I’ve been to a number of whisky tastings. They begin in a similar fashion with a lovely and informative story of the whisky’s distillery, including its location and history. If you’re fortunate you will be regaled with an interesting story of town’s folks nearby the distillery. Be sure to brace yourself because if the distillery has been around long enough it’s quite likely there will be a story about a fire somewhere along the way. There’s almost always a fire.🔥 I’ve even presented a whisky once whose distillery had suffered an explosion! That was rather unexpected.
Following a description of the distillery the presenter may, if you’re fortunate enough, move into describing the barrel(s) used to age the whisky, including the type of wood used to form the barrel and whether this wood was previously used to age another drink, typically bourbon, sherry or port. Henceforth, the presenter will often describe which qualities the wood is likely to have imbued within the whisky. For instance, perhaps oak will infuse a whisky with flavors such as vanilla, honey, caramel and spices; the presenter will be able to expound on these flavor profiles during the nosing and tasting portion of his or her presentation of the whisky.
This leads me to the one and the only drab, underrepresented and oft misrepresented aspects of whisky presentations I have witnessed, including those given by The Masters: colour. For us whisky afficienatos stop and ask yourself, “how many times have I heard a whisky described as either golden or amber?” One would think those are the only two options by which to describe a whisky’s colour. I am writing here today to forever break this habit amongst whisky drinkers. There are in fact beyond 50 shades of gold; I was being saucy. If you were to ask a mathematician they would tell you there are an infinite number of shades of any colour within the visible spectrum. However, for the purposes of this blog post I have taken a colour chart from EnglishGrammar.org which sufficiently describes 40 shades of yellow and orange.
This chart is incredibly useful. For example, instead of describing a whisky as “dark gold” instead state that it is the colour of firelight licking the sides of the glass refracting tiger’s eye. Isn’t that far more pleasing than “dark gold?” As well, in lieu of describing a whisky as merely “amber” try something like “the colour is a deepening, robust butterscotch, and if you swirl your glass you can see how the legs reflect as a tuscan sunset setting into the meniscus.” Try that at your next whisky tasting. You’ll be the talk of the tables!
Remember, while there may be more than 50 shades of gold a solid description of 40 shades of yellow and orange is a good start. Have some fun with it. Look up different shades of yellow, gold, orange, and enjoy writing metaphors to describe your whisky in as many ways as you can imagine.
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