Proofs Positive

Bobbie Burns, liquordom's Scottish laureate, left no doubt about the wellspring of hisinspiration when he said, "O whisky soul o' play and pranks/ Accept a bardie's gratefu' thanks." Americans say thanks not in verse but in the gallonage they drink. Three out of every four bottles of the distilled spirits with which they now commune are whiskey. Most of it's whiskey spelled with an "e," an added tribute which the thrifty Scots and Canadians never have found really essential.

Any intelligent owner of a liquor cabinet nowadays knows that he can get away with one kind of gin, one kind of vodka, one kind of brandy and one, maybe two, kinds of rum. But when it comes to whiskey, he must be able to dispense at least five different kinds—U. S. blended whiskey, bourbon, Canadian, Scotch and Irish. If his whiskey outlook is liberal, he'll offer two from each class. The making of whiskey in all countries follows steps that are essentially the same. A mash is made of grain. Malt turns it to sugar. Yeast turns it to alcohol. Heat vaporizes the alcohol. It cools into whiskey. Wood ages it. But the subtle variations in the finished product are virtually limitless.

There are whiskey disciples who still believe that what's very old is naturally superior to what's contemporary. We've recently tested the theory by sipping a jigger of Gibson's Ancient Special Reserve Pure Rye Whiskey, distilled in 1916. Among pre-Prohibition playboys, its heavy rye flavor, with pungent straw overtones, held pride of place. Drinking it today makes a man feel about as relaxed as he would be dressed in a long duster, cap and goggles, at the wheel of a 1916 Cadillac that was negotiating a potholed back road. It's a perfectly preserved specimen of a type of whiskey against which drinkers have successfully rebelled and are still rebelling, championing in its stead the lighter proofs, the lighter flavors and the lighter bodies —and by body we mean quantity of flavor, not quality.

In distinguishing the lighter from the heavier whiskeys you'll note, after a little practice, that both types create an aftertaste of sorts. The light whiskey leaves a pleasant small glow that seems to linger in the back of your mouth. A heavier whiskey taste hangs around the front of the tongue and the lips, and usually overstays its welcome. Don't let color influence your judgment. In whiskey laboratories, they use garnet-colored glasses to eliminate the bias of the eye in favor of deep colors. Some whiskeys receive their tint from the casks in which they're aged. In others, caramel coloring is added.

Lightness is only one of the good features of a whiskey's profile. The things that make up whiskey flavor, that give it its essence, are called congeners. To recruit the pleasant congeners and stave off the poor ones is the real science and sorcery of whiskey making. In a fifth of whiskey there is, all told, only about a teaspoon of congeners. Without them, it would be plain alcohol. Some congeners are born in the kind of grain used. Others owe their genes to the yeast's paternity. Congeners must be controlled during their stormy adolescence in the big fermenting vats. In the still they're carefully hoarded by drawing off the liquor at low proofs. By law, whiskey in this country must be taken out of the still below 160 proof. Actually, most of them are drawn off at proofs from 115 to 140.They're later cut to drinking strength. If the liquor trickling out of the still goes above 190, all the gusto of the grain simply disappears. You then have neutral spirits. It's like a steak cooked rare retaining its magnificent flavor and a steak cooked well done losing its juices. The comparison must be amended, because whiskey only begins to flash its good stuff—when the congeners become mellow—after long aging in the wood.

Whiskey flavor is coaxed out of a grain mash by either a pot still or a column still. The pot still isn't a yawning soup pot, but a huge metal flask with a dome-shaped bottom, having a blazing fire beneath it and a narrow outlet at the top for trapping and delivering the whiskey vapors into a coil where they're cooled back to a liquid. Some pot stills in Ireland today are monsters holding over 20,000 gallons each. The other, more modern utensil is the column still, a lanky affair three or four stories high in which the alcohol is wheedled out by live steam inside the column rather than flames beneath it. Column stills are like modern coffee makers—the slave of science rather than art—producing a suave, controlled flavor. Pot stills are like old-fashioned enamel coffeepots in which the ground beans dumped into the boiling water swirled around to bring out all the robust coffee essence, a technique that could throw the amateur. But those who handle both the pot stills and the column stills in the big-name distilleries today are pros, highly disciplined in the virtuosity and the chemistry of spirits. Some bourbons today are made, as they were generations ago, in pot stills. Others flow from column stills. Most of the Scotch and Irish whiskies exported to this country are now combinations of pot- and column-stilled spirits.

In buying whiskey, don't judge its personality exclusively by age. Some whiskeys mature earlier than others. Weaker spirits age more quickly than stronger ones. Whiskey in a large hogshead takes longer to mature than the same whiskey in a small cask, because less of it's in contact with the wood. If certain whiskeys are left too long in the wood, for age's sake alone, they sometimes begin to show the "casky" flavor of old age.

U.S. Whiskeys

For all practical purposes, American whiskey production falls into three categories:

Straight whiskey. Whiskey distilled at 160 proof or less and aged for at least two years.

Blends of straight whiskey. Two or more straights married to combine their best features, some for mellowness, some for strength, some for aroma.

Blended whiskey. A U.S. blend of about one third straight whiskey at 100 proof (the law says one fifth is enough) and two thirds nonwhiskey neutral spirits.

Like a stubborn gate-crashing ghost, the word rye keeps weaving in and out of bars and drinking parties when what's really meant is blended whiskey. Actually, less than one half of one percent of the whiskey wetting American throats is straight rye—that is, a straight whiskey concocted from a grain mixture containing more than half rye. In the finer liquor stores you may still find a distinguished old bottling of straight rye, but that is decidedly the exception. Rye, the grain, is used in many American whiskeys as a minor ingredient along with other grains such as wheat and barley. But to call for rye today in a bar is as illogical as asking for an onion stew when you really want a beef stew, on the grounds that onions are used for seasoning purposes. Among those most guilty in perpetuating the rye myth are hotel-keepers and restaurateurs who still present bar menus with the heading Rye Whiskey, followed by a list of well-known blended whiskeys. When the Government christened blended whiskey with its name, it invented an unimaginative phrase that drinkers are loathe to use. Fortunately, fewer and fewer drinkers are calling for rye by name and instead ask for the brand name of the blended whiskey they want.

Before Prohibition, three out of every four bottles of redeye were blended whiskey. It had the boilermaker's touch. Today's blended whiskeys are liquordom's light fantastics. We've never swallowed the old saw that says in effect that blended whiskey appeals only to those drinkers who have discovered to their distress that whiskey has a taste. For manhattans, old fashioneds, whiskey sours, whiskey collinses as well as winter and summer punch bowls, 99 out of 100 bartenders, pro and amateur, use blended whiskey. In all of these drinks it's the necessity that turns out to be a happy virtue.

As you move westward across the U.S., you'll hear bibbers now and then calling for bourbon when they mean blended whiskey. This happens to be less of a semantic crime than that committed by the rye name-droppers, because the whiskey used in blended whiskey is usually straight bourbon. At the end of World War II, three out of four jiggers of whiskey were the neutral-flavored blended whiskey. Shortly thereafter, bourbon men began to cut their traditional 100-proof liquors down to 86. Many of them started to spin out lighter flavors. But it was still bourbon, made from the seraphic oils of the corn, its new easier flavor as perfectly burnished as ever. Bourbon sales blasted off and have now eclipsed blended whiskey. Its first well-known distiller was a Baptist minister, the Reverend Elijah Craig. It was named after a section of north-eastern Kentucky called Bourbon to honor Louis XVI of France for his help in freeing the colonies from Britain. Two centuries later, bourbon the whiskey is now being tasted for the first time by many Frenchmen who still, of (continued on page 190) Proofs Positive (continued from page 96) course, possess the most aristocratic palates in the world. Henri Gault in the Paris L'Intransigeant recently told how men at the Ritz bar, at Fouquet's and the Grande Séverine were demanding bourbon and seemed completely enraptured by it. In France, bourbon was originally a snob drink. With all due credit to snobbery for its motivating value if for nothing else, a stream of bourbon is now wending its way through all the principal playgrounds of Europe. Even the Scots are drinking it clandestinely. In this country, the city that drinks more bourbon than any other is the one that from many standpoints, but particularly the gourmet's, is our finest metropolis, San Francisco. It must rankle old horse breeders to realize that Louisville, Kentucky (31st in total population), ranks an undistinguished 20th among U.S. cities in its consumption of bourbon.

Kentuckians will insist, however, that the only true bourbon is one made from special water running down limestone rocks in the Bluegrass State. Bourbon men from Pennsylvania and Illinois argue that water is indeed important, but that it flows just as sweetly if not more so from their own private springs. Some vow that whiskey ages best when the barrels are exposed to all the heat of summer and the icy cold of winter. Others coddle their whiskey in the air-conditioned comfort of streamlined ware-houses. All whiskey men guard their yeast formulas like dowry rights.

For those seeking special whiskeys, bottled-in-bond is the most eminent. It can be spotted by its green rather than red stamp. It must be a straight whiskey (and is almost always bourbon) produced by a single distillery in one year, at least four years old, bottled at 100 proof and kept under more or less constant surveillance. During its slumber, it's tax-free, and during this time it's watched by Internal Revenue men who look upon their quarry as something of a cross between the Pietà of Michelangelo and the man at the head of the FBI's ten-most-wanted list. Theoretically, it can be a very poor whiskey and still be bottled-in-bond; the revenuers don't care about quality. Actually, most of the prominent bottled-in-bonds are the very cream of the present bourbon dynasty.

The terms sweet mash and sour mash can stand clarification. A sour-mash bourbon means that the grain mixture contained some "spent" beer from a previous run of whiskey. Like the chunk of leftover dough bakers use for their sour rye bread, it's the kind of leftover that up- rather than downgrades the new batch of whiskey. Sweet-mash bourbon starts off with a clean slate. The thing to remember is that sour-mash whiskey actually has a sweeter flavor than the so-called sweet mash.

Finally, there's corn whiskey. It's made up and distilled like bourbon but must contain at least 80 percent corn, as compared with bourbon's minimum of 51 percent. Here the resemblance ends. It's aged in uncharred or reused oak barrels and lacks the deep mellowness of bourbon, although it has its faithful Southern following.

Scotch Whisky

If America makes a god of corn, Scotland does the same of barley. Young drinkers who take their first sip of Scotch are sometimes torn between what they think they should like and what they actually like. But something of a mellow note draws them back, and before long they're in tune with the great Highland fling. Long before the whiskey insurrection here in the Thirties, in 1908 in fact, a Royal Commission looking into British whiskey tastes had warned that the drinking public wanted a whiskey "of less marked characteristics." They were talking about the old heavyweight Scotch malts made with grain, as it is today, dried over peat smoke. They're still the foundation of Scotch whisky, but they're only half the picture. The rest are light whiskies made from corn, rye and wheat, sent through the stills at high proof, as light as thistledown, almost but not quite on the borderline of neutral spirits. All Scotches are now blends not of one heavy whisky with one light, but often of as many as a dozen heavies with a dozen lights. The breeding and crossbreeding of blends is a Scottish native art and you must be born on Scottish soil and breathe its mists in order to acquire it. What's so amazing is that year after year Scottish shippers, sometimes using their own whisky, sometimes not, can turn out a spirit that seldom varies, as purebred in flavor as bottles of a vintage wine from the same grapes on the same hillside of the same château.

The thrifty Scotsman usually wastes no mixers on his hallowed whisky. The Scotch toddy in which a squirt of lemon juice is introduced is a notable exception. Each member of the old Nine Tumblers Club of St. Andrews was required to be able to down, at a leisurely pace, nine tumblers of Scotch toddy and be able to enunciate clearly at the end of the session the words Bib-li-cal crit-i-cism. In cold or stormy weather, it's a fascinating indoor sport to try in your own turreted castle. In this country, the modern Scotches are usually found swirling over the rocks more than in any other form. The Scotch old fashioned or the rob roy—a manhattan made with Scotch—are fine old stand-bys that also seem to fare much better with the lighter Scotches than with the dark old malts.

Before the War, all Scotches coming to this shore were at least eight years old. Now they're running between five and seven years, even though many labels indicate no age at all. If you're in a mood for taste exploration, try the same brand of Scotch in an eight- and twelve-year-old version. The satiny smoothness of the older Scotch is roamin' in the gloam-in' at its best. Now and then a label will read "Liqueur Scotch Whisky." It's not a sweet liqueur in the literal sense, but indicates an older Scotch which the shipper presents as his gilt-edged potation.

Canadian Whisky

If in spelling whisky, the Scot in the Canadian seems to have taken charge, in distilling it, the French canadien is obviously the creative force. For Canada turns out the world's lightest, most delicate of spirits, a marvelous balance of corn, rye and barley. While every bottle of Canadian whisky seems to reflect the icy clarity of the cold arctic, you can depend upon its eventual effect to be as warming as any 86-proof potable in the world.

As far as public behavior is concerned, our neighbors to the north are notoriously stiff-necked puritans. There are few Canadian cities where you'll find men and women drinking in a cocktail room. A barmaid is unknown. A man carrying a bottle from a government liquor store can be jailed if the wrapper should accidentally drop off his fifth. Even the Queen's health at state dinners is toasted in ice water. But while the puritan is thus all powerful in public, in the privacy of the great old distilleries, the government is the soul of leniency. Canadian liquor men are subject to only a fraction of the rules besetting distillers in the States. Since 1800 when every miller in Canada was also a distiller, the whisky taste makers have used charred or uncharred oak barrels as they please. Their own self-imposed code is responsible for the light brilliant spirits, at least six years old, now sent into the States. Travelers in Canada often notice that in its native habitat, Canadian whisky seems even softer than in the States. The simple explanation is that in Canada many of the best-known brands are sold at 80 proof.

Irish Whiskey

After a few sturdy drams, amateur whiskey genealogists often trace Irish whiskey to its first maker, Patrick, patron saint of Ireland. When literal-minded whiskey historians insist that St. Patrick in the Fifth Century was a brewer of beer rather than a distiller of whiskey, Irishmen aren't in the least bit rattled. Whiskey is only distilled beer, which is true, just as brandy is distilled wine. And the whole history of distilling, they point out, from the ancient Arabs onward is such a barmy tale that St. Patrick might just as well be credited as less worthy benefactors. When impertinent Sassenachs say Irish whiskey is like Canadian but more robust, they make a comparison that may be true but is nevertheless odious to any true Irishman who can point out that the world owes the very word whiskey to the Gaelic uisgebeatha, water of life.

There's something regal in the flavor of Irish whiskey, best described in Holinshed's Chronicles in 1577, "Trulie it is a soverigne liquor if it be orderlie taken." Its base is barley, with wheat, rye and oats for additional flavoring. The grain is dried over closed fires. Unlike Scotch, smoke never gets in its eyes.

In Ireland there's a saying that whiskey takes seven days of a man's time and seven years of the whiskey's time. This is just about the lowest age at which Irish whiskey is now exported to the States. The most recent version in which it's "orderlie taken" is, of course, Irish coffee—a drink as good iced as hot. Good Irish coffee needs honest whipped cream, always enhanced if it's laced with either Irish Mist or coffee liqueur.

Herewith an intercontinental compendium of original Playboy recipes offering urbane approaches to the whiskey-with theme.

[recipe_title]Scotch Solace[/recipe_title]

[drinkRecipe]2 1/2 ozs. Scotch[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 tablespoon honey[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1/2 oz. triple sec[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]5 ozs. milk[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 oz. heavy cream[/drinkRecipe]

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated orange rind Pour whisky, honey and triple sec into 12-oz. highball glass. Stir until honey is thoroughly blended. Add milk, cream and orange rind. Add ice cubes to fill glass to brim. Stir well.

[recipe_title]Kerry Cooler[/recipe_title]

[drinkRecipe]2 ozs. Irish whiskey[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 1/2 ozs. madeira or sherry[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 oz. orgeat (almond syrup)[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 oz. lemon juice[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]Chilled club soda[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 slice lemon[/drinkRecipe]

In 12-oz. highball glass pour whiskey, madeira, orgeat and lemon juice. Stir well. Add 3 large ice cubes. Fill with club soda. Stir. Float lemon slice on top.

[recipe_title]Double Derby[/recipe_title]

[drinkRecipe]2 1/2 ozs. bourbon[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]2 ozs. cold strong black tea[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]2 ozs. claret[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 oz. red currant syrup[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 oz. orange juice[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1/2 oz. lemon juice[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 wedge cocktail orange in syrup[/drinkRecipe]

Pour bourbon, tea, claret, red currant syrup, orange juice and lemon juice into double old fashioned glass. Add ice cubes to fill glass to brim. Stir well. Add cocktail orange. (If red currant syrup is not available, red currant jelly to which a teaspoon of hot water has been added may be heated over a low flame and stirred constantly until jelly is liquid.)

[recipe_title]Canadian Frozen Fraise[/recipe_title]

[drinkRecipe]2 ozs. Canadian whisky[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 oz. fraise (strawberry liqueur)[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]1 extra-large strawberry[/drinkRecipe]

[drinkRecipe]Superfine sugar[/drinkRecipe]

Fill a 6-oz. saucer champagne glass with very finely crushed ice. Pour whisky and fraise into glass. (If champagne glass is less than 6 ozs., reduce liquors proportionately.) Dip strawberry in small amount of fraise; dip tip in sugar and place on center of ice. Serve with short straw as post-prandial frappé.

Drinking tastes are always in ferment, or they wouldn't be tastes. Where future whiskey tastes are destined is any bar philosopher's guess. But learned whiskey men believe that in the years just ahead many of the 86-proof whiskeys will probably be offered in 80-proof versions—several have already appeared—and that the lighter flavors will become lighter before they become heavier.

But be it 86 or 80, the real proof of the whiskey is in the drinking. And having discovered this, more and more Americans find themselves in felicitous accord with the canny Scotsman who said, "There's whusky and there's guid whusky, but there's nae bad whusky."