Tasting: Highland Park 12-year

Saturday night (late Saturday night) I finally had the chance to break the seal on my bottle of Highland Park 12-year-old. I made sure to have a clean palate (I even ate a bland cracker). I used the Riedel stemware that I’d purchased. I was ready. And so I poured.

Now, as a wine guy, I’ve gotten very used to smelling (or “nosing”) my wine before I drink. Based on some of the reading that I’ve been doing, it appears that step is also important with whisky. But one caution that I read was that unlike wine, it was usually best not to start by just shoving your nose down into the whisky glass as the difference in alcohol levels between a 15% wine (at the high end) and a 46% whisky is dramatic. As one of the books suggested, I “approached with caution.” And boy was that good advice.

I didn’t have to get too close to the glass before the smell of the alcohol was upon me. Not so strong as to send me running for the hills, but certainly strong enough to say, “Caution! Strong spirits ahead!” Once I’d managed to adjust to the strength of the alcohol, I allowed my nose to get a bit closer and take a bigger whiff. Well, one thing I can say for sure: Whisky and wine do not share many similarities on the nose.

As I smelled the whisky I came to the realization that I had two problems: First, it was hard to separate the alcohol from the other components of the whisky. Second, as I tried to make out other aromas, I found that I didn’t have the words to describe them. My vocabulary for describing wines is still relatively small (though I feel as if I’m growing, albeit slowly). But with the whisky, I am starting over at the ground floor. At to that the fact that some of the aromas that my reading has suggested that I look for are not aromas that I would necessarily recognize. I could certainly detect a smokiness in the glass. Was that the peat smell that is so often made reference to? There was also a bit of something that I associated with either a medicine or maybe a cleaning product (though not in a bad way). Lots of the other tasting notes that I’ve read have made mention of heather, but I wouldn’t know the smell of heather unless I was walking through a field of it (and even then, someone would have to tell me that the grasses I was traipsing through were heather…). But overall, it was the smoke and alcohol that seemed to dominate.

Well, enough of that. It was time for a taste. Yes, I’d had a sip of this whisky shortly before I started this blog, but that was after trying another whisky first and with a whole lot of distractions. This time, it was just me, the darkness of my basement, and the whisky.

And so I sipped.

I’ll admit that my first taste did not make me jump up and down with excitement and glee. Nor did it make me want to just down shot after shot. Perhaps it was the strength of the alcohol that continued to dominate my palate. While the whisky seemed relatively light in the front of my mouth, the back of my mouth felt as if it was under assault. I took several sips, swirling the whisky around in my mouth, allowing it to touch all of the different parts of my tongue, trying to tease out all of the flavors. Perhaps my senses are too dull or perhaps the flavors were just too subtle, but I couldn’t really detect any sort of fruit or flower. Rather, I tasted alcohol and smokiness and … something else.

After several sips, I decided that I wanted to see what the whisky tasted like colder. Not wanting to dilute it with water or ice (that will be reserved for my second tasting), I decided to use one of those frozen rocks that I’d bought on a whim several years back and which have mostly been taking up room in my freezer. After letting the whisky chill around the rock for a few minutes, I began sipping again. While I still didn’t find my palate shouting out the names of fruits or flowers or other sorts of familiar tastes, I did sense the whisky had softened in my mouth a bit, which really makes me interested to see the difference that cutting it with a bit of water will make.

But after one tasting, right now I’d still have to say that I’d prefer a glass of Port or a dessert wine to a glass of whisky. Yet I still find myself very curious and interested in further exploration. It may just be that my palate has become sensitized in a particular way and I now have to learn to smell and taste other things in other ways. We shall see.

Below is the actual tasting note that I wrote as I sipped the whisky Saturday night:

Light on the front palate, assaults the back of the mouth; hot, but stays short of being too much so. More harsh than pleasant, though softened up a bit with a rock cube. Need to try again cut with some water.