlightenment is shorter and better suited for purpose if it follows the path of flavour education. What do I mean by flavour education? The inner workings of the human body that take molecules and transform them into the perception of flavour. Allow me to explain with some examples.

You may be familiar with how we smell in two different ways – orthonasal olfaction where odour molecules are sniffed through the nostrils, and retronasal olfaction where odour molecules travel directly from the mouth into the nasal cavity. Retronasal olfaction accounts for the majority of what we call flavour and the brain interprets the information differently to orthonasal olfaction. This is why a whisky can taste very different to how it smells, and why peatiness is not always picked up on the initial nose.

Mouthfeel is a great second example. We tend not to discuss mouthfeel enough, but it’s very important for quality, balance, and making drams interesting. Mouthfeel is the combination of many different elements. Differentiating them by understanding the sensory mechanisms adds a great deal to one’s tasting ability. Textures range from creamy and oily, to dry and dusty. Spiciness is on a scale of light ginger all the way up to raw chillies. Plus there are also tannins, effervescence, menthol, fats, and even soapiness.

These are just two small areas where a little knowledge can make a big difference. Such learnings are free from techniques, tactics, and attempting to look good. They are simply thoughts within one’s cranial accounting department that can be applied to not just whisky, but also wine, food, and even that foul poison from the devil’s own quagmire - coffee.

Moving away from methods that were never designed for hedonistic experiences will surely remove some of the seriousness from whisky tastings. Teaching people how flavour works shines a light on the biological, neurological, and psychological processes rather than telling people ‘how to taste whisky’. The experimentation, progression, and expression that would arise as a result is a tremendously exciting prospect. It’s up to us to share the knowledge, open the doors, and start a crusade.