WorkBook 2017 The effect of wood maturation on whiskey F. Paul Pacult Spirit Journal, Inc thewhiskeyauthority.com ©2017 SPIRIT JOURNAL, INC. thewhiskeyauthority.com 1 THE WHISKEY AUTHORITY (TWA) MISSION Operated independently by New York-based Spirit Journal, Inc. and supported by brand mem- bers, THE WHISKEY AUTHORITY provides unbiased, credible, and cutting-edge information about all Whiskey categories directed at beverage trade audiences. THE WHISKEY AUTHORITY’s dynamic, informative, and entertaining seminars include blind tastings of TWA’s members’ brands. Through seminars bolstered by three decades of Whiskey-tasting experience, award- winning author, journalist, and educator F. Paul Pacult clears the clouds of confusion about Whis- key. With clarity and humor Paul illustrates why Whiskey deserves its status as one of the world’s most beloved distilled adult beverages. F. PAUL PACULT 2017 Called “America’s foremost spirits authority” by Forbes.com, F. Paul Pacult has been the publisher/editor of F. Paul Pacult’s Spirit Journal since 1991. Today, F. Paul Pacult’s Spirit Journal is recognized as the premier independent source of spirits reviews and evaluations. He and his wife/partner Sue Woodley are also the creators of the groundbreaking, highly successful iWhiskey App. Through Spirit Journal, Inc., Paul and Sue consult for many of the beverage alcohol industry’s largest international corporations as well as small artisinal companies. Paul is the only journalist worldwide to concurrently be a life member and Master of Keepers of the Quaich Whisky society (Edinburgh, Scotland), a life member of Kentucky’s Bourbon Hall of Fame, and a life member of France’s Compagnie des Mouquetaires d’Armagnac (Company of Armag- nac Musketeers). In September 2011, the Bureau National Interprofessional du Cognac (BNIC) in France honored Paul as the Cognac Personality of the Year 2011. In January 2012, he was awarded the Cheers Conference 2012 trophy for “Raising the Bar” in spirits education. He is the author of five best-selling books: Kindred Spirits 2: 2,400 Reviews of Whiskey, Brandy, Vodka, Tequila, Rum, Gin, and Liqueurs from F. Paul Pacult’s Spirit Journal 2000-2007 (Spirit Journal, Inc., 2008); A Double Scotch: How Chivas Regal and The Glenlivet Became Global Icons (John Wiley, 2005), the best-selling American Still Life: The Jim Beam Story and the Making of the World’s #1 Bourbon (John Wiley, 2003), as well as Kindred Spirits (Hyperion, 1997) and The Beer Essentials (Hyperion, 1997). He and Sue are currently writing Kindred Spirits 3: All One Needs to Know About Spirits which will be available in 2019. Paul is also a founding member of Beverage Alcohol Resource LLC (BAR) and Ultimate Bev- erage Challenge LLC. 2 thewhiskeyauthority.com PRIMARY WHISKEY All Whiskeys produced the world over are made up of a trio of fundamental base materials: grain, yeast, and water. On the surface this sounds like the ingredients for baking bread. Or, for that matter, beer. For good reason. Grain, which is sometimes malted, yeast, and water are the constituents of both bread and beer. Maybe that’s why some Whiskeys own bread-like, doughy or yeasty aromatic and taste qualities. But with just three primary ingredients, why is Whiskey such a complicated beverage category? That’s the question that can cause the most confusion. The Whiskey category’s wide latitude of types from various regions of the globe are best defined and preserved through the prism of a half-dozen pivotal factors that affect telltale characteristics: • First, the choice of grain(s), meaning that specific kinds of grains (rye, wheat, corn aka, maize, barley, oats, spelt) create specific varieties of aromas and tastes that are considered germane to certain subcategories. To illus- trate, straight Bourbon Whiskey is sweeter than, say, single malt Scotch Whisky because corn contains more sugar in its makeup than barley. • Second, the management and selection of oak barrels, in terms of barrel variety and the duration of the maturation period. Most distillers will tell you that the period of oak barrel aging and the variety and history of the barrel influence the aroma and taste of Whiskey by from 60% to 80%. (SEE APPENDIX A) • Third, the origin, quality, and preservation of the water source. Yes, water is a key element, in that, even though Whiskeys are fermented first then distilled, water can and does affect the final outcome and is why so many distilleries fiercely protect their water source. • Fourth, the terroir effect, if any, on the Whiskey, meaning the environmental influence of the Whiskey’s place of origin. This is a controversial point, but there can be a strong case made for certain Whiskeys being directly influenced by the location of the distillery or, more importantly, the aging warehouses. • Fifth, the variety of distillation utilized, meaning customary, labor-intensive, batch-by-batch pot-still or efficient column still distillation or even a blend of both. This key factor is often misunderstood not only by the drinking public but by beverage tradespeople, as well. One method isn’t better than the other. They merely provide different types of unaged spirit that eventually becomes Whiskey. • And sixth, the Whiskey production laws and standards of the originating nation or region. These half-dozen aspects are crucial to each Whiskey type’s underlying personality and degree of quality. The best way to understand the centuries-old universe of Whiskey is to take a tour of the world’s foremost Whiskey making nations. That’s the mission of THE WHISKEY AUTHORITY. thewhiskeyauthority.com 3 In addition to recognizing the six factors to quality, it’s likewise good to understand a few other funda- mental facts. For instance, the word Whiskey is derived from the ancient Gaelic term for “water of life”, uisge beatha (OOSH-kah bay-ah). Making matters somewhat confusing is how different nations prefer to spell Whiskey. Ireland and the U.S., with some exceptions like Maker’s Mark Bourbon, prefer the employment of the “e” while Canada, Japan, and Scotland drop the “e”. The plurals then become “Whiskeys” for Whiskey and “Whiskies” for Whisky. When referring to the worldwide industry, THE WHISKEY AUTHORITY chooses to use “Whiskey”. Also, Whiskey is produced in many countries that grow grain. The “Big Five” are Scotland, United States, Canada, Ireland, and Japan. Other Whiskey-making nations, to lesser degree, include England, France, India, Australia, Taiwan, Belgium, South Africa, and Wales. Then there are the mushrooming “craft” distillers in North America and Europe, who have Whiskey in their portfolios. The reality is that imbibers inhabit the best time in history to be a Whiskey lover. 4 thewhiskeyauthority.com WHISKEY DOSSIER: WATER OF LIFE Latin-speaking medieval Christian monks called them “aqua vitae”. The monks’ contemporaries in France referred to them as “eau-de-vie”. Gaelic-speaking distillers in Ireland and Scotland identified them as “uisge beatha”. Poles and Russians labeled them as “zhizennia voda”. All of these regional monikers meant one thing: “water of life”. These names were employed in direct reference to the fermented and distilled liquids that by the fif- teenth century had become firmly rooted in societies from Russia, Poland, Scandinavia, Germany, and the British Isles in Europe’s northern tier to France, Spain, Italy, and Greece in the south. But, what was meant by “water of life”? Why use this evocative combination of terms? The meaning has to do with how distilled liq- uids were viewed in the first place and how they evolved over two and a half millennia. >> Fermentation First, Then Distillation The beverages that we’re talking about come about through two necessary transformative processes: fermen- tation and distillation. Well prior to the discovery of the process of distillation, which most likely occurred in or around the region of what is today Pakistan and northern India in the second century B.C.E., Eurasian farmers utilized fermentation to convert commonplace fruit juices, especially grape juice, and grain mashes into low-alcohol (5 to 12 percent) beverages. Alcohol, carbon dioxide, and heat are generated when a univer- sally available microorganism ― yeast ― consumes innate sugars in either fruit juices or mashes of grain. Fermentation is a natural biochemical process that is triggered whenever sugary liquids come into contact with either airborne or purposely injected yeasts. Because fruit juices are innately sugary, wines can, under the right circumstances, virtually make themselves. A bit of human intervention, as the world has observed for the past thousand years as wines have dramatically improved, helps. With beer, the procedure is a bit more complicated, in that the starches in the grains must first be converted to sugar through dampening which stimulates partial germination. Once the grain starches have changed over to sugars, the resultant soupy mash starts to transform with the introduction of yeast cells. Thus, beer really does need an assist from mankind in order to happen. And for at least 5,000 years, mankind has been delighted to oblige. That, in rudimentary terms, is what happens in fermentation, the ini- tial step in the process of making distilled liquids. Via fermentation, fruit juices become wines and grain mashes become beers. Simple. In the historical sense, these two beverages have very likely existed since before historical events were formally recorded. Early agrarian communities from 3,000 B.C.E. and before have displayed indisputable archeological evidence of winemaking and brewing. Pinpointing exactly when fermentation took flight within the framework of an ancient community must be left to speculation. Regarding distillation, historians now have a relatively clear sense of when this second step may have first bubbled up to the surface. Archeological digs in the 1960s conducted in the ancient Greek-Indian city of Shaikhan Dheri in Pakistan unearthed compelling evidence of earthen pot stills that suggested the existence of small-scale distilleries.