WHISKY HISTORY

A graphic look at whisky

Long before the Society’s system of flavour profiles came into existence, SMWS founder Pip Hills had devised his own method of describing a whisky’s attributes with a simple bar chart. Here, he describes the origins of The Scotch Whisky Directory, and how the book was compiled

MAIN PHOTO: MIKE WILKINSON

When we started The Scotch Malt Whisky Society in 1983, the great and the good of the whisky industry were on the whole dismissive. They saw us as just another would-be private bottler which, if it prospered, wouldn’t amount to much – and if it did not, would soon go bust. Very few bothered to ask what we were doing and those who did ask, when told, would prophesy our speedy disappearance. Almost nobody foresaw the changes which were coming, and that the odd things we were doing would become standard practice.

Because each of our bottlings was unique, we had to be able to tell members of the Society what each whisky tasted like – and for that, we had to analyse the flavours and produce words for the results of the analysis. This had long been common as regards wine but was quite new to Scotch whisky. We adopted wine tasters’ terminology where it seemed appropriate, but otherwise just went with whatever descriptors seemed intelligible

That was fine, so long as common sense prevailed – and occasional inspiration – but, like all good ideas, it needed bright, lively people. By the early years of the new century, I had got to thinking that the time might be right for the introduction of a more rigorous way of describing the flavours of whisky. (Brand owners had taken to copying our methods and some were, shall we say, less than scrupulous about the veracity of their descriptions.)

A method of exhibiting flavour had been devised years before by the Scotch Whisky Research Institute, which produced the now-famous Flavour Wheel.

In this graphic, which originated with the wine industry, the characteristic flavour components are distributed around the perimeter of a wheel and lines connecting the flavours used to convey information as to the presence and relative intensity of the flavours.

This is good as far as it goes and, with effort and some imagination, it is possible to extract enough information from the diagram to get an idea of what the whisky described is like. But it takes a lot of effort and not a little imagination.

As a heuristic device, it’s opaque, which it why it has never caught on – except with nerds and people whose job gives them an interest in making it work.

My suggestion that we might use a simpler, more intuitive way of presenting whisky flavours met with approval from the people at the SWRI, who were kind enough to provide me with a list of the principal flavours discernible in any traditionally produced Scotch whisky.

There are 15 of these categories: some of them refer to a simple flavour like sweet, while others such as floral cover a very wide range. Some of the flavours are always pleasant, as are floral and fruity; others such as soapy and musty always disagreeable, while a good many are nice or nasty, depending on their concentration and their strength relative to the others.

The flavour categories are…

COLUMN 1

Floral
Fruity
Vanilla
Caramel
Nutty
Sweet

COLUMN 2

Smoky
Cereal
Aldehydic
Woody
Resinous

COLUMN 3

Sulphurous
Sour
Soapy
Musty

The flavours in the first column are always pleasing in a whisky and never, as far as I know, present at concentrations sufficient to render them disagreeable. Those in the second column may be nice or nasty, depending on their levels relative to the flavours in the first – and to some degree on individual preference. These are the flavours which give whisky much of its interest to grown-ups and are absent in unmatured liquors such as vodka or gin or tequila. The last four flavours are always undesirable, but acceptable if present at a level which is masked by the other flavours.

Alas there isn’t space here for adequate descriptions of the flavour categories. If there is an appetite for it, I’ll be happy to write about them in a later issue of Unfiltered. Most of them are pretty obvious, though some require attention and experience to identify.

If the presence of each of these flavours is indicated on a scale of one to 10 on the vertical axis of a bar chart and the horizontal axis has them listed in the order shown, we get a graphic representation of the taste of a whisky, from which it is possible to tell at a glance how the whisky will taste.

It sounds complicated when it’s described but in practice it’s quite simple and easy to read. There follow a few examples which, to save embarrassment in some quarters, shall be nameless.
Example 1

FRUITY AND FLORAL 10-YEAR-OLD SINGLE MALT

This is a very good, well-known malt whisky which has been 10 years in an active ex-bourbon cask. There are enough of the always-desirable early flavours and they are balanced by unusually high cereal and aldehydic aromas; the latter sufficient to add interest but not enough to detract from the overall flavour. It is good enough to stand a trifle of soapiness at the end.

Example 2

SMOKY 10-YEAR-OLD ISLAY SINGLE MALT

Above is a well-known Islay malt at 10 years in cask. The smoky flavours are dominant and, I suspect, have served for ages as a cover for the fact that it isn’t a very good whisky, for the crucial early bars are low and there is a thumping big showing of soapiness toward the end. Still, some folk who should know better like it.

Example 3

UNINSPIRING 10-YEAR HIGHLAND SINGLE MALT

The following is a proprietary bottling of a malt whisky 10 years in cask. This is poor stuff. There is nothing wrong with the spirit but the casks have left a lot to be desired. Significantly, the distillery is owned by a corporation which owns a lot of other malts, whose needs as regards casks are being given priority.

Example 4

UNDERAPPRECIATED STANDARD BLEND

And, for those Society members who sometimes disparage blended whiskies, here is an absolutely brilliant blended whisky. There is a lot going on here: the floral and fruity bars indicate the presence in the mix of some very good malts indeed; the next four flavours complement these – as do the aldehydic, woody and resinous bars – and the overall flavour is sufficient to disguise the final undesirables. And this is classed in the trade as a standard blend, with price according.

The variety of flavour profiles is astonishing, as are the conclusions which can be drawn from them. What is undisputable, though, is that you can tell from a glance at the profile just what a whisky is going to taste like. Analysis of flavour profiles throws up all sorts of interesting insights: not least of which is the disconnect between price and quality – for some very expensive malts fare but poorly while some cheap standard blends do very well indeed.

Having devised what seemed to me a workable scheme, I spoke to my friends at an Edinburgh publishing house called Mainstream (now gone, alas) and suggested that there might be a market among the then-growing band of aficionados, for a comprehensive survey of all existing Scotch whisky brands, analysing each and exhibiting its flavour as a bar chart, with a commentary. It was an ambitious project and, in accordance with its ambition, it was to be called The Scotch Whisky Directory.

Even then, there were a lot of Scotch whisky brands, especially if one included the then-growing offerings from private bottlers. I ended up with 265 entries, each listing the brand name, corporate owner, age in cask and a simple quality rating based on the flavour profile.

I have written about this in The Founder’s Tale, so I won’t go into detail here, save to say that I obtained samples (mostly full bottles) from the owners of the 265 brands. I bought over a thousand 5cl glass sample jars and labelled each with a code number. I persuaded four of the best noses in the whisky industry to taste my samples and rate each for the presence of all of the flavour categories on a scale of zero to 10. (In fact, each of the tasters had to taste 400 samples, 35 of which were controls.) It was a huge job for people who held very demanding day jobs and I am still grateful to them. When it was done, Frances Jack and her colleagues at the SWRI kindly crunched the numbers for me.

It can’t be said that the Directory was a publishing success. A lot of the brand owners hated it (those whose whiskies didn’t appear to advantage) and there was little interest among the whisky-drinking public. The book sold out its first edition, but not quickly enough for Mainstream to contemplate another printing. It’s still possible to find copies second-hand – but if you do, please remember that this is a picture of how things were nearly 20 years ago, and the flavour of some of the brands may be quite different now.

I think that such an enterprise might be more popular today, but such is the proliferation of whisky bottlings that it’s doubtful whether the Directory could usefully be repeated. The method, however, remains valid, and the Flavour Profiles can still show at a glance just how a whisky will taste.

Compiling the Directory was a pleasing occupation. I was a member of the Forth Corinthian Yacht Club (FCYC), which had a yard at Granton Harbour, in which my boat lay at a mooring. It is about a mile along the coast from The Vaults. Some years before that, the club had bought two portacabins which lay disused in the yard, one on top of the other, with a stair up the outside.

The upper one had windows and it seemed to me a suitable place in which to compile my Directory. So I spent the best part of a year, perched high above the harbour, with some hundreds of bottles of whisky. I had no shortage of visitors – and in the course of time, the FCYC was to have one of the best-stocked Scotch whisky bars anywhere on the planet.