When you add water (preferably at room-temperature) in different stages, you'll find that some
single malts are best experienced neat, while others require different amounts of water to flourish.
Some malts require no more than a teardrop, while others only open up after nearly being drowned.
Even with a cask strenght whisky 50/50 is the absolute maximum for me, but there are people who
happily murder a good malt by adding twice as much water to it. That's whisky-flavoured water!
Anyway, that's yet another one of those matters of purely personal preference, I guess.

Experts in maltland often use seven 'scent groups' to classify a single malt.
They are: sweets, creaeals, oils, woods, esters, phenols and aldehydes.
Personally, I don't find this system very useful, but it may work for you.

After investigating a fine dram I always
have a few sniffs from my empty glass as
well; the heavier, lingering aromas can give
you an interesting new perspective on the
whisky you've just enjoyed. Just make sure
not to sniff your glass the next morning ;-)

Everybody enjoys whisky in his own way and that's fine by me.
Well, with one major exception: people who put ice in their malt.
This is, in my humble opinion, not only stupid - it's unforgivable.
Ice completely ruins the structure and balance of a malt whisky.
What's more, you'll lose three quarters of the wonderful aroma.
If you need to dilute a malt, use distilled or mineral water.

Although the tongue plays a major part in whisky appreciation as well, the NOSE tells us the most about a malt.
You'll be pleased to learn that, as far as single malts are concerned, the size of your organ plays a minor part in
the experience. To quote Sir Edmund Blackadder: "It's not what you've got, it's where you stick it what matters!".
With the right glassware you can even distinguish several 'layers' in the bouquet, depending on how far you keep
your nose above (or even in) the glass. When you take your time, you will notice that the bouquet often changes
considerably after you've allowed the malt to 'breathe' for some time. Take at least half an hour for a good malt.
Nosing is by definition a personal experience because every nose is 'technically' unique and there are dozens of
different components that make up the bouquet of a simple malt whisky. Apart from these 'technical' aspects,
the very nature of our memory ensures that nosing a malt will always be very personal. We tend to associate
all the aromas we find in a malt whisky with familiar smells from the past to be able to define the experience.

Some people argue that a tumbler is better for judging the colour of the whisky.
Yeah well, frankly I'd rather drink the stuff than look at it - but that's just me ;-)
However, the COLOUR can actually tell you something more about that whisky.
The spectrum goes from pale straw via golden to dark amber. Single malts that
were matured in bourbon barrels, for example, are usually very pale. When sherry
casks are used for storing the whisky the colour is usually much darker. Whiskies
also grow darker as they age, but a lot of bottlers artificially colour their malts
with caramel, so it is best not to judge a sheep by it's cover - or something...

And this brings us to the tricky topic of TASTE - and I'm not talking about your choice of apparel here...
There's a lot more to tasting a malt than just the taste, if you get my drift... Things like the texture and
'mouth feel' of a malt, the development over time and the different parts of your mouth that are affected.

A Nose
(Archive)

NOSING noble drinks like cognac, armagnac and SMSW 'officially' happens in three stages.
First, without waltzing, take a deep sniff with your nose a few centimeters above the glass.
For your second sniff, you put your nose right over or even inside the glass - still no waltzing.
Finally, you waltz around the drink in your glass for a while to release the heavier components
of the bouquet, and enjoy the third sniff. Some people try to cover as much as possible of the
inside surface of the glass to give the whisky maximum 'breathing space'. This also allows you
to inspect the 'legs' of a whisky - the drops that trickle back down the inside of the glass.
Heavy (= slow) legs usually spell good news.

The most important thing is giving a whisky enough TIME to develop properly.
Finishing your dram within five or ten minutes is a bit like leaving a movie during
the second act - you think you're saving yourself some valuable time but in the
end you're missing out on part of the fun - and maybe even the whole point.
I'm not suggesting you should reserve 2 or 3 hours for every single malt whisky
(although some are arguably worth it) but I'd say it really deserves half an hour.

And what about DILUTION - adding water to the whisky to help release the bouquet?
Like so many other things concerning the finer things in life, that's just a matter of taste.
Or lack thereof.... I often add some pure mineral water (no bubbles!) to help release the aroma's.
Adding water is usually good for the nose of a malt, but not always for the palate, so I make sure
to always have some sniffs and sips before I start adding water. And even then, I only add a few
drops at a time - especially when I'm sampling a malt that was bottled at a moderate 40 or 43%.
Obviously, cask strength malts like Glenfarclas 105 that's bottled at an ABV of 60% can be diluted
more rigorously than whiskies bottled at 40 or 43 percent, but even then I recommend caution.

Different parts of your tongue register different taste sensations.
The average tongue has only 3000 papillae, each detecting only one of
four primary tastes; sweet, salt, sour and bitter. Well, there have been
rumours about a fifth taste, 'umami'. It's the Japanese word for 'delicious',
but it also means 'fleshy' and/or 'spicy'. I'll have to do some more research on this.

If you've read this far you probably are a person of style and sophistication.
And even if you're not, you can pretend to be by amazing your friends with all
the malt knowledge you've picked up so far. But at some point you're going to
have to face the music and try your first real drams. And then try some more.

There are only four (or five) primary tastes but there are over twenty primary aromas.
And as anybody who has ever visited a fish market at the end of a hot summer day could tell you, the human nose can distinguish much more than those twenty basic aromas. Actually, by far the most of what we experience when we're 'tasting' anything can be attributed to our noses anyway. That's why you can't taste very well at all when you're suffering from the common cold. The bad news is that our noses, very much like the rest of our bodies, deteriorate over time. That's why it's such a good idea to start drinking single malt whisky as young as possible ;-)

E-pistle: Klaus' Big Glassware Test
E-pistle: A Decade of Dramming
E-pistle: Seven Steps to Maltmania
E-pistle: Sound Advice
-

But once again we're getting ahead of ourselves...
We should concentrate on choosing the right GLASSWARE first.
For my personal tasting ritual, I usually taste my whiskies in a large
cognac-snifter (a.k.a. 'fishbowl') which 'gives the most nose' for me.
Wine glasses and copitas are suitable as well, but avoid tumblers!

A Tongue
(Archive)

Seven Scent Groups:

If you believe everything 'they' say, SMSW should be served at room temperature.
Well, I personally prefer to drink my malts slightly warmer; especially because the fainter parts of the aroma
tend to become more pronounced and develop more rapidly at higher temperatures, which enhances the fun.
And that's one of the reasons I like my big cognac bowls so much; they allow your hands to warm the glass.

Before we proceed to chapter 9 I'd like to stress the importance of glassware one more time.
Trust me when I say that a bad malt from a good glass can smell better than a good malt from a bad glass... The next chapter deals with the 'practical issues' that any novice stumbling through maltland has to deal with. Well, any novice that wants to become something more than a novice, that is...  Click on for some guidance during your first shaky steps...