Put Down the Scotch and Step Away from the Shaker
Dedicated lovers of Scotch whisky may wish to look the other way right now.
In his "Shaken and Stirred" column in Sunday’s New York Times, Jonathan Miles addresses one of the touchiest topics in mixology: the crafting of cocktails using single-malt Scotch. Miles writes, “As a Scottish proverb says: ‘There are two things a Highlander likes naked, and one of them is malt whiskey.’ But we New Yorkers are islanders, not Highlanders, and adulteration befits us.”
Outraged purists aside, Scotch is already a very difficult spirit to mix. A handful of cocktails achieve success with blended Scotch—the Rob Roy, Cameron’s Kick and Blood and Sand among them—but these victories are badly overshadowed by the failures. These losses can be seen in the cases of good whisky squandered in undrinkable concoctions that must have seemed promising at first, had it not been for Scotch’s near-sociopathic inability to get along with others.
The distinctive, robust flavor of single malts exacerbates the challenge, and it’s a challenge that Charlotte Voisey, brand ambassador at William Grant (parent company to Glenfiddich) rises to. For Shorty’s.32, Voisey created the Sweet Solera, a mixture of Glenfiddich Solera Reserve, Lillet Rouge and Monin caramel syrup, garnished with a maraschino cherry. As Miles writes, “While the root beer-y sweetness of the Lillet Rouge and caramel blunt the rugged, smoky edges of the Scotch, the peatiness still comes rumbling through. It takes more than a cherry to tame a single malt.”
I haven’t tried a Sweet Solera myself—aside from the cherry, I have none of the ingredients on hand—but the idea of single-malt cocktails is certainly an intriguing one.
Where do you come down on the issue? Do you have a live-and-let-live attitude when it comes to mixing with single malts, or do you blanch at the very idea of pouring a Highland into a cocktail shaker?
Photograph from chipgriffin on Flickr
About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.
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10 Comments:
"Scotch’s near-sociopathic inability to get along with others"
That must be why I like it so much :)
I'd have to say no on the mixing front. I'm an Islay drinker. I don't want anything, other than a splash of water, coming between me and whisky goodness.
Amandarama at 2:10PM on 01/16/08
Not being a stickler for tradition, I've tried the various attempts at Scotch-based cocktails - and they all fall flat. The author is right, it just doesn't get along with anything.
I like my Scotch neat; a single in a DOF (for aroma). A little ice and/or water is only called for with the burliest varieties, like Talisker and Ardbeg, etc.
rheogs at 2:52PM on 01/16/08
I'm a heretic, will mix just about any spirit, and liked this cocktail:
Vieux Carre Variation 2
1 oz Highland Park 12
1 oz Calvados Roger Groult, Réserve 3 years old
1 oz M&R Bianco Vermouth
Dash Benedictine
Dash Angostura
Dash Peychaud's
Stir, strain, grapefruit peel twist.
...But, basically every Scotch, or at least ever major region of Scotch production, needs to be considered a separate style of whiskey and that fact needs to be taken into account when mixing. This is true to a certain extent with all spirits, but usually not so much with whisk(e)ys as it is with Scotch.
erik_flannestad at 3:08PM on 01/16/08
You know - i love scotch, but on rare holiday occasions my dad makes a scotch mist (milk and scotch served on served on ice.) It's yum.
Elizabelle at 3:28PM on 01/16/08
Mmmm. I am not much of a Scotch whiskey drinker, although I come from A Scots family. My Gran drank Black and White all her life; my grandfather who was a ship's purser smuggled it in to her during prohibition. But I remember my very first sip of spirits at about age 5 in 1954 was a Rob Roy. But I am low brow, I guess, I adore Bourbon - Wild Turkey for my Old Fashioneds, and Woodford Reserve neat.
I recently invented a cocktail in honor of the Harvard Fencing team which is a sort of Old Fashioned with a bit of orange liqueur floated on top, and many shakes of Peychaud is required.
dksbook at 3:52PM on 01/16/08
Ice is all I need or want. For some reason, Scotch (or any whiskey for that matter) seems to taste pretty bad to me if its mixed with anything, including water (for some reason the ice doesn't bother me).
the only exception may be the mint julep.
Soup_Dumpling at 4:21PM on 01/16/08
I mix it solely with wit, and, on occasion, a splash of whimsy.
HunterAnglerGardenerCook at 8:38PM on 01/16/08
I like my single malt neat, but on rare occasions a rusty nail does the trick. It's equal parts drambuie and scotch served over ice. Curiously, it gets better as the ice melts. But I save blended scotch for this - there's no use in blunting the subtleties of a good scotch.
mslaas at 6:29PM on 01/17/08
To be frank, Glenfiddich is haufin, and is probably improved by blending with anything short of burnt tyres.
But add anything other than room-temperature soft water to my dram of Highland Park and I'll see you outside, Jimmy.
(Whisky purity aside, if you really must make a "Scotch"-based cocktail, bear in mind that every distillery produces a unique nose, and the age/era of each batch within a distillery will differ greatly. That is, after all, the beauty of the single malts.)
akatsukira at 4:54AM on 01/18/08
Single malts are too damned expensive to mix. Nothing wrong with a proper Whisky Sour (the short one, basically whiskey, lemon juice and syrup) but I wouldn't waste a single malt on it - use a blend for a cocktail.
bronwyncarlisle at 5:59PM on 01/18/08