Ep. 97 - Whisky, Wine, Blind Tastings, and Certifications

Transcript

Drew Hannush:
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews. I'm your host, Drew Hanisch, the Amazon bestselling author of Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experiencing Irish Whiskey and Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And today, it is time to bridge the divide between wine and whiskey with my guest, Adam Edmondson. Adam is the general manager of Sommelier Company, a master of scotch with the Council of Whiskey Masters, and a certified specialist of wine with the Society of Wine Educators. couple of weeks ago, Adam reached out to me on behalf of the Council of Whiskey Masters and was asking me if there were some of the people who were on their advisory board that maybe we could have on the show at some point to talk history, which I would love to do. But as we were chatting, it was like, wait a second, this is a really interesting conversation that we're having about wine and whiskey. And it's interesting for me because it's something that I started actually wanting to go from beer into wine and I ended up in whiskey. So it seems like a path that some people will take to get to that final destination of whiskey. And so I thought we'd have a great time talking about that. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Edmonsond:
Wonderful, thank you for having me, Drew.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, this is a very interesting topic for me because as I say, my journey was to say, wait a second, it started with a movie with me. It was the movie Sideways. And when I saw it, I was like, okay, this guy knows all this stuff about wine. I'm a James Bond fan too. There are times in the early James Bonds where Sean Connery goes off on a particular spirit. and starts telling you the whole backstory on it. It's like, that's really cool. I can't really do that with beer. I would love to do that with wine, but wine evolved into whiskey for me. So let's talk first about your journey and how did you first get to wine? Because I'm assuming wine came before whiskey.

Adam Edmonsond:
It did. Wine came before whiskey and actually, interestingly, it started with when I moved to California. I'm originally from the Midwest, from Kansas City. I moved to California about 12 years ago, maybe 13 years now. And right away started going to wine tastings. People assume when I say that, that it's California wines, but actually the tastings I went to had a really global focus and a pretty systematic approach. So the founder of that tasting group, was a sommelier, many sommeliers attended those tastings along with collectors and hobbyists. So it was a pretty high level conversation. It wasn't focused on, there was no promotion, it's not focused on the producers, it was critical discussion, blind tasting in every tasting. So

Drew Hannush:
Mmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
the wines were tasted and discussed before revealing what they were. And that was an excellent way to learn a lot about wine is hearing people's reasoning out loud and, you know, argumentation with each other and keeping it an interesting game, essentially, that allows you to pick up lots of little facts here and there. Prior to that, I mean, I studied abroad in Europe, so I had wine before I was of drinking age in the US. And I would say my pop culture reference was when Hannibal Lecter was serving a $700 bottle of Montrachet.

Drew Hannush:
Okay, that works. I don't

Adam Edmonsond:
Hehehe

Drew Hannush:
know that you want to pair anything that he would pair with his, but... Oh, that's interesting. So you were introduced to the sommelier concept very early on in your experience.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I was 21 at the time when I went to Sommelier-led tastings. And I got my certification in wine from the Society of Wine Educators by the time I was 23. But even before then was essentially co-hosting those tastings after a while. We had three different groups in three different cities. So we were in LA, San Diego, and Orange County once basically three Saturdays out of the month. And so I was tasting, you know, through much more than most people get access to tasting. If you're in the trade or something like that, unless you go to a lot of large trade tastings. And so just the exposure and I'd say the methodology, you know, really hooked me pretty quickly to making this an intellectual topic and something to, you know, savor beyond just the physical sense of that term.

Drew Hannush:
Were your parents wine drinkers or did you just kind of stumble into this yourself?

Adam Edmonsond:
No, polar opposite. I mean, I don't think they had ever purchased a bottle of wine. There was boxed wine at family events. It was not anything in the family really. It was just, you know, I'd studied, you know, a lot of culture and things like that before having moved out here. I had lived in Europe. I had, you know, I learned German as a second language and knew a bit more about European history and so on. So I... food and wine and kind of the interest of all those things came together. I'm pretty interested in food as well.

Drew Hannush:
Liebherr Milch, that's what my parents drank.

Adam Edmonsond:
Oh no. With the, yeah,

Drew Hannush:
A

Adam Edmonsond:
yeah.

Drew Hannush:
lot of Blue Nun we had around the house. Yeah, so we

Adam Edmonsond:
Yes.

Drew Hannush:
were, I mean, German background for me. So what was interesting to me was the first time I got to go to the Alsace-Lorraine region and right there on the border of France and Germany. And I've been so exposed to red wine when I started my journey into wine. a few years ago and it was kind of interesting to jump back to white wine again and have that experience. Did you have a preference when you started? Did you jump into the whites first or the reds or kind of equal opportunity?

Adam Edmonsond:
It's interesting. People kind of, I think, go through phases with that. I had a few years where I was only interested in white wines after, after blasting through, you know, all the red wines I could for the beginning. I think, I think in the beginning, red wines were more interesting to me. There is more to find in them and to say about them in general. You're adding a production method that increases flavor or produces flavor and texture. And there's a bit more to it. But. I would say, I mean, if you went to a great place for finding really complex white wines. And so when I was introduced to Alsatian white wines, German white wines, some of the Rhone Valley white wines that can just be amazingly complex and interesting. You see, okay, you know, these things don't all taste like one another, which I think for a beginning taster, it can seem like the whites tend to blur together a bit more than some of the reds do.

Drew Hannush:
So it has to be sort of daunting, I guess, at the beginning when you're getting into this. Are you, when you're attending events and doing things like that, you feel like people are talking over your head initially. I think that stops a lot of people from really wanting to dive in to learning about either whiskey or wine.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I think, I mean, you're trusting the presenter or the host or whoever's leading and kind of designing the format of a tasting like that. And that really, so the Samulier company, which is the company I operate now as the general manager, it actually grew out of those tasting events, which were hobby tasting events, but people started asking the founder to do private events. And so that eventually became a company doing corporate and private events, um, and consulting and things like that. But, uh, that began with having someone who can, you know, appropriately set the context for someone who's new to tasting wine while at the same time, not making people who have 30 years of experience feel like they're starting with wine 101. Um, so it's, you know, you're mentioning facts here and there that, you know, um, people who are new are picking up. but at the same time, you're reminding people who already know them.

Drew Hannush:
Do you start out kind of talking about regions? And I try to relate all of this to the way that I teach somebody about Scotch. And I talk about regions now, of course, regions in Scotch are not quite as distinct as they had been for some time. But still, is that kind of where you start? It's like, I wanna figure out where to ground myself.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
so that I don't feel overwhelmed by all of this.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, and that when people, you know, when publishers design books or encourage writers to design books a certain way, typically it's divide things into region. People have already been trained by wine to think that way. And for wine, the reason for regionality is much more inherent than the reason for regional characteristics in whiskey. There's much more on the production side of the equation in whiskey. Certainly there are environmental factors and things that influence how they can develop, but I would say with wine it's quite a bit easier to divide the world up into places which naturally have boundaries and divisions. And then to think also in the dimension of grape variety, because grape variety plus region maybe plus style if there's a distinctive style of winemaking or grape growing is really the identity of a wine. Whereas the identity of a whiskey is a much more complicated thing, I would say.

Drew Hannush:
So was Samoyed something that when you first got into this, there was actually a certification for, or was it a title you just kind of, people tagged you with that after a while if you really knew your stuff.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I mean, the traditional use of the word was a job function in a restaurant. So it's, it was something that, you know, a French restaurant had a sommelier, kind of in the height of French cuisine. All any nice restaurant would have a sommelier. And then there, I don't know if the court of masters sommeliers was the first to come up with any type of certification of this kind. I don't, I don't believe they are, but I'm not sure, but they really, got to be associated with a certification by certifying Sommelier's, that's one of the titles they offer, and then advanced and master. And I think many people are familiar with the phenomenon of master sommeliers because there have been documentaries like Somme and books and TV shows and things that kind of look into this specialized world of people whose mission is to know literally everything about wine. Um, you know, even comically sometimes to the point of, you know, beyond any practical use in a, in a restaurant. But, um, you know, memorizing lists and things like that. But I think the, um, yeah, it's, it's gotten to be associated with certifications. There are other certifications that don't use the term like mine, um, is a certified specialist of wine with a society of wine educators, and that really just indicates an educational focus. Um, someone who wants to teach about wine. rather than a service and hospitality focus, which was the purpose of the court and some other organizations.

Drew Hannush:
So this has really helped people kind of move beyond just being an individual restaurant and actually go around and do tastings in other places and be more mobile.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, the profession of sommelier outside of a restaurant is still a new thing. Um, so we, um, for long, for the longest time have been really the only company that does that nationwide as far as bringing sommeliers in front of audiences, uh, outside of a restaurant setting. Um, there are other people who've been doing that individually and kind of built their own, um, career doing so in specific cities, but it's, um, it's something that was relatively new 10 years ago.

Drew Hannush:
Okay, so I know my audience is going, whiskey, when's he gonna talk

Adam Edmonsond:
Whiskey,

Drew Hannush:
about

Adam Edmonsond:
whiskey!

Drew Hannush:
whiskey? Yeah, let's jump in and say, what was it? Because as I say, for me, wine was something that I enjoyed. My issue was that because I was single and I'd buy a bottle of wine, I felt like I had to drink a bottle of wine. And I was one who was really starting to get into the idea of nosing and tasting. And so I didn't necessarily want a big glass of wine. I just wanted something I could nose and taste and not feel guilty that I hadn't put my little air compress compressor to work to try to save the bottle and all the rest

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
or by the fancy corks and all that sort of stuff. So that was kind of my transition over to whiskey was here's something that I can just pour myself a little bit of. I can nose it. I can taste it. That kind of thing. So what was it that brought you over to whiskey?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, so I mean there was a time I would have said I'm not interested in spirits and I'm not interested in being interested in spirits I mean it would as a as somebody who cared a lot about balance and You know the other virtues you look for in wine you're thinking 40 plus percent alcohol Well, you know, that's a big elephant in the room how are you going to manage flavor with that level of alcohol etc and You know my it dawned on me when I became when it became useful for me to learn about whiskey was really when people started requesting whiskey tasting events, who, you know, previously would have requested a wine tasting event. And I really studied it for a while and I would say the thing that really made it dawn on me that, you know, this is something that can be just as complex, just as, you know, delicate, just as flavorsome, interesting, intellectual. was when I really had a kind of a high end tasting. You know, it's sometimes you actually have to start at the higher end of the spectrum to be grabbed by the lapels and see what's possible for this type of beverage. Because the tendency is to think you should start at the beginning, which is the bottom shelf stuff and then work your way up. But the problem is some of the bottom shelf stuff isn't interesting enough to keep you interested in the topic. So one of the first... Single malt Scotch tastings I did that had lots of aged things, you know, 18 year, 21 year, 25 year, things like that, that I was leading from a sommelier's perspective, just blew my mind, you know, with the

Drew Hannush:
Mm.

Adam Edmonsond:
complexity in particular and just the clarity of flavor and just the beauty.

Drew Hannush:
I think the reason why you could probably step beyond the entry levels is because the entry levels are probably going to offend you a little bit. They're going to be rougher. They're really not going to help ease you into that whiskey world. Whereas you already have a developed nose and palate and so you're more prepared. Whereas when I started in whiskey, I was like, you know what? I don't want to drink a... $200 bottle of whiskey because I feel like it's wasted on me. I haven't really

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
trained my nose or palate yet and I need to start with a quality spirit but not one that is necessarily going to break the bank and that I'm going to feel guilty drinking.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you need to have something that's a little over your head that you can really see, oh my God, there's something here, and then aspire to understanding it and become more fascinated in how it's made, what makes it different from other whiskies, why is there such a variety of flavor in something that seems like it's simple coming from just a few ingredients. And yeah, I would say people go in phases too. Like I said, I had a white wine phase. I also had a younger whiskey phase. So if I was starting with low age statement or no age statement bottlings and couldn't really appreciate them at the beginning, maybe I learned enough and began to appreciate whiskey enough through higher end selections that then I'm circling back and saying, well, there's a lot of merit to most of the whiskies that are on the market. They're not occupying shelf space for no reason. We don't actually get much bad whiskey.

Drew Hannush:
Hmm. And so did you get used to over 40%?

Adam Edmonsond:
I did, yes.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah. That's

Adam Edmonsond:
Yes,

Drew Hannush:
a...

Adam Edmonsond:
and now I'm demanding 46, et cetera. So yeah.

Drew Hannush:
Right. Yeah. Aren't we

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
all, aren't we all? Yeah. It's, it's kind of an interesting progression. I think actually, in some ways I watch people who are drinking cast-strength whiskies now and, and are like, they're grabbing for as much as they can possibly get out of that bottle. Um, that as you say, we go through phases and maybe this is part of a phase that people want to get the most aggressive they can get out of it to see where it goes and then at some point potentially kind of pull back and find that sweet spot.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, yeah, I found, you know, it's not only the alcohol, the warmth. I find too that, you know, when you have a higher proof whiskey, it seems to carry the flavor better. Not only that it's not losing a lot of that in the process of, of proofing, but it just, it seems like a little higher alcohol kind of presents the flavors a little bit better. Um, so I am tasting quite a bit at a higher strength than I would have before. If I had bought a cast strength whiskey before I would have watered it down to effectively 40, 43, something like that. Um, but, but yeah, I'm, I'm kind of in a cast strength phase right now. I would say.

Drew Hannush:
Did you gravitate more towards finished whiskeys when you started out? Just because of the familiarity?

Adam Edmonsond:
I did only actually for the reason that I was so impressed with Glenmore & Gee. And so that was one of the whiskeys I really enjoyed was the Glenmore & Gee 18. And so I went and bought things that they have and the rest of their, you know, their core range and some special bottle links. But most of those, you know, being varied by the different finishes.

Drew Hannush:
So was it scotch only or when did you start kind of trying different areas, coming over to American whiskey, maybe trying some Irish whiskey, all of that?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I think I began tasting bourbon about the same time as I did Scotch. So I would say my interest was much more in Scotch and it has been to date. That was the program I decided to go through with the council, the master program. And my plans for the future though, I am going for the master of whiskey designation, which is basically to cover the entire world. So right now I'm focused a lot on bourbon and Japanese, catching up on my knowledge of Irish, Canadian. you know, other world whiskeys. But yeah, I think Scotch is still to me kind of the thing that means the most.

Drew Hannush:
It's interesting jumping in and I have really tried to encourage people to stretch themselves and go beyond. What I'm finding is that as I start tasting Irish whiskeys now and I've tasted some Canadian whiskeys that I hadn't really tried before and I'm going into these different areas, you... you see different personalities evolving in each of these, kind of like we talk about with wine, different regions kind of have their own personalities that there's characteristics, there's the way they make the whiskey in a particular place, what they pay attention to, that it just seems to open up your, just opening up the knowledge. And getting to know all of that, I think, just makes you a smarter whiskey drinker overall.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And if you want to understand the different styles, it's important to understand the different regulations about how they're produced. And those came up, you know, out of most legislation is custom before its legislation. So those come out of tradition, but they also act as constraints. And so they are they're actually in a way also inhibitors to competition in the sense that If you're, if you're trying to figure out how to compete with Scotch, you know, you're able to do things that the Scotch producers can't do, um, by, by definition. And so you can carve out your own marketplace and that's becoming interesting in many places around the world where they're looking at different ways of innovating Scotland at the same time as innovating continually, um, within the constraints of its regulations, but these are kind of fascinating interplays, you know, the culture, the, um, competitive forces, tradition, regulations. Learning to understand those and kind of understand the different styles that result from them, that's I think really fascinating. Once you get past your kind of region of choice and you start tasting other things, I mean, Japanese whiskey was a revelation to me. I mean, just the quality available there is astounding. Same thing with many other places around the world, but they're so different. you know, from Scotch.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah. We'll get into talking about blind tasting here in a little bit, because I think that's an interesting subject and trying to figure these regions out and, or these, these different countries and, and their styles. But let's talk first about the first thing that you have to do, which is really kind of developing a nose and palate when you're first starting out. And again, it can be kind of that overwhelming feeling to some people when they start. I know when I started my channel, I started it as a history channel and I was never going to do tastings. The reason I was never going to do tastings is because I was one of those people that said, I'll never be great at that. That's something that only masters can really do and I'm just going to sit back here and tell history and I'll sip on something and I'll apologize for how little I know about tasting whiskey. But then after a while it caught on. And so if you were to give somebody some advice who's going, you know what, I apologize all the time for the fact that I can't tell you what this tastes like. If they go to a, I would travel to a distillery and I would have the master distiller looking at me and I would have this glass and I know he's going to ask me what I'm nosing and tasting out of this or what I'm experiencing. experiencing and then it's just kind of this overwhelming feeling of, oh,

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm.

Drew Hannush:
you know what? I'm going to say it tastes like vanilla and caramel because it's a bourbon.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
How do you start yourself out in trying to expand your palette?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I think, I mean, before you see individual tasting notes, you do actually have to have quite a bit of experience just tasting whiskey, not necessarily widely, even a given whiskey. If you have, you know, over the course of six months, a bottle of whiskey, you're going to start noticing things about it beyond kind of the base impression. But you have to have that time and exposure to start noticing those things. So The truthful answer, if somebody asks a novice, what do you smell? They're going to say whiskey. You know,

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
it just smells like whiskey. That sounds like a funny answer, but it's the true answer because that's what you see. And you're differentiating whiskey from, from water, from Coca-Cola, from whatever else. And then once you've had a lot of whiskey, then you start differentiating one type of whiskey from the next and one tasting note from the next. And. Part of observing tasting notes too is more cognitive than it is sensory perceptual. So most people have very similar palates. There are people who have, in terms of their equipment, have many more taste buds. They have some advantage in that way. But those people are rare and they're not generally the best tasters in the world. The best tasters in the world are people with normal palates who've learned kind of what to do with their mind while they're tasting. And asking yourself questions, knowing how it's produced, knowing which questions should be coming up to you to try to identify something goes a long way. It's much easier to go down a checklist than it is trying to observe things just inductively from scratch without any kind of foil or without any kind of comparison. So I think that's part of how a tasting note from a sommelier can be so impressive. They've got kind of a rubric. and a lot of background in terms of intentionally thinking about different tasting notes and going to the grocery store, buying fruits you wouldn't normally buy, going to the floral department, smelling and tasting spices, eating foods that are different from what you normally would. Those are the kinds of things you can do to expand your repertoire.

Drew Hannush:
It's really interesting because whiskey really taught me how to taste and smell because I really had not paid that much attention to the food or the smells around me. There could be a smell going on around and I was just totally oblivious to it. And now I'm to the point where I even, when I drink water, I know what water feels like. And so

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
it's like you taste what a whiskey, the body of a whiskey, you start paying attention to those smaller details. And when I started out, I was like, should I just go to the store and buy a bunch of different spices and be nosing them and trying to pick things up that way? And there is sort of that overwhelming feeling once you get started that, especially if you start into scotch, because the flavor range is greater, sometimes it's hard to figure out where to know. uh... where to start in smelly sometimes he smells kind of morph and blend together so that it's hard to pull one smell out from another

Adam Edmonsond:
And it's a moving target. You know, you have development in the glass, just like you do with wine. I think, yeah, it's quite tricky, but I think the... I mean, the thing for someone beginning, I would say, read about it as well. You know, if you buy a bottle of whiskey, read what different writers have written about it and see what you can confirm or deny. There's an element of being influenced by that you have to be careful of. I think if you... If you want to really learn about tasting, you should do it in a blind setting. And then there, what you're relying on is contrast. You know, you have two different samples at the same time, or more if you're being sort of the whole flight at once. And you can say, okay, this one has more red fruit than that one, if we're talking about wine, or this one's more tannic and grippy on the palate than that one, if we're talking about whiskey, why would that be? You know, and it depends on, I would say the thing that makes you know, wine tasting possible is that geographic and grape variety difference that sets apart styles and types of wine. The thing though with whiskey is that you have the vast majority of the flavor coming from man-made processes, production and maturation, and there are so many variables and they're interacting variables that what you have to do is look for evidence of certain types of production techniques and then reference that kind of against your knowledge of how different whiskeys are produced, so it requires quite a database of knowledge already to successfully blind taste whiskeys. And I think that's, I find it a little harder, or actually quite a bit harder than wine.

Drew Hannush:
Oh, that's encouraging.

Adam Edmonsond:
Hehehe

Drew Hannush:
That's a, I remember I was getting cocky about, about tasting and smelling whiskey, and I did a threesome, an Isla threesome. I basically tried to blind taste, and living by myself, I have to basically pour it into the glass, mark something on the bottom, and then shift them around and try to distract myself, so I'm not paying attention to

Adam Edmonsond:
I'm sorry.

Drew Hannush:
which, where I'm moving stuff around, the old shell game I'm playing in my brain. And so I thought, well, I'm going to do well at this, because I had a Lagavulin 9, a LeFrog 10, which to me those two actually were a lot closer to each other than you might expect, and then Ardbeg, which is very ashy. So it was interesting in doing it, because I could pick out the Ardbeg every time, because

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
it was so different. But the other two, I kept getting them backwards. And

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
it made me go. Okay, you know, there's something in this, but it was still early on. So it's like, there is something between these two different types of smoke that I'm not picking up on. And I'm believing one spirit should be this when in reality it's the other spirit. So I see where your blind tasting can be an assist.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, and you know, if a given thing stands out to you at a given point in time, and that's the thing you're focused on, you can make a decision in your logic tree that says, okay, therefore, you know, I'm taking these three as candidates and excluding these two. And if you're wrong on one point, the rest of it's all gone, you know, unless you realize it later and backtrack. But it's very hard. And I think there's a lot of discipline involved, making sure that you're not making hasty decisions. that you're not excluding things prematurely. There's a whole strategy really to blind tasting. And it is geared more toward an exam than it is toward appreciation. I think appreciation is different from being able to identify something.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah,

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
let's talk about objections, because I got into a discussion with somebody on a chat about, now, if I go to talk to a bourbon drinker, I will sometimes get from a bourbon drinker, I don't like scotch, which to me, I always say, well, that's kind of like saying you don't like food because there are varieties of food, there are varieties

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
of scotches. And so how do you tend to try to over overcome that objection?

Adam Edmonsond:
My answer usually is I can fix that. Because I mean, there's nobody who's told me they don't like scotch that I wouldn't be able to find a scotch that they would admit to liking.

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
If in particular, if they are already into spirits of any kind, or, you know, find them acceptable. I think one of the hurdles is the alcohol content for some people and there you may want to start them on cocktails or something else. But if they like tequila, but they don't like scotch, or if they like bourbon, but they don't like scotch, I think it's only a matter of introducing them to the right thing.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah. So what's interesting to me is that I never really think about it from the other direction, but I would think it would be harder for a Scotch drinker to find a bourbon that they like than it would be for a bourbon fan to like a Scotch because Scotches are aged in bourbon barrels. So there's some bourbon characteristics there. Whereas when you have a, when you have a bourbon, the thing I'll hear from a Scotch drinker is it's too sweet.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
because of the aggressiveness of the barrel aging and getting it in that fresh barrel, do you find yourself looking for a bridge whiskey that can get them over that hump? Because my thought is, well maybe if I could just find a really dry bourbon.

Adam Edmonsond:
Hmm.

Drew Hannush:
I mean, something that it probably has a lot more of like a... or something that maybe has a familiar note in it, like a finished cask,

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
wine cask kind of a version.

Adam Edmonsond:
That's an interesting thought. I think if finishing would, um, would influence and make it, make it more approachable for some people. Um, I think, I mean, you see that with angels envy. I get a lot of requests for angels envy at tasting events. Maybe that's the reason. Um, but I think the, I think the, I agree with you. I think it's a little, it's harder to go at least for me from Scotch to bourbon rather than from bourbon to Scotch. I think people naturally like sweeter flavors in the United States anyway. You know, we're raised on Coca-Cola and a little more sweet desserts and things than in the rest of the world. If you go and have dessert in Germany, it's not that sweet. It's just something that I think kind of matches the American palate. Also the intensity of flavor. It's that just incredible intensity. You see that in American wine preferences as well. You know, they like often these bold Cabernet Sauvignon. They don't understand what's going on with this, you know, dainty Beaujolais. Um, and, you know, that's, that's maybe how it translates into the world of spirits. Um, but in Scotch you have both. So if I have a bourbon drinker who likes intensity, who likes sweetness, then I can show them something that, you know, has a heavy sherry influence, um, that has, you know, a lot of intensity flavor from distillery character, um, and usually find something that they like. Um. If they do like, you know, more delicate flavors, then you can find them at a delicate space site or something that isn't shared and, you know, usually bring people around that way. So I think you have a few more entry points in Scotch because there is such a diversity of flavor, whereas the definition of bourbon requires a certain amount of overlap in flavor characteristic that's considerable. So I'm having a hard time, I'm studying bourbon now and tasting and... preparing to blind taste for it, I find it harder than scotch because there is so much coming from those casks and so little variation. You can char the casks to different levels, you can toast them, you can do a second cask, you can do a double maturation. There are some now that have finishing, but otherwise you're looking at differences of grain bill, maybe of yeast strain. things like that, but it's hard to differentiate them, and I think harder than even Scotch.

Drew Hannush:
I think the advantage I get in tasting on bourbons usually is that I'm such a rye fan that the type of rye flavor is kind of like that differentiator for

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
me in tasting a bourbon.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
I heard you on the Bourbon Life podcast and it was kind of interesting to hear the talk of blind tasting, maker's mark. cast strength and thinking

Adam Edmonsond:
Hmm.

Drew Hannush:
it was a high rye whiskey and that everybody was getting it wrong. That sometimes

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
you can be that thrown by something like that.

Adam Edmonsond:
That was in the Master of Urban Exam. That was the first Master of Urban Exam. I wasn't there. I was in my own for Scotch. But the panel of judges were tasting blind initially, along with the candidates. So they make their own notes to keep themselves honest. When they're judging later, how well did you do? And so I think everybody just about, I don't know if maybe there was an exception, but thought there was a high-rai component there. where

Drew Hannush:
Hehehe

Adam Edmonsond:
there was none. And so that's kind of a lesson in, I like doing things like that in a blind tasting because then I want to work out why that could be, you know, how can that happen.

Drew Hannush:
Right, right.

Adam Edmonsond:
And it's well what can give you the flavors and textures and impressions that are similar to a something with a lot of rye in it. You know, you've got spiciness, what else can cause the perception of spiciness, you know, alcohol, you can have flavors from from maturation, you can even have certain flavors from production that come through as quite spicy. And there are other things, you know, it's just, there's so much interacting there. I try to work out afterward where I went wrong. And sometimes that's helpful.

Drew Hannush:
Did you have a moment where when you went back after you started drinking whiskey and then you started drinking wine that you were going, I'm noticing things about wine that I didn't notice before.

Adam Edmonsond:
Um, I don't actually know. I think, um, now I'm finding more in whiskey than I did before. Um, I'm continually, I'm continuing to, to see things in whiskey that wouldn't have been something that I would typically notice, um, even six months or a year ago. And, um, I would say correspondingly wine has become, uh, less interesting. So

Drew Hannush:
Ha ha

Adam Edmonsond:
there are some wines that I'm in love with and I tend to gravitate toward those types. And I've, you know, many people over time, they go out and explore lots of different wines and then they kind of narrow down what their wine categories are. And I've never wanted to do that. I've always wanted to taste widely, but you know, I'm going back to the same four or five regions all the time and looking for more interesting expressions of it. But I'm spending more time analyzing my whiskeys than I have my wines.

Drew Hannush:
It's really interesting because I went to Missouri wine country many, many years ago and I went to the town of Herman and I went to this one particular winery and I tasted through all the wines that they had to offer. And I walked out going, I don't know. I really don't know. I left with a bottle, but I was kind of not, not sure what I had just gone through. And then after I came back years later, after doing whiskey tasting, it's like I taste. I taste the oak in this. I'm

Adam Edmonsond:
Hmm.

Drew Hannush:
tasting things in this. Now I'm actually paying attention to the flavors that are in this. And I think that's what's kind of fun, about switching between and seeing how your palette has progressed over the

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
years.

Adam Edmonsond:
yeah, definitely. And I think too, you know, it's, it's just like, oh, I don't like scotch. Well, let me find you the right one. Same thing in wine. You know, if somebody says I don't like red wine, I only like white wine. Like, okay, well,

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
try this one for me and see what you think.

Drew Hannush:
So I always

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
use this example because I say, you know, the thing that I started off with whiskey was that I didn't really want to drink drier whiskies. And maybe that was the American palette thing coming through. But I had a Beaujolais, and I thought, it sounds so wonderful. And then I opened it and it was so fruity on the nose. And I was like, this is going to be great. And then I poured it and it just tasted, it was so dry.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm.

Drew Hannush:
I can't really describe it at the moment, but there was no fruit

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
I could taste. And I was like, the disconnect, is that a characteristic of Beaujolais or is that something that was probably just that particular vineyard?

Adam Edmonsond:
It could be the quality level. So in Beaujolais, often, you know, in France in particular, but in Europe generally, the Appalachians can be a little bit confusing. So Beaujolais, if it only says Beaujolais on the bottle, that just means that every grape that went into that wine has to be grown within the Beaujolais region. If it's not

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
an estate bottled wine, those could be sourced from all over the place. And then maybe there's kind of a least common denominator character rather than an individual character from a particular vineyard. The Appalachians though, Dios Dense y Bojale Villaje, which indicates it has to come from one of the village Appalachians within that level of narrowness in terms of identification. And then you'll see things like Morgon Fleury. Moulin-Avon, those are different villages where if it comes from that particular place and you have the winery, you're going to have an interesting distinctive character that may be better than just if it says Beaujolais on the bottle. So the broader the naming, generally the less interesting the wine is likely to be. But the...

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
I would say too, they're going to be very dry. They're dry, fermented. They're all the, you know, all the alcohol is converted or all the sugar is converted over to alcohol with tiny, tiny amounts of residual sugar. So there won't be any sweetness. You may get astringency. You know, those are going to be high acid wines generally. They go through a process. Some of them, or many of them do called carbonic maceration. So it's, it creates these kinds of bubble gum. type of fruit flavors and kind of small red berries

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
and things like that. So you get this huge promise on the nose of this fruitiness. And then on the palate, it may be kind of thin and watery and even astringent.

Drew Hannush:
Okay, that's interesting because you know in the world of whiskey, I tend to really appreciate whiskies that deliver on the nose and deliver on the palate the same experience.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
It's kind of like okay the distiller has figured out how to you know translate a beautiful nose into the palate, which I think is a rewarding experience in the

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
end.

Adam Edmonsond:
well, and with wine, you have to think about the added dimension of food. Most whiskeys, you know, people nowadays are beginning to talk more about pairing spirits with food, but wine has always been produced in a way that it was meant to be a handmaiden to food. And so if you think about the experience of a wine, you know, what would we amp up to make it go better with food? Well, you know, we would amp up the acid because acid stimulates the palate, gets the saliva flowing. It begins the digestion process. It clarifies the flavors on the palate. Acid and salt are the two ways that chefs, it's not an addition of flavor, it's an amplification or magnification of the flavor in your food. So seasoning, they're basically, when you produce a high acid wine, you have an effect of seasoning your food with it. And so those are things to consider. Generally, French and Italian wines are not something you're gonna enjoy as much on their own. as you are with food and you know American wines tend to be made many of them tend to be made to stand alone in the same way that a scotch can.

Drew Hannush:
So would you say that when it comes to, because I don't know how much pairing you have done in terms of whiskeys. When I think of whisky pairing, I always think of simple pairings. Like you are taking a little piece of chocolate and you're pairing with that or a strawberry or whatever it may be, you're just pairing it with a small item instead of a whole meal. But maybe this idea that when you're using like one that we're gonna, I'm gonna pull out here to taste here in a moment. that has really heavy wine character

Adam Edmonsond:
Hmm.

Drew Hannush:
to it, that maybe those end up being more your dessert or your dinner whiskies rather than your dessert whiskies.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I mean, I think I like the idea if you're going to have whiskey with a meal, I like the idea of thinking through which course you're going to have it with. I think that's the right level of analysis. And then you want to look for complimentary flavors and avoid clashes. Um, with wine, you can go a little more narrow. You can have a bit more of a kind of a hand in glove fit between wine and food. Um, I think that's harder to do with 40 plus percent alcohol because alcohol is

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
something that clashes with or overcomes many things that you're going to get from food. Or it can even be very bad with very spicy food, for example. So I think it's harder to pair, but I think you can organize a meal in a way that highlights it. You can also decide that you're going to feature the whiskey or you're going to feature the food, you know, which one's going to take importance.

Drew Hannush:
Right. So I had this interesting bottle that I bought the other day and I was looking at it. I've seen it on the shelf multiple times and I just kind of passed by it but it was from one of my favorite distilleries which is the Ben Romick Distillery in Speyside. It is a small distillery. They do their own floor maltings part of the year. It's just kind of one of those places, another place I really want to visit one of these days. And this was a, it was a Sassacaya. So it's one of those names I look at and I go, I have no idea what that is. Whereas you know, the wine lover comes over and goes, oh, that's interesting in a whiskey. And so what was interesting about it was it first got me to actually, as I was tasting it, I was going, I am tasting things. I really don't think I've ever tasted in whiskey before. I am lost. And so I went and found myself going to Tasting Notes for Sasekiya to see if I could figure out what flavors it was bringing.

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm.

Drew Hannush:
So as a wine drinker, a port wine drinker, so on and so forth, do you find that these distilleries are giving enough of an impact of that wine? to really make it a good bridge or something that somebody would taste and go, yes, I definitely pull that particular wine out of this particular whiskey.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I think it would be hard to, I mean, you can, I think, get categories of notes from a wine. I think dessert wines are a bit different. I tend to get many more distinctive characteristics. Dessert and fortified wines, I get distinctive characteristics. The red wine casks, think about what's going on. You have something that's maybe 15% alcohol interacting with the cask, as against previous fill. of something like a bourbon that would have been much higher. So what you have with red wine casts often, I mean, it can be flavors from the red wine, like fruit and berry flavors and even a little bit of a color tint in many cases, or even tannin. I mean, if you have Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, you have very tannic wine, and then you have tannins that maybe are not fully cleaned from the barrels. that could influence that as well, as well as the tannins from the barrels. But I think the, one of the things that a wine cask does differently from like a previously filled spirit would have been often just the ratio of alcohol soluble flavoring compounds being added by the cask as against water soluble. So with wine, you've extracted a lot of the water soluble, although wine is usually aged for a much shorter period of time as well. So you have a fairly active, fresh cask that hasn't had many of those alcohol soluble components pulled out yet.

Drew Hannush:
This is to kind of describe this particular wine. It is made, it was actually, it's an Italian wine, but it was the bringing in of French vines as I understand. Cabernet and another French vine as well were brought in for this to kind of grow it.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, the broader phenomenon here is the super Tuscan movement. Um, super being in the Latin sense of beyond, um, Tuscany. So you had a movement of Italian winemakers saying, you know, we have some evidence that grapes from outside of Italy can grow really well here and produce high quality wines. Under the existing classification system, they would have been required to call them table wines, basically the lowest quality grade possible. but eventually some of these wines were selling for hundreds of dollars per bottle while being labeled low quality table wine. And so

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
you had something that kind of had to be rectified there. Regulations were changed. You have Appalachians set up to recognize, you know, French grape varieties being grown in particular places in Italy. This is centered around the village of Boulgari, but you see Tuscan wines more broadly have been influenced by this and that even Chianti. and other types of wines that involve blending Sangiovese and Tuscany with other grape varieties. Chianti has to be 80% Sangiovese. The remaining 20% used to be composed of lesser known local Tuscan grapes, red and white, but now you're more likely to find Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and French grapes making up the balance. So that's been really influential in Italian wines and in other places. You know, outside of Tuscany. So Umbria makes a lot of Merlot, UC Cabernet Sauvignon, all over the place.

Drew Hannush:
It's a lot darker than I would expect it to be. You know, I think of Red Wine, but I don't really necessarily think of tobacco notes and things like that coming through. And then there's like a minerality to this. And then there's smoke, but the smoke blends really nicely. It's the Ben Roemick

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
smoke, because they use a little bit of peat in their

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
distilling. But... But then it's on the palette that I really start picking. It's like I get berries, raspberries, and then all of a sudden I get this tannin

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
note on the finish. Are these normal? Well, I say normal. What size barrels are they probably using to store this wine in as it's aging?

Adam Edmonsond:
I would believe they're probably using French barrique, which are smaller than American standard barrels. They're the barrels that come from Bordeaux region, generally. They have slightly different shapes coming from Burgundy, but it's a, it would be French oak. In that case, I'm not sure if they're using any American oak. If they are, they would probably be using new American oak barrels.

Drew Hannush:
They started with, I don't know how long this ages initially. I think, actually I do. It's six years in ex-Burban, and then it's two years in these French casks. And when you look at the color of this, and the flavor is so punchy from the wine cask rather than from the traditional BenRomic flavors that you kind of expect, that... It makes you think that maybe this is too long. That, you know, unless you're really looking to sell somebody on, um, not having to spend all, because apparently this is not an inexpensive wine. So here's your opportunity to taste that wine without having to, um, buy the actual wine.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I mean, I would expect it to be tannic because tannins, if you put, first of all, they're 10 times as many tannins in French oak as there are in American oak. So if you're finishing with a French oak, those tannins are some of the things that extract fastest. You're going to have the impression of tannin color, other things coming through. There are some things that take a lot longer. to extract from the cask. And then there are things that also resolve over time. Tannin in the presence of oxygen as it naturally permeates the oak of a cask can polymerize, can form chains and sort of fall out of solution and then not end up in the whiskey or they can end up being softer, a bit more velvety. You get that with aging wine in a bottle. The tannin is going from something perceived as kind of unripe and green and stemmy and astringent, like a black tea bag. You know, if you ever had that last sip of tea, it's quite textural. Those with time and oxygen can become something that strikes you as more velvety and supple. And so counterintuitively, maybe it needs a lot longer in the cask to resolve that. Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah. So did you, cause I have my whiskies here. I think you had some that you were going to suggest along with this. So is that a, a wine cask there that you're

Adam Edmonsond:
So

Drew Hannush:
tasting?

Adam Edmonsond:
what I have, I'm sticking to your distillery choices, but I have different bottlings here. So I have the Ben

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
Romach. I have had the one that you are having. I actually had it in Kentucky funnily enough, but

Drew Hannush:
Oh, okay. That's where I buy all my scotch.

Adam Edmonsond:
okay. But

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
no, and it was beautiful, I remember it. But I have the Ben Romach 15, so. looking for kind of that similar what's coming through from the distillery. But I know since we're talking about wine and finishing that they're selecting from ex-Burban and ex-Sherry casks to produce this whiskey. It's always a question, by the way, when we talk about ex-Sherry, which oak species are we talking about? Because that can make a huge difference

Drew Hannush:
Mmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
for the flavors that come through. The majority of Sherry casks nowadays are American little more complicated if what you're expecting is something amber, red, tannic, you know, things like that, which would come from European oak.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, and it's a lot more seasoning, probably less time. I mean, I think that's what makes this different is that as I understand it, Sasekiya goes probably 18 years or so in a barrel. So it actually is an aged spirit or wine versus something that may just be seasoned for a short period of time just to get the flavor into the

Adam Edmonsond:
Well,

Drew Hannush:
barrel.

Adam Edmonsond:
the wine, the wine would age for a much shorter period of time in the cask, and then they would move it over to the bottle

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
to finish that aging. So if they're holding it back for a long time before release, most of that time is going to be in bottle.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
The time in the in the wood generally is going to be, you know, two years, something like that, for something like that. So it's a,

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
it has a lot less time to get to get some of what it would out of it out of the barrel. So there's a lot left in a wine cask for a whiskey to absorb if it's going to be in there at higher alcohol and for 10 years or more.

Drew Hannush:
This is what threw me when I first got into whiskey because the first bottle I got was a 16 year old Scotch and I said, well, I'll just hold on to that bottle for a couple of years and then it'll be a 18 year old Scotch and I didn't realize that it doesn't. And then now since I've been so in the whiskey world, I forget that wine actually ages in the bottle. Where, so what is the difference? Why is it aging in the bottle versus, I understand that. the whiskey side of it, but I less understand the wine side of it.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, you know, I don't know if I can do a satisfactory job on the chemistry of that. But the I think what if you think about what's left in a whiskey after distillation, and then after maturation, you have the vast majority of what's in a whiskey bottle is either water or ethanol. It's a tiny amount. It's like a third of a percent are the congeners that give flavor to the entire thing. And those are mostly composed of esters, aldehydes, lactones from the oak, things like that, ketones, other chemical compounds and some tannin, other things, but that don't maybe necessarily interact as much as if you're not going through that process of distillation, you still have everything that was pressed out of the grape juice. It's still the vast majority water. the sugar has been converted into alcohol, but you have all these other compounds, esters, aldehydes, and so on. And you still have something that is a bit more active. There are many, the larger percentage of those things that are still there to have any kind of chemical reaction that they are going to have with one another. I would guess there's still chemical reactions going on between flavor congeners and a whiskey, but they're just such a small part of it. And maybe something about the fact reduces the possible activity of that over time.

Drew Hannush:
I think the thing that I find in whiskey is that it's the more oxygen that gets to it. If you leave space in a bottle, I can put a bottle of whiskey up on the shelf that has that much room of air at the top of it. If I leave it there for two years, there is a change in

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
the whiskey. I have some whiskies, Abelauer is a good example of this. If I get an Abelauer 12, when I first buy the bottle, I don't like it.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
But something happens in that bottle once it sits on your shelf for six months with some air in it that makes it really great whiskey. So I think something with the air getting in there allows oxidization to go on in a different form than it goes through in

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
a barrel.

Adam Edmonsond:
I think you're dead on. Many whiskies I'm not impressed with on first taste, you know, have a dram or two, let them sit there because I'm drinking everything I'd rather drink. And then I come back to them and I think, what was I thinking before? This is fantastic. So I agree with you. I think that

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
helps quite a lot. You know, it's the same principle in wine. People know about decanting a wine. You can accelerate the absorption of oxygen right before drinking it. And it really brings out the expressiveness and it integrates the flavors and makes it much more pleasant. But at the same time, you get diminishing returns. That bottle is not gonna last overnight. You're gonna have oxidized wine, which basically is damaged aroma from too much oxygen. So there's a really nice balancing point. And I think whiskey has that too. And even in the dram, or in the glass, I know people who insist on it. sitting out for 30 minutes before they drink it.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, that's the rule I heard was one minute for every year it was in a cask

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
is the way to go to let it settle down. It seems to make a difference whether it necessarily makes it better or not. That's the interesting thing is if you're doing a whiskey tasting and you... I'll go to a whiskey tasting and I'll see them pouring something out immediately that's an aged whiskey and I'm thinking... you know, what would the experience be like if they'd poured those all out ahead of time and they were just sitting there breathing, getting the opportunity to let some, some air in. Um, is that, do you have a strategy with that? Do you like having it poured at the moment or poured ahead of time?

Adam Edmonsond:
Um, I like, I do like to let it rest a bit. I think it's, I think, and I also disturb it with a couple of drops of water. Usually, um, not for purposes of dilution, but just for purposes of kind of breaking up the chemical tension in the glass and letting those aromas sort of begin, um, moving around and emerging. I think there's a difference of the accessibility of flavor, you know, if not the quality, you may be still have. I don't know if it's right to say it's improving, but what you're doing with air is making it available to your senses, it seems to me.

Drew Hannush:
Hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
So, yeah.

Drew Hannush:
It's amazing. It's amazing how some whiskies that I will pour it and I'll set it over to the side and I can smell it and I'm nowhere near

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
it. It's like, it's over there, but it just hits you. And other whiskies that you have to stick your nose all the way in and just draw about as hard as you can draw and you just can't get much of a scent out of it. That a spirit could be that different

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
is

Adam Edmonsond:
well

Drew Hannush:
amazing.

Adam Edmonsond:
that's another way where I think it's helpful to have a very knowledgeable person helping you when you get started tasting a lot because you're going to wonder if it's your fault or the whiskey's fault. And it's often the whiskey's fault. You know, some of them are not that expressive,

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
they're not that... they don't show really clear and distinct flavors. They can be pleasant. The question after that is what did they promise? You know, if it's a... you know, if it's, if it's clearly a budget selection or if it's something that's meant to be, um, you know, something a little more rarefied, you may then think how to, you know, think about what you think of the quality from that perspective. But yeah, I think you, um, you have to be careful with those selections when you're beginning to taste, because you may feel like you're just not getting it and it just may not be there.

Drew Hannush:
Well, another interesting way that I tried to develop my nose and palate was when I started doing YouTube videos, I would do pairing. So I would do this whiskey versus this whiskey and try to find two that were sort of close to each other and then try to describe each as I'm tasting them. And I've sort of brought that back on Mondays on YouTube where I do a matchup. But what's interesting is now as my palate has evolved... I've started to realize the importance of putting one whiskey ahead of another because I did a tasting where I did a Shackleton whiskey. Shackleton has a very strong nose to it and it's got some muscle behind it and I was smelling it versus a Dewar 12

Adam Edmonsond:
Hmm.

Drew Hannush:
and that Dewar 12 I could not smell anything. It's like I went, okay I got the Shackleton, now there's nothing here and what was funny about that? was I talked about it during the tasting and I was like, you know, I'm sort of disappointed in this 12 because it's not really

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
giving me much of anything to go on and so I was downgrading it. Later that night, I decided to pour myself a tumbler of it. I was watching TV and I said, okay, well I'll just sip a little bit of it. And all I was tasting was like gingerbread and I was going, wow, this is so good. And I've just dissed it on my video, but it's just. time and place and actually not having it, having it in its own space rather than putting it through that kind of a comparison or maybe lining whiskies up and saying, here, we're gonna go through a tasting and the importance of having those matched up in a way to where you don't create a disappointment out of something that it does have its own story to tell.

Adam Edmonsond:
Oh, totally. Yeah. And I think if you, I mean, you would definitely want to organize the tasting in a way that you're going from, you know, lighter to heavier in terms of intensity and things like that. In a blind tasting context, like for the exam, my first thing to do is go through and find the peated whiskies, push those back so that I

Drew Hannush:
Mmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
don't taste them before something

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
unpeated and delicate. And then next would be, you know, are there any cask strength here? Do I think by, by appearance and by, um, first impression, if so push that back and then is there anything heavily shared? Um, you know, with some big or some big port finish or something like that. Um, that is going to trample all over, you know, um, the more delicate whiskeys that may appear in the lineup. So you're kind of eliminating those, um, those that may have undue influence on the rest of the flight.

Drew Hannush:
Let's talk and dive a little bit into the idea of blind tasting because I avoided it for a long time. The reason I avoided it was because I was of this opinion for a little while that part of the experience of drinking a whiskey is even in the branding of the bottle. I went to Amsterdam and I went to the Bowles Museum. and the Geneva Museum and they had this really cool room that you go into and it would, when you're in the room they give you this liquid and you put the liquid in your mouth and then they shine different colors on your face while you're looking at yourself in the mirror and the flavor changes as you're sitting there watching these different colors hit you in the face. And it was such an interesting experience and I realized that I can drink a whiskey in one room. with my eyes open and the sunlight beaming in on me. And then I can walk into another room where it's darker and drink the same whiskey, nose and taste the same whiskey from the same glass, same time period, and get a completely different experience out of it. So in a way, I got to a point where I said, I don't wanna do blind tastings because I want to have the full experience. If you see a Black Jack Daniels bottle, you got a certain personality in your head and that kind of, it's that connection between your brain waves and everything, all the other stimuli that goes along with that tasting. So where is the, what is it, and when is the right time to be doing blind tastings?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I know. I mean, I think that sets up a perfect distinction between appreciation, which is the full picture. I mean, that's what we're all going for in the end. There's no point in identifying these things if we're not going to end up appreciating them. They're products made for the purpose of enjoyment. So I agree with that from an enjoyment perspective. I think the place for blind tasting is to train yourself to observe. what's there with minimal bias. And so, you know, if you already know what something is supposed to taste like, you're likely to find those flavors. And, you know, that's no

Drew Hannush:
Mm.

Adam Edmonsond:
hindrance to enjoyment. So maybe that's fine in that context. But in the context where someone wants to know, you know, how much am I actually perceiving through my senses and through my process of reasoning about a whiskey, you know, for testing. for testing a master examinee, or if we have other more narrow purposes like evaluating the quality of a whiskey, you want to be able to know what you're being influenced by. And if marketing is a factor, it's ultimately gonna be a factor for consumers. But the consumers often look to judge panels, for example. I was on the international whiskey competition a couple of months ago as one of the judges. And we do everything blind because we want to have, you know, exactly the same conditions and then a fair assessment of, you know, dozens of different factors about a whiskey to give the consumer a sense of quality, what quality they can expect from it, you know, separate from any influence of marketing. So you know, those are some of the purposes, I would say quality evaluation and then learning and then examination of knowledge.

Drew Hannush:
So give me sort of a strategy here in terms of doing a blind tasting. I'm thinking, because here's the thing, if I drink, I totally get the point of. My brain will go, if I know I'm drinking a bourbon, my brain will go right to, okay, look for the caramel, look for the oak, look for the vanilla, maybe find some butterscotch notes in there. You know, you have the particular rye flavor coming through. Is it there, is it not there? when somebody puts a glass in front of you and you have no idea what you're gonna be faced with, and as I understand it, you do something like eight different whiskies during the blind tasting for your

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
certification. How do you practice for that? How do you try to approach that? Is there, do you first try to identify in your own mind by doing the tasting? Am I tasting a bourbon or am I tasting a scotch or is there a different route that you take?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, so the exam I've done so far was only for Scotch, so that makes that a lot easier. Going forward, I will

Drew Hannush:
Hehehehe

Adam Edmonsond:
have blind tastings that have different, Scotch, Japanese, Irish, you name it. So I think that's a level up on difficulty. For Scotch, you're thinking about what are the most important variables. If it doesn't strike you right away, that there's a particular distillery character here that you just happen to know, which is a big important part of it. Nobody's going in just going down a list of tasting notes. The first thing you perceive in a whiskey is the total, and then you start dissecting it. And you can ask questions about what's evident from production processes, what's evident about maturation from what's in the glass. What do you think the probable ABV is? You know, if you know that the ABV in your estimation is in a certain place, and that contradicts an earlier impression you had about what this might be, then there's a lot of kind of textbook knowledge of the whiskeys themselves and what's produced in the core ranges of different producers that helps you to narrow down what you think it is. So I would say those kinds of considerations are the main thing. There's a lot of practice too, so I bought most of the core range bottle-ings of all the distilleries that were eligible to be on the exam, which they do publish that list, but the number of bottle-ings is still more than about 150, so it doesn't help you

Drew Hannush:
Wow.

Adam Edmonsond:
too much.

Drew Hannush:
Good luck.

Adam Edmonsond:
But

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, yeah,

Adam Edmonsond:
if

Drew Hannush:
yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
you strategically purchase whiskies that you think are going to show you the distillery character maybe more than the mature character, so for example I'm more likely to buy a 12-year-old. if I'm preparing for an exam, then I am to buy an 18 year old. Um, because I want to see, I want to see that through line that is more likely to appear in many of the whiskies from that distillery rather than the influence of the cask, which may be similar to the influence of the cask across many different distilleries. So kind of what are the, what are the handles, what are the holding on points that you're going to be able to use to identify these things?

Drew Hannush:
Do you, cause you traveled Scotland,

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
correct? You went to some distilleries

Adam Edmonsond:
Yep.

Drew Hannush:
in Scotland. Did you feel that helped you a lot in terms of when you go see Glenn Morgans big, tall, swan neck stills that all of a sudden you're like, okay, now I understand from the process that, you know, that's gonna create a lighter character. So if I get a lighter character in that whiskey and it may lean towards being a Glenn Morgans.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, and you can also though, you can also confuse yourself with that because there are a lot of ways to end up with a light whiskey. And, you know,

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
if you pick up on the wrong one, that can lead you, you know, to a wrong guess. So it's really got to be the totality.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
You know, you're almost a jury in a courtroom, you know, weighing all the evidence and then deciding what you think it is. because any one piece of evidence can be seriously misleading.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, so here is a good example of how you could be lead astray, which this is the, uh, Glenmore and G Quinta Rubin, which is a port wine finished. Uh, as I understand it, um, it spends 12 years in the bourbon barrel, two years in a, uh, ruby port barrel. And the best I can describe this particular whiskey is that it is, um, I don't know if you've ever had a Basil Hayden's Dark

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
Rye before, but Basil Hayden's Dark Rye, they basically pour port wine into a

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
bourbon or into a rye. So the rye disappears. All you taste is the port wine that's in that. And it's almost syrupy. When I tasted it, I was like, I could just pour this over

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
ice cream. this would be excellent over ice cream as a syrup, rather than drinking it, because it's

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
so sickly sweet in a way. And this is a Glenmorenge, but this is longer in the barrel, and the Ruby Port has such an influence on it. I guess the question being, as you're putting together these tasting sets of glasses that you're doing, do you try to trip people up with? whiskeys like this or do you try to stay close to the distillery character?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I mean, I think there are for the council, there are there are things that would be considered fair game and not. I think there's a question always with finishing. Is this an iconic product for this distillery? Because all things being equal, you'd probably want to show something from a distillery that's going to be core range, an essential expression of that distillery that you're more likely to find out in the wild. But for Glenmore and G, you know, um, the finishing is an essential part of their identity. And, and that's a core range bottling. It's not one of the experimental, you know, limited release, uh, bottleings that's something that they produce, um, or have had available at least for, for many years now. And so that's something I think people could be expected to know. Um, and there you'd, your strategy would be to try to identify that this is finished as such. Um, what do you think it's finished with,

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
that it's port finished. If you know that it's port finished, then you can think through what are port finished whiskies that I think are eligible to be on this exam, and then maybe narrow it down from those. And Quinto Rubán would certainly be, I would say an iconic enough one to appear on the exam. Though I've had to, I worked on the level one and level two exams with the council, but because I was a candidate, For the Scotch exam, I had to be separated from anything having to do with the master level exams up until that point. So I haven't made any of those decisions, but I kind of know the

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
philosophy of the people making the decisions.

Drew Hannush:
It's so interesting because when I think of Glenmore G, the original 10, it's like, to me it's very citrusy. And I don't get really the citrus in this. It goes into grassy tobacco, leather, and then the raisins and the rest coming in. And then it's really nutty on the finish, so I kind of get like peanut butter and jelly on the finish of this whiskey. So it's just really, like I say, to me. It makes me feel like to be a good, especially Scotch whiskey taster, you almost need to go find those bottles of port wine and understand what the origin of all of these different tastes and smells really

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
are.

Adam Edmonsond:
and there's also, there is a confusing aspect. I think it's, people can get the arrow of causality backward and think that it's the beverage influencing the cask and then the cask influencing the whiskey. That's true in certain dimensions, but in other dimensions, it's that what's going into the cask for its first fill, is being influenced by the cask much more than the other way around. So for example bourbon, the flavor of bourbon comes from the cask. Really. I mean, if you just taste

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
a majority corn whiskey with other grain whiskies, they're not influencing the barrel. The barrel is influencing the spirit. And then what's happening when that is filled again with a scotch, it's not that it tastes like bourbon because the bourbon was in it. It's that the bourbon tastes like bourbon because it was in the cask. And then the scotch tastes like bourbon related flavors because it was in the cask. So that's a, and I

Drew Hannush:
Right.

Adam Edmonsond:
mean, and it runs both directions depending on which beverage we're talking about because with a lot of these sweeter desserts, you get, you know, free sugars being lodged into the woods. You have lots of berry flavors being deeply soaked into the wood color. those sorts of things and those are certainly coming through in the final product. So that's kind of a nerdy side note, but I

Drew Hannush:
Ha

Adam Edmonsond:
think it's

Drew Hannush:
ha ha.

Adam Edmonsond:
got to think about it because it's going in both directions.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, well I think one of the things that I ran into early on that really threw me was I get this concept in my mind that sherry would be, as we head towards the last whiskey here, that sherry is something that is always going to be fruity. And what I was shocked by was that when I had LeFroy casque of Amontillado finish, I It was, I was like, okay, wait a second, I'm not picking up as much fruit in this. And so I went and bought some Amontillado and tasted it. And I said, this is like almonds. I mean, it doesn't taste fruity to me at all. It was a very different kind of a personality. And I think that can sometimes the, we hear wine finish or we hear. port wine finish or we hear sherry and we just assume a particular flavor

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, and Sherry

Drew Hannush:
out of them.

Adam Edmonsond:
has such a variety of products under that category. So if you think about, they make sweet wines from the Pedro Jimenez grape, which are only partially fermented. So they stop the fermentation so that there's residual sugar that hasn't been converted by the yeast. And then they're fortified to stop that fermentation essentially. And so they have a higher alcohol But then you have cherries that are made more like a wine. They are, they're only fortified to a smaller degree and after the fermentation. And then the yeast are still able to survive and to create this floor. They call it this kind of thick layer on top of the wine in the barrel that has oxygen above it. And they create these incredible flavors. that come from the yeast themselves. You get these bready, nutty, and other kinds of flavors. Whereas the other types of cherries, if you're fortifying them to the point that the yeast can't survive, they're only aging oxidatively, like a whiskey does, with oxygen very slowly moving through the cask.

Drew Hannush:
Mm.

Adam Edmonsond:
So very different flavors, different grape varieties. The cherries that are made to be dry and having that yeast flavor are... usually gonna be, or they're gonna be white wine. So they're starting from the Palomino grape, not the Pedro Jimenez. And then on the sweet side, you also have Moscatel. But so they have different grapes, different processes, different effects.

Drew Hannush:
We're gonna increase the sales of wine amongst whiskey drinkers this week.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yes.

Drew Hannush:
Go out and try these. So talk about that 18 year old. Because I haven't had the 18. I've had the 10 and I've had the core line stuff. But I haven't tried the

Adam Edmonsond:
Yes.

Drew Hannush:
older expressions. And you said this is an Oloroso

Adam Edmonsond:
So

Drew Hannush:
or PX?

Adam Edmonsond:
this is, so it's a complicated maturation actually. So the Glenmore NG 18, so I'm keeping up with your distilleries with different bottles. It is 30% of it after 15 years goes on to be finished for three additional years in Oloroso casks. So you get a sherry influence,

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
but it's 30% of the make and it's for three years. And Oloroso is not going to be one of the cherries that has these yeasty flavors. It's, you know, oxidative maturation. And so you get a lot of fruit. There's a lot of fruit in Glenmorenge generally, these citrusy fruits, but I think you get a depth of fruit flavor, like dried fruits,

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
dried apricots, things like that, that likely are contributed by this small amount of sherry. But you still have those things that I think are important to Glenmorenge as a house style, which are... characteristics that come from bourbon casks, that vanilla is important to, I think, Glenmore and Gee's identity. And you have a lot of those other typical tasting notes, like the, it's kind of an almond. um nuttiness you have these nice like light delicate kind of white floral fresh flower perfumey characteristics um there's a good sweet amount of sweetness to it which i think is largely attributable to the sherry casks

Drew Hannush:
So what I love is the reason why I usually will pull out Glen Dronic 12 for people who are either bourbon drinkers who are interested in getting into scotch or for somebody just starting out with scotch is because to me it's that combination of the Oloroso which has the darker fruits to it and the PX which sometimes can be a little sweet for people. It kind of tames the sweetness and pulls in some of those interesting characteristics without getting too heavy with the barrel. It's like, a lot of people find the 15 to be a sweet spot, which I agree, but sometimes I want a little less of that wood influence and really to try to get to the new make and what's left of the new make in that

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
spirit.

Adam Edmonsond:
yeah, there's an interesting, for anyone who wants to get really in the weeds on this, the book I recommend is Cask Management by Matt Strickland. And it goes, you know, into the chemistry of maturation and all the different things that are happening at the same time. It's, you know, and the question is when to stop or when to make a change, because you're interrupting this process, but you're also preventing this process. and things are happening on different timescales and to different degrees. So it's a little bit convoluted, but yeah, you can see like how much, when do we stop getting those pleasant extractives from the cask and start getting a little bit, something that's too woody and tannic? When do we stop increasing the complexity of the esters through esterification and having the... when do we lose the distillery character because there's too much mature character, all of that. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. And I agree with you. I think 12 to 15 years is a sweet spot for most whiskies.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, I went to Glen Scotia and I got a chance to taste the new make and I was like, this is so good off the still. I don't really know if I want to taste it long age, but the flagship is 15 years. I'm like, oh, you know, they're going to kill all the flavor out of it, but they don't. It's just the way they manage those casks that they're able to retain the beauty of that new make, but also marry it nicely with. the casks over that longer period of time.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, and if you look at a place like Glenfarkless, they achieve incredible age statements because of their microclimate for their dunnage warehouses, which

Drew Hannush:
Mmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
basically is the closest thing you can get to nothing going on with the maturation. You have a very, very slow evaporative loss where they are. You have a ton of time. um, for all these esters and complex flavors to develop through slow, slow oxygen exposure. You know, you have the right level of humidity, it's cool, it's very consistent. Um, so they can achieve incredible age statements and then someone, you know, a few miles away may not be able to do that. Um, they can over mature their whiskeys very easily. So it, that is a case where it's not only, it's not particularly regional. It's down to the exact microclimate.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, and it's one of those lessons for people who are going out to buy whiskey for the first time, that the age doesn't always dictate quality

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
or what your experience is going to be. We get in a habit of, I hear many times, people talking about Pappy Van Winkle, and I'm like, man, for a bourbon, as much heat and... Whether that's going to go through, I know they protect those barrels down at the bottom of the warehouse, but even at that, that's a long time for a bourbon to be sitting in a barrel. And so you have to determine is that the flavor profile you're really looking for, or is it .. And I think for some people it's just the status and to say that's what I'm drinking. But... you know, for somebody who's really looking to hunt out flavors and figure out what their profile is and what they're going to enjoy, it's better to get beyond the numbers and dive into the spirit itself and as you say, the distillery quality and what it brings to the barrel.

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, and you know, that's always a question I've gotten about wine too is You know, what's it, you know, how old should the wine be? What's a good vintage? And my answer is unfortunately it totally depends on You know the vintage quality

Drew Hannush:
Hahaha

Adam Edmonsond:
of that year will determine how long that particular age can or that particular wine can age and You know I guess this is why the sommelier profession exists because there is no good rule of thumb that applies to everything but if you have You know, there are heuristics, but yeah, I think age statements can be incredibly misleading. And I've heard interesting kind of philosophical arguments about getting rid of them. You know, they're not always the best. Age and maturity are

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
not the same thing, basically.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah. Well, uh, going back to my, uh, James Bond, uh, mode, I would count every time I would hear him say, Oh, I, you know, the 56, uh, don't pair neon is, is the best. I would go, okay, that was, this film was done in X year. So they're saying nine years, nine years seems to be good for it. Cause that they, they would do that. Every single vintage would increase in, uh, the year along with how long the book was out, you know, when the book was written and so on and so forth. We look for these little clues sometimes when we get hung up on ages and vintages. But I think what's interesting, I'm starting to sense a little bit, there are some distilleries that are talking about doing vintages. And I think it's an area of wine that hasn't really been explored so much in terms of whiskey. This concept of what what was the weather like during the time period from here to here that had a certain impact on that particular spirit instead of saying just a pat, okay, 12

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
year whiskey. We're thinking, wait a second, you're talking about we had a very dry period for three or four years or it was excessively hot for three or four years and that warehouse is going through experience. It'll be interesting to see whether whiskey actually kind of goes in that direction in some cases in terms of its want

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
for innovation. But is that something that you pay attention to in wines? Do you look for particular

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm.

Drew Hannush:
years that you go, yes, that particular wine is going to be much better in that particular

Adam Edmonsond:
Totally.

Drew Hannush:
year?

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, I think, I mean, for me in whiskey, vintage is, is basically a marker for a particular production run. You know, you have the distillers edition made in that year, and then you have the distillers edition made in that year and they have different characteristics, but who knows why. In wine, you know, there's such a, you know, it's probably 30%, 40% variability in quality that, that you could sort of arrange. a given wine, you know, same exact vines, same exact place being, producing different wine every year, you can have a massive difference in quality based on the, based on the the weather and the characteristics of the vintage, which are total. I mean, you can have a complete, you can have a vintage that's unusable because of the weather, or you can have the best vintage of the century. So, you know,

Drew Hannush:
Mm.

Adam Edmonsond:
and places like Champagne don't even produce vintage wines, unless it's an exceptional vintage, they usually are blending three different vintages together on a rolling basis. So that's the standard model. And then you have vintages when you have something that you say, well, this is so special, we're not going to dilute it down. We're going to present this as the face of the company.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
And yeah, I mean, I pay attention to vintages. And then I pay attention to age more with respect to grape. So some grapes and therefore some

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
regions, cause region grape are tied together largely in Europe, at least. those grapes need more or less time to mature their resulting wines, based on tannin, based on acid, those things. So I pay a lot of attention to vintage and wine. It'll be interesting to see what the future of that is in whiskey. For me, right now, it has more to do with production runs. If it gets down to where people are saying the weather was better, that'd be interesting because I think right now it's kind of lost in

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
the number of different variables.

Drew Hannush:
I have many years ago I had somebody tell me, oh, you know, if you buy Weller, you should buy Weller 12. There are good years of it and there are bad years of it. And that was the first time I ever really heard somebody say something like that. I would think in a single barrel product, that's where you're really gonna sense that

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
difference.

Adam Edmonsond:
and maybe you know something about their operations, different master distiller, different warehouse, they've changed something about production, anything like that. I did make my pilgrimage to the Pappy Barrel at Buffalo Trace,

Drew Hannush:
Did you? Ha ha

Adam Edmonsond:
and

Drew Hannush:
ha.

Adam Edmonsond:
it's in

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
the lower level of the building and what feels like a Dunnage warehouse, because it's like a brick kind of... humid place. So it's if you want long maturation like is possible in Scotland, you kind of kind of mimic those conditions.

Drew Hannush:
It's fascinating. Buffalo Trace is a great tour to go on to kind of get a exposure to warehouses because that's mostly what you do on that tour. And we had a guy, the last one that I went on, just the standard tour, he was obsessed with warehouses. So he was telling us all about the character of all the different warehouses. And I think the reason he was focusing on it was because they were building new warehouses and he was talking about the fact that these warehouses had been built with different materials over a period of of decades and that to create these new warehouses, they had to basically figure out how to recreate that same exact material and construction so that they could have a second warehouse that would react the same way as that first warehouse

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
did.

Adam Edmonsond:
no, and you see that it's fascinating. You see that in Scotland too, when they need to expand production and they produce another set of stills. And sometimes they'll have the dents in the

Drew Hannush:
Hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
stills put in the new ones too,

Drew Hannush:
Yeah

Adam Edmonsond:
every little detail. I love that about this industry. I think that's an important

Drew Hannush:
It is

Adam Edmonsond:
fact.

Drew Hannush:
funny. I think it's funny too because it all depends on who, it depends on the distiller. Sometimes it depends on the country. But if you're in the US, people will talk about their yeast strains. And then I was going through Scotland the first time and I would ask about yeast strains and they're like, oh, we just use

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
the standard yeast. It's not like it's anything special, but then you'd hit particular distilleries that said, yes, yeast

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
is important. So it's interesting to see the value that each different culture puts on different parts of the process. As you say, the Scottish warehouses with the Dunnage warehouses, you don't see a lot of Dunnage warehouses in the United States,

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
if at all, but there it becomes a very important part of those historic distilleries in creating

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
that same character.

Adam Edmonsond:
and the historic styles of particular distilleries are driven by so many different things. I think it's romantic to think they were all by design, but some of them were just responding to legislation, or it was accidental. You have flat-topped stills somewhere because they had to chop the top off to fit it in the building, not because they particularly wanted a flat-topped still. Those kinds of things have gone

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
around.

Drew Hannush:
You've been to

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
Old Pulteney.

Adam Edmonsond:
exactly, old Pulteney. And

Drew Hannush:
I said,

Adam Edmonsond:
you have

Drew Hannush:
yeah,

Adam Edmonsond:
things like that defining the

Drew Hannush:
with it.

Adam Edmonsond:
absolute character of the products that end up being accidental. And it's kind of funny. But once you have something nice like that, and then you want to preserve it, then yeah, you're going to all the trouble to recreate the dents and the stills.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, it was funny when I walked into Old Pulteney and they have this still that is squeezed into the room. It looks like a space alien when you first walk in the room and then you see it kind of the thing is toppled over this way on the top and it's like, okay, was this by design? And it's like, no, it was unfortunately the only way we could fit the thing into the building, but it gives a particular character to that style. It's a heavier style whiskey, which is really interesting. note that it

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
was a happy accident to create a very particular style

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
of

Adam Edmonsond:
and

Drew Hannush:
whiskey

Adam Edmonsond:
we tend to

Drew Hannush:
for

Adam Edmonsond:
think

Drew Hannush:
them.

Adam Edmonsond:
about individual distillery decisions too, but a lot of decisions come from corporate ownership. So you saw in the 60s and later a lot of distilleries doing things like getting rid of their worm tubs, getting rid of direct firing of their stills and replacing that equipment with steam heated stills. And those all affect flavor. Some of them have taken out the worm tubs and put them back in, in the case of dalwini. But some of that is you can actually watch, you know, when I was preparing for the master exam, I would get details like which distilleries got rid of worm tubs when, those sorts of things and sort of watch a trend. It's all the diagio. distilleries got rid of them at about the same time and etc etc. I mean not Diageo, they actually have most of the worm, one-third of their distilleries use worm tubs still. But as an example you would see kind of a corporate move to replace what was thought to be antiquated or you know hard to keep up equipment, anything like that, replace it with something more modern which changed the character. And that's another thing where if you know I have friends who collect old you know, something old that was produced in a different way and taste the difference, and it can be quite astounding.

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm. This is why I want to go back and grab a, and find a bottle of Jack Daniel's from before 1900, which will be very hard to find, but the reason why I would love to taste it is because there's always this talk about making whiskey the way they used to make it, but as I was doing my research, come to find out they used to use

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
log stills. So it was initially a log still distillery. And if it was that, it's gonna be a lot different than those big column stills that they're pumping whiskey through these days. So, you know, to say it's the same, no, it's gone through a lot of different processes. But, you know, the worm tubs is interesting because Mortlock, was it Mortlock? Yeah, Mortlock and Opultny, there were certain ones that I went to that I saw those worm tubs and I went. Hmm, wonder what that's about. And then you taste the whiskey and it's so much, it's

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
got more body to it. To me it's like the oils are still retained in that whiskey. And I would assume by your research that most of those worm tubs were probably pulled out prior to this whiskey boom. When people really started again, paying attention

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm.

Drew Hannush:
to flavors and jumping in. Because I would imagine, that today we might notice that big of a change, whereas the whiskey drinker before 2000 probably was, you know, yeah, if I taste a LeFrog, I know what a LeFrog tastes like, but I'm probably not gonna be overwhelmed by a big change in it unless I'm just, you know, massively a fan of that particular

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, the big

Drew Hannush:
style.

Adam Edmonsond:
changes in the industry as far as equipment that I remember were in the 60s, 70s, that kind of period of time, which was really before single malts took off in most places around the world. The first single malt that was available to most people was end of the 60s, was Glenfiddy. And then you have, and I would say, You know, you have the classic malts at the end of the 80s. Um, and that's, that was another big push for recognition of single malt as a category. Um, so yeah, most people who've come to know and love single malt whiskey, it was after most of that equipment was changed out.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah. Well, we can probably go on forever talking about all of this, but let's talk a little bit about this certification program, because I know there's some people who will probably be interested in it. Who do you suggest that program is best suited to?

Adam Edmonsond:
Um, I mean, so there's broadly two types of people who I think go through these certifications and this is true with the council of whiskey masters, but also wine. Um, I would say it's some people are planning to have a profession as an expert in these fields, um, in one way or another, if they're in hospitality, if they work for distributors. if they want to be an educator on these topics, if they want to be a writer, anything like that. That's one camp. The others are enthusiastic hobbyists who want to learn all the detail they can about this topic, but they sort of realize they're not going to do it on their own. Of course you can buy a pile of books, but when you have a deadline, when you have an exam, when you have people you're studying with, you have the camaraderie, you're part of an organization, that helps a lot of people to keep themselves accountable and motivated, because it's not always pleasant to study everything you need to study to be a well-rounded expert on the topic. And I would say that that's probably a good half of the others who have other careers, usually engineers, attorneys, doctors, people like that.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, not everybody can do like me and just pick up and fly somewhere. Plus when you talk about all the distilleries I've been to learn what I've learned about whiskey, I think I've spent probably five, 10, 15 times what it would cost to just go get a certification. Of course it's a life experience, but it's one of those things that, again, not everybody can do. Talk about the tracks on this then. There's different levels and... You talked about bourbon and scotch as being separate. How does that how does

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
that all

Adam Edmonsond:
so

Drew Hannush:
work

Adam Edmonsond:
the

Drew Hannush:
out?

Adam Edmonsond:
entry points are separate. You can choose a Scotch track or a Bourbon track. And there are some people who want to take both exams, but that's a level one exam, which is all multiple choice. There's a study guide, which is going to be something that was written by board members of the Council of Whiskey Masters. All the study materials are written by the board members. And if anyone wants to see who's on the board, they're pretty well-known authors. And... industry experts and others who've put these materials together and who've kind of stress tested the exam itself and seen, okay, this is a good... representative exam of expertise at this level. So there's the certified Scotch professional, the certified bourbon professional. The second level after that is a certified whiskey specialist. So you have the worlds coming together and expanding. So you have to be, you're then responsible for knowing about Scotch, about bourbon, and about the rest of the world of whiskey, Japan, Canada. There's not much about really new kind of frontier regions, but the idea is that you have a nice overview, a well-rounded knowledge of different production processes, things like that. It's not going to be in-depth expertise about each distillery, that sort of thing. It's focused more on theory. What are production differences? What are stylistic differences? Who are the key producers? Important facts at that level. then I think there's a big jump before you get to the master level. So that's where you may want to spend a couple of years, at least in some cases. Some people are ready for it early because they knew a lot starting out, but you would want to have a lot of time to really understand production in depth, have a lot of tasting experience so that you would be able to pass the blind tasting exam, which we help with training. You know, you'll have, you can always get yourself paired up with someone who's passed the exam to kind of mentor you through the process and help you study and meet with you regularly and things like that. But, and I would say that's actually, that's the point at which the real community aspect. of the council comes into play, it's kind of you're interacting then at that point with a lot of experts in the field and you can ask people to help you as you prepare for the exam. And, you know, that's the real stressful part of it, I think, is the fact that so much of that exam is open-ended. The theory exam, they can ask any question they want. It's not limited really to any particular domain or set of topics.

Drew Hannush:
Mm-hmm.

Adam Edmonsond:
There are six essay questions to be answered within two hours. The eight whiskey blind tasting exam takes place within 30 minutes. Um, in terms of the time you have to take your notes and then you have an hour and a half discussion after that. Um, and then the thing that hasn't happened yet, um, which will happen, I think in May in Scotland is the master whiskey exam level four, and that's where you take that master level, um, of knowledge and then expand it. laterally out to the other areas outside of your track. So I was a Scotch track, but now I'm gonna be, you still have a specialization. I'll still know more about Scotch than I do about anything else, but I have to be well-rounded in that exam.

Drew Hannush:
Okay, is it onsite or is it

Adam Edmonsond:
The master

Drew Hannush:
something you're

Adam Edmonsond:
levels

Drew Hannush:
doing online?

Adam Edmonsond:
are generally on site.

Drew Hannush:
Well, yeah, but the first level

Adam Edmonsond:
Level one

Drew Hannush:
and

Adam Edmonsond:
and

Drew Hannush:
maybe

Adam Edmonsond:
two

Drew Hannush:
second level.

Adam Edmonsond:
are done remotely. You take the exams at a scheduled time live

Drew Hannush:
Okay.

Adam Edmonsond:
with a kind of locked screen and so on. It's like a proper exam if you were taking the LSAT or something like that, but you do all your studying on your own and then it's multiple choice. When you get the tasting involved, then it's all in person.

Drew Hannush:
uh... do you dive much into history

Adam Edmonsond:
Yes,

Drew Hannush:
in it

Adam Edmonsond:
history is a big component. History actually starts as a component in level one. So the Scotch exam, for example, is based on a study guide that I developed with Charles McLean based on his book Malt Whisky, which has an extensive overview of

Drew Hannush:
Mm.

Adam Edmonsond:
the history. And so he updated a lot of that material and we used it in the study guide. know, important things about history because there's so many vicissitudes of tax law in Scotland affect things that you don't need to memorize in the level one

Drew Hannush:
Oh

Adam Edmonsond:
exam,

Drew Hannush:
yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
but the broad thrusts, yeah.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, I started doing a series on Irish whiskey and I've gone through 13 episodes so far and I was digging back in. I'm telling a little bit about Irish history as well as because they tie in together so much. But boy, remember all the different taxes that came through and when they came through and then also events like the Scottish Malt Riot in 1725 that changed all the... really pushed the Scotts to drinking whiskey and giving up their beer and all of that sort of stuff. It's like, wow, you could really get lost in the weeds on a lot of that stuff in terms of trying to, you would be overwhelmed just by history, let alone trying to figure out distilleries and flavors and

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
all

Adam Edmonsond:
definitely.

Drew Hannush:
the rest. But you can tell them they can listen to the

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah

Drew Hannush:
Whiskey Lord podcast. They can entertain, drive down the road,

Adam Edmonsond:
And

Drew Hannush:
and hear

Adam Edmonsond:
I'll

Drew Hannush:
the

Adam Edmonsond:
tell

Drew Hannush:
stories

Adam Edmonsond:
people that

Drew Hannush:
as they

Adam Edmonsond:
because

Drew Hannush:
go.

Adam Edmonsond:
a lot of the history material has been, I think, probably some people's weakest parts, because it's difficult to read about one legislative action after the other and really come away with a, with a vivid

Drew Hannush:
Yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
understanding. And so if you've gotten into the history with your

Drew Hannush:
But

Adam Edmonsond:
podcast,

Drew Hannush:
there-

Adam Edmonsond:
I think it's definitely better than most, most of what's available.

Drew Hannush:
Yeah, well, and it's funny because yesterday was the 200th anniversary as we're recording this, the 200th anniversary of the Excise Act of 1823. And if you look at it, you go, all these Scotch whiskey bottles I pick up all have 1823 on it. What was the deal

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
about that date? And that's the fun part about history because a lot of people in... in Ireland will tell you that they're not a big fan of Anais Coffee because he came up with the coffee still, but it was actually as I was doing my research, come to find out Anais Coffee had a lot to do with pushing that excise

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
act to be passed. So those are the parts of history that are fascinating and I think they're funner when they're, I think it's more fun when it's stories rather than just dates. And so I think that that's what gets people in. It's like when I was... going through college, my history professor said, I don't want you to learn dates. I want you to understand what happened so that you can

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
apply it to today. And I think that makes history so much more interesting and applicable to the experience of helping people

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
understand

Adam Edmonsond:
and

Drew Hannush:
their

Adam Edmonsond:
how

Drew Hannush:
whiskey.

Adam Edmonsond:
did things like that affect the styles of whiskey in different places? You know, if you want to, some of that's still with us today. You know, you have traditional styles that develop for reasons that have to do entirely with historical and global events. So that's fascinating. I think what I mentioned, I think I mentioned to you once before, why are Isla whiskeys so heavily peated? characteristically where many other island whiskeys are peated, but not to that degree. One reason was they're traditionally used as ingredients in blends, and if you were shipping barrels from Islay to the mainland to be delivered as ingredients in a blend, it would be nice if you could get a lot of peat flavor from a single barrel rather than from 10 barrels. So... They came up for that reason as a supplier to blenders, but then that became their traditional regional style for which they're known and it became something that people now insist upon. So just that sort of thing is fascinating.

Drew Hannush:
And it's interesting that it was, yeah, I was going to say, it's interesting that you say that because I was just doing a, I do a little home blending. And so I was taking a bottle of monkey shoulder that I was like, this has been sitting on the shelf forever. And I don't know if I'm ever going to drink it because to me it's, um, it's more of a neutral kind of a whiskey. So, um, uh, so I took a little bit of my Sherry Oak LaFrog and put it in there. And I'm like, wow, it tastes like Sherry Oak LaFroeg. I didn't need that much of that LaFroeg to bring that big flavor out. And so that is one of the things you kind of learn when you start home blending a little bit is those Islay whiskies can be quite potent when you're

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
using them.

Adam Edmonsond:
I think, and maybe this is a homework question for anyone watching, I believe that when the Balvany Distillery was founded, they got their stills, or at least some of their stills, either from Lefroyg or Lagervullen. I don't remember which, but that's an

Drew Hannush:
Nah.

Adam Edmonsond:
interesting tie-in what you've done

Drew Hannush:
It.

Adam Edmonsond:
there because you've maybe brought the whiskey back home. So Balvany being

Drew Hannush:
There

Adam Edmonsond:
one of

Drew Hannush:
you

Adam Edmonsond:
the

Drew Hannush:
go,

Adam Edmonsond:
three single

Drew Hannush:
yeah.

Adam Edmonsond:
malts in

Drew Hannush:
Oh,

Adam Edmonsond:
the

Drew Hannush:
I'll

Adam Edmonsond:
monkey

Drew Hannush:
have to look

Adam Edmonsond:
shoulder

Drew Hannush:
that

Adam Edmonsond:
blend.

Drew Hannush:
up. Yeah, well I was talking about the Scotland, the Glasgow Mall riots, the guy's house that ended up getting burned down. The government compensated him for that and so he was supposed to rebuild his house with it, but instead he bought Isla and Jura. They were for sale

Adam Edmonsond:
Mm-hmm.

Drew Hannush:
and he said okay I will buy them. So he ended up buying those two and his brother is the one that built the Beaumont church. and got the distillery started. So it's really interesting to see these

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah.

Drew Hannush:
little connections and

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah,

Drew Hannush:
how they

Adam Edmonsond:
no,

Drew Hannush:
work

Adam Edmonsond:
I mean,

Drew Hannush:
out.

Adam Edmonsond:
studying history

Drew Hannush:
So,

Adam Edmonsond:
sounds daunting, but it's,

Drew Hannush:
well.

Adam Edmonsond:
uh, it's, you're rewarded steadily across the process.

Drew Hannush:
Absolutely. So if somebody wants to learn more about the certification, how

Adam Edmonsond:
Uh,

Drew Hannush:
can they go about that?

Adam Edmonsond:
uh, whiskeymasters.org council of whiskey masters is the, is the organization. Um, you can Google that or go to whiskey, whiskeymasters.org. Um, plenty of information there about what's included in the, in the different levels of certification process and, um, you know, who organizes it as far as who's on the board and all that sort of thing. And, um, yeah, I would say too, if anybody's considering it, you know, if there's someone who's pretty serious about, you know, a career. and whiskey that they think would be helped by the program or, you know, just wanting to talk to somebody who's been through, I'd be happy to talk to anyone as well. So I can, my last name Edmondson, edmondson.com, they can find me there.

Drew Hannush:
Okay, excellent. And I'll post a link to it also on the show notes page as well. So they can just click through there at whiskey-lore.com. Adam, thank you so much for taking us through a journey of wine and whiskey and some history and all the rest. Again, this is, this is one of those subjects that I don't know that all whiskey podcasts pay attention to probably the ones more that are dealing with scotch than dealing with bourbon, but I think bourbon people. are getting to the point where they're needing to know a little bit about these finishing casks that are making their way over into the US and influencing their whiskies as well. So I thank you for sharing

Adam Edmonsond:
Yeah, definitely wonderful

Drew Hannush:
all of your

Adam Edmonsond:
being

Drew Hannush:
knowledge

Adam Edmonsond:
here.

Drew Hannush:
today.

Adam Edmonsond:
Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you. And I think we've done enough damage to this topic. I will, I will look forward to the comments and

Drew Hannush:
Hehehehe

Adam Edmonsond:
be responsive. No, I think it's, it's a it's an important emerging topic. And like you said, in bourbon as well. So hopefully, it's useful to everyone. All right,

Drew Hannush:
Fantastic,

Adam Edmonsond:
cheers.

Drew Hannush:
cheers.