Why I love Whisky
I remember the first time I ever tasted a single malt Scotch.
I long since forgot the name of it. Or the flavor. But I remember the story.
(They tell me that’s what really matters.)
It was 8 years ago, back in ’08 . I was staying in Tomich — a tiny village up in the Highlands. Tomich boasted a grand total of one street, one pub, and one hotel (it owned and operated the pub).
There was no mobile reception. No Internet either (naturally). Only two ways to amuse oneself: hiking and drinking.
I’m not much of a hiker.
That last sentence is funnier in hindsight. You see, I ended up in Tomich because it bordered Glen Afric — a magnificent natural reserve. A humongous patch of wild country that Scotland is famous for.
A taxi driver told me about it back in Inverness, and I decided to go. Because, you know, a scrawny Ukrainian with little experience of the great outdoors, or appropriate gear, would feel right at home in the land that no Celts or English could tame.
So there I was, the following day after that fateful taxi ride, trying to explain to the barkeep what a mojito was. He was an elderly gentleman, and made an admirable effort to heed the obtuse instructions of some hairy foreign kid.
Finally, he went behind the bar to produce a lemon and a lime. He held both of them out to me, and asked, “So which is it again?”
I realized, the mojito thing may not work out.
(Why I thought an icy Cuban cocktail would be appropriate — or even sane — to drink in the middle of a cold, wet, drizzly Scottish August, is anybody’s guess.)
I made a serendipitous decision, “You know what? Let’s forget the mojito and try a Scotch instead.”
I was not prepared for how thick the whisky menu was. Thicker than the food menu, for sure.
Overwhelmed but curious, I poked one of the line items and said, “Let’s have this one.”
Thinking back, I think it was a Jura 10 y.o. But don’t qute me on it.
Hand to heart, I didn’t enjoy the drink much.
Back then, I was more into hard liquors that you could impressively gulp down, tumbling the empty glass back on the table. The subtlety of good Scotch was lost on me. I didn’t get it.
I wouldn’t get it for a long time.
The next few years of my life were quite barren, Scotch-wise.
I would drink blended whiskies, non-threatening in their lack of complexity (back then, I thought Dewar’s was good — ugh). From time to time, I would pick a common but high-quality dram like Glenmorangie. Nothing that would help me finally understand what all the fuss was about.
Come 2012, I was introduced to my first favorite single malt — Glenfiddich 12 y.o. I couldn’t afford a bottle of the stuff back then, but a friend of mine kindly brought it to a party.
It was amazing.
Just the thing to share in a circle of friends, cozied up by a roaring fire, the woods outside shrouded in bitter cold.
I would drink it neat from a glass. I would drink it neat from the bottle. It tasted even better somehow — after all, lack of propriety is the spice of life. Or is it variety? I can never remember.
Ironically, the taste has long since faded from my memory.
Thing is, in the last couple of years Glenfiddich and I had a bit of a falling out. To this day, I keep getting sick whenever I drink a sizable amount of it.
Maybe, seeing as it’s one of the most popular single malts in the world, there could be a lot of counterfeit Glenfiddich sold in Russia. Or maybe my body stopped liking it, for some reason. Perhaps, on every occasion, I overindulged and blamed the whisky, when I should have blamed my lack of self-control.
Whatever the case, I stopped buying Glenfiddich, and gradually forgot what it tastes like.
I don’t mind. Glenfiddich was my gateway into the world of single malt Scotch — and for that I am infinitely grateful to the good folk who make it.
Single malt Scotch is my favorite kind of liquor — or any alcohol, period.
I love it because it’s so obsessive, and so irrational. If you were unconcerned with both the idiosyncratic, deliberate craftsmanship, and the fearless, passionate imagination that goes into making whisky…
…then it’s nothing more than distilled beer (the pre-distilling process is indistinguishable, or so I’m told).
But it’s so much more than that.
I see it as an anthem to this uniquely human ability: to spend years upon years of our fleeting lifetimes to make something…
…knowing the whole time that it will be gone in a handful of evenings. Or just one evening.
It took 13.7 billion years for humans to sprout from the Universe. It takes anywhere from 6 to 30 years to make single malt Scotch. The Universe, by definition, has all the time in the world. We don’t.
Yet we still do it. We make this laborious, ourrageously demanding drink — just to enjoy those brief moments of laughter with friends, warmth in the belly, and flavor unlike any other.
If you want proof that experiences are more significant and more valuable than mere “stuff”, look no further than single malt Scotch.
If you’ve never enjoyed it, it will take a more eloquent voice than mine to do it justice. If you have, you don’t need me to explain to you what it’s like to have a fine dram.
Very recently, my colleague asked, “What makes a good Scotch?”
Such a devious question! How do you answer it?
It’s like pornography — you know it when you see it. Or rather, taste it.
Everything makes a good Scotch. The land makes it. The people make it. But most of all, time makes it.
I am 100% convinced that great Scotch is one part alcohol, and one part dreams. In its liquid, those dreams are made potable.
Dreams of someone’s native land, it spring water, and peat, and ticklish heather flowers.
Dreams of the great and terrible sea — strong enough to rip apart the prpoudest cliffs, even if it takes millennia…
…and at once mellow and generous: softly singing generations of hardy people to sleep — and feeding them when they are awake, toiling on the coast and among the waves.
Dreams of overseas craftsmen who made bourbon, and wine, and sherry, and cognac — and gave their empty barrels to age the whisky. Of coopers who hammered those barrels together.
Dreams of distillery folk who dedicate long decades of their lives — ceaseless, irretrievable — to something so transient.
You can taste all of them.
In the smoky heaviness as the liquor first hits your palate.
In the burning-and-smooth, briny-yet-sweet sensation it gives you as it goes down.
In the stinging mellowness of fruits and spices, flowers and sweets.
In vague notes of chocolate and tobacco, luxuries that are nothing like whisky, but somehow can be felt all the same.
Go on, pour yourself a dram.
Have a sip.
Pause.
Can you taste it?
