Mmm, I love scotch. I love scotch. Scotch is got scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly. Welcome to another edition of Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot with Kristen Ellis from Binny's and myself, Jeff Carlin. It's another week, and what's on tap this week? Oh, everything scotch, kind of overlooked, but I think is definitely feeling kind of a renaissance in itself. I feel like it kind of went away for a while, and now it's back. It gives us the ability to bring in scotch specialists like our buddy, Patrick. Pat Brophy, welcome. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. So we brought you in because you love whiskey, but you know quite a bit about scotch, and I say every time you and I sit down and you teach me about scotch, blended, single malt, all the different rules and regulations, I learned so much. So first, before we get into the tasting that you've set up for us, which looks delicious, by the way. It smells even better. I know. It's better than a cheeseburger right now. That's how it smells to me. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I was going to say, wait slightly. It depends on what the cheeseburger is coming from, right? Yeah. Love you, cheeseburger. Kumas. Can we shout out to Kumas? Where we begin is with just the definition of scotch, right? So what makes scotch scotch? Well, you really hit the nail on the head with the rules and regulations being a product controlled by the British government. There is an unnecessary amount of rules and regulations, in my humble opinion, of course, but scotch whiskey, it's broken into multiple categories. Blended scotch, blended malt scotch, single malt scotch, blended grain scotch, single grain scotch, all these different things. And the big difference here is what cereal grain the whiskey is distilled from and what distillery it is distilled at. Okay, the two big definitions I know are single malt and blended. So what makes a single malt and what makes a blend? Okay, this is a pretty easy one. Single malt, common misnomer. Most people think it's made from a single barrel or something like that. It refers to a single distillery and 100% malt barley. Malt barley is the big key here. Malted barley means it is barley grain that has gone through the malting process. Big shock there. The malting process. Which is converting starches in a barley kernel into fermentable sugars, which we can then extract alcohol from. And these babies are aged in oak, yeah? Oh yeah. By law, Scotch whiskey is aged in oak for a minimum of three years. Also in oak barrels, no larger than 700 liters. So we've got lovely tasting here that you've set up for us to kind of walk us through these different styles. A lot of these styles of Scotch are named after from the villages where they come from. It's kind of a European thing to do is to sort of name the particular style, wine or beer, spirit kind of from its place of provenance. So I think, right Pat, that's kind of how we're going to walk through this tasting a little bit and sort of fold in some stylistic differences as well. Yeah, we're going to start with a couple of different blended Scotches. The main one being the world's best selling Scotch, Johnny Walker. In this case, Johnny Walker Black, which is a blended Scotch whiskey. So that means it's a mix of malt barley whiskeys and grain whiskeys. Grain whiskeys being primarily corn or wheat, and also a bit of malted barley. This is aged for a minimum of 12 years. So that's something with Scotch where this has an age statement, age 12 years. That means the youngest whiskey in this bottle is 12 years old. That doesn't mean it's exclusively 12 years old. There could be older whiskeys or possibly, although not likely in this case, much older whiskeys in that bottle. But the minimum age of all whiskeys blended together to make this final product is 12 years old. And a smaller proportion of malt in this particular whiskey? Yes. Generally, with more commercialized blends like this, there is a larger proportion of grain whiskey than malt whiskey. Our next two samples, we have single barrel blended Scotch whiskey, a real anomaly in the Scotch whiskey world. It sounds like an oxymoron to me. Totally sounds like an oxymoron because it goes against everything that blended Scotch is all about. So, at the end of the day, what these really are is barrel finished blended Scotch. We had this whole warehouse full of various different whiskeys and various different casks at Compass Box in Edinburgh, one of our favorite places and one of our favorite whiskey makers. They blend all these casks together, they marry them together in a nicer term, I suppose. Like ketchup at the end of a serving shift? I'm a little bit confused. We are anti-ketchup in Chicago, take that stuff back to Wisconsin. I'm from Wisconsin. I couldn't tell. It's the fifth episode, I think it's time we tell people. Let us behind the cheddar curtain. So what we have, this scotch was essentially married and blended from all its different component whiskeys and then returned back to the barrels, all those component whiskeys came from. Okay, and then therein lies the term finishing. Correct, and then it sat in there for several months, and then we could taste through the different barrels and say, we want this barrel and we want this barrel or this and this. So with that marrying process and then that finishing for several months, was there a big drastic difference between barrels? I mean, was it kind of? Absolutely, because these were grain whiskeys, these were malt whiskeys. So malted barley whiskeys tends to be more fruit forward, grain whiskeys tend to be more sweet. If it came from a sherry barrel, it might have a more raisin character to it. If it came from American oak, it could have vanilla. It could have come from third fill oak too, and it could have had not a whole lot of character at all. So what we've done here is we essentially took two different single barrels, one, and we are going to taste the American oak first. Okay. Which was finished in what on the label says a Highland malt whisky cask. So this was finished in a cask of whisky that previously held Ben Rinnes single malt. In the Highlands? In the Highlands, of course. The Highlands is the largest geographical area as far as scotch is concerned in Scotland. I know two things about Scotland. I know there's a place called Edinburgh, and I know there are Highlands. That's all I got. There are these lovely animals called, they're the cows there, they're called the Highland Qs. You have to pronounce like Scotland and cow is Q. Sure. So Highland Q. Highland Qs. I was looking at pictures of the little Highland calves. I don't know how to say that like I'm from Scotland. In the middle of February, when you're sad, look at pictures of baby Highland Qs and life is good. Back to Whiskey. Back to Whiskey, please. These are available in limited quantities. These are something we did about 18 months ago. So what's around at your local Binny's Beverage Depot? What is left? Well, and that's the beauty of our handpicks program. I mean, we get it. We get a good amount of it. But then, you know, when it's gone, it's gone. In a couple of weeks, we've been doing the podcast here. The Binny's picks that have been coming through and tasting, all of them different, all of them awesome. It's not so easy because not only do they pick single barrels, but sometimes they have to make blends. And so the other day, Pat had to make up these proprietary blends for us. And it was watching him just kind of painstakingly go after different proportions of Madeira, Turcaille finish, or Sauternes finish. And trying to get all of this together was just, it was really fun to watch. And I mean, I got to help a little bit, so I felt good about that. I have a close relationship with graduated cylinders. Yeah. But it takes a long time and a lot of effort to make sure that always with the customer are kind of at the forefront of what he's trying to do. It's not, do I like it? It's one thing he thinks, but is everyone else going to like it too? And that's kind of his aim. So to watch him go through that process. So it's not just taking a single barrel. Sometimes they're mixing them all together and it's, it's really interesting and very thoughtful, the way they put these things together. There's an artistry to it, that's for sure. For sure. After this many years doing this, that's, you know, I've kind of settled to the point where I kind of like weird. And if customers don't, you know, what good am I doing any of us, you know, whether Binny's or whether the customer, you know, I have to deliver things that people want. So that's one of the hallmarks of our single barrel program is that, you know, for example, if we're doing a single barrel of Pultiny single malt scotch, which we'll taste later, it's very important that it still tastes like a Pultiny. So if someone buys a barrel of Pultiny that was hand-selected and bottled by Binny's Beverage Depot for Binny's Beverage Depot, that it is not just the best Pultiny they had, but it follows the flavor profile of the distillery. Because if we give you a Pultiny that tastes like a Glen Fittick or something, what good are we doing anybody? Right. We're really proud of our hand-picked single barrel program at Binny's Beverage Depot. It's been truly a hallmark of our whiskey program in general for many years now. One of the things we're most proud of with that is we won a World Whiskey of the Year Award from, at the time it was called Malt Advocate Magazine, now Whiskey Advocate Magazine, for a 34-year-old single cask behind the park we did, which I think was I want a golf clap, because it's Scotch, Scotland, and it's an award, and it's, thank you. Yeah, it's a major award, and it's something I would gladly put in my front window. And so, continuing on today, we have several different single casks of single malt Scotch whiskey, hand selected by us here at Binny's Beverage Depot. These are available only at Binny's, and whenever possible, we have these bottled in natural strength. So when whiskey goes into a barrel, it goes into a barrel around, you know, 125 proof or so with bourbon, possibly even higher with Scotch, and these are bottled uncut and unfiltered outside of the loose, you don't want to be drinking particles of wood, but outside of that, these see very little filtration at all and they're bottled in natural strength. So most of these whiskeys we're going to taste here are around 60 percent alcohol actually, which is actually a great deal because when you So let's taste this fourth one and then let's talk about putting a drop of water in it and how that's going to affect the profile. Absolutely. So this fourth one is Craig Ellickey. Craig Ellickey is a single malt you don't normally see in the United States. It's actually one of the base malts to the Dewar's blend. So when you drink Dewar's White Label Scotch, what you're actually drinking is a whole lot of Craig Ellickey. If you drive by the distillery, it doesn't actually say Craig Ellickey on the distillery. It says Dewar's and Dewar's visitor experience and all this stuff. So what this is doing, what this particular blend, what this particular malt gives to that blend is a lot of the fruit and a lot of the structure and a lot of the body to the whiskey itself. So this is a very typical space side whiskey in that it has a lot of ripe kind of juicy fruit to it and a bit of that kind of heather and herbaceousness to it. Yeah, there's a lot of really good fruit on here. I have been a long time since I've had a whiskey with that much fruit in it. That's incredible. It's very much a breakfast whiskey in my opinion. Absolutely. I like that. I kind of think this is too strong for me. It's cask strength like you just explained. We just talked about putting a little drop of water in it to kind of ease it for me. Can you talk me through the process, how it changes maybe? Not too geeky, but it does change on the molecular level and how it presents. At the most core level here, you're adding a little bit of water to a whisky. When you first start to see a little bit of kind of oiliness form on the surface of the whisky, that's kind of separating those volatile, strong alcohol molecules from the flavorful, fatty, oily molecules. So at that point, what you're seeing is actually you're blasting all that kind of harsh alcohol away and you're concentrating the actual flavors and aromas of the whisky that are left. Okay. So it's always beneficial almost no matter the strength to add a little bit of water to your whisky. I think it's even more pronounced with the water. Yeah, it really kind of opens it up. There's a lot of like you taste it outright with just straight and it's almost too much. Like I said, it's abrasive. It feels you're... It's mean. I can say it's mean. Yeah, it's mean exactly. You're weighed down by the heaviness of it. But a couple of drops of water, it opens it up a little soft for you. Taste some more fruit, a little softness around the edges. That's the way to go. It's kind of like what ice would do just a little bit kind of faster in a way, right? You're just putting the water in and letting it open up. Absolutely, but it doesn't dull the nose of the whiskey the way ice does. It's like people who are used to wine where you swirl the glass or you can't have wine. It's almost like that concept where it adds a level of complexity that you weren't used to. I agree, yeah. Nice fruit-forward whiskey though. I like this one. That's great, yeah. That's incredible. And is that French American Oak or is that, what's the difference there? That is American Oak. This is aged. This is from one single refilled bourbon barrel. Cool. We bought the whole barrel, only found it at Binny's Beverage Depot. Cool. Excellent. What else you got for us? I have one of my favorite, most exciting casts of whiskey we've done over the past couple years. It's an 11-year-old Edward Dower single malt. This was filled in 2006, bottled in 2017. This was aged its entire life in a sautern barrel. Ms. Ellis here should be able to tell us a little bit more about sautern. Bordeaux's favorite dessert wine. So sautern, I'm going to be an encyclopedia here. Now, sautern comes from Bordeaux. It is a sweet wine made with grapes that are affected with what we call noble rot. It's a fungus that attacks the grapes, it desiccates the grapes, it eliminates the water content, and what it does is concentrates the sugars and the flavors and the minerals. It gives the wine this very honeyed, sometimes rye bread characteristic that is unmistakable. Sautern is the benchmark of all these sweet wines that have been made with grapes that are affected by noble rot. So they're aged in oak for many years, and after the vintners take the sautern from the oak, they then sell on the secondary market these sautern barrels up into Scotland, and then they go ahead and they put delicious scotch in there. So what it does then to the scotch is gives the whiskey in essence of sautern. So you get some of that honeyed, soft honeycomb characteristic to the whiskey. Yeah, big benchmark flavors being honey and that golden raisin character. That's really sautern flavors that scotch whiskey tends to draw out well in a cask with age. So what else you got for us today? I have one more single malt for us today. It is actually a pretty polarizing flavor. It's from Ardbeg on the island of Islay. Islay is known for having very smoky, very peaty scotch whiskeys. The smell on it and the nose is very peaty. Oh yeah. It's not my thing. So it never has been. See, and that's the thing is like with these peated whiskies, you either, I really honestly believe you either love it or hate it. Like, well, I can't say I hate it, but I hate it. Right. I can say this all day. There's really no in-between opinion with heavily peated whiskies like this. So peat basically is a moss that grows on the island. And during that malting process that Pat was talking about before, what? Peat is essentially dirt. Peat is millions of years of decomposed plant matter that has slowly compacted into a dirt, essentially. And so this gets cut and it forms bogs that grow moss on top and they harbor water and they soak things up. But what this does is you'll go out and you'll cut the peat and you'll let it dry and then you fuel a fire with this dried peat. It looks like big clumps of dirt, but because it's made of plant matter, it actually burns. So it's not a moss. No, not a moss. Just moss grows on top of it. Yes. So on wind swept, you know, far blown Scottish islands like this, where there aren't a lot of trees, in order to heat your home, in order to cook your food, in order to dry your malting barley, you need to have some sort of fuel to burn, in this case peat. So peat gives a particularly earthy, and in the case of Islay peat, it gives a bit of a salty smoke to it, because they have a salty, particularly salinous water table that's been washed over with seawater over the millennia, all that kind of This is incredible. This is truly one of my favorites of the year. So this is the first year-round addition to Ardbeg's whiskey lineup in at least five years, I think, since Corey Vreckan came out or something like that. And this is a, of course, highly peated, so very smoky, very earthy, very kind of dirty and sooty-tasting scotch. But part of it is aged in PX sherry butts, Pedro Jimenez, which I'm sure Kristen can tell us a little more about being the sherry savansi is. Well, Pedro Jimenez is one of the three main constituents of sherry. Well, one of two, really. And it makes the sweeter styles. And so when you have sherry that's aged this long with this type of grape, the barrel itself is going to impart a very lovely array of dried fruit, raisin, prune, fig aroma to the scotch. It's lost in a person like me because I can't get past the peat, but I think what it adds, it's a lovely nuance, kind of between that peated aroma, that kind of a little bit of an herbaceous, band-aid-y sort of smell with the dried fruit. And I think it just adds a lovely touch, and it makes it softer and rounder, for sure. I dig it. It's got that saltiness. It's got that peatiness. It's smoky. I mean, it's almost mesquite in its flavor profile, as people would tie it to, and it's awesome. I dig it. I agree. I think the PX gives it a balancing factor to all those, that tobacco-y, leathery, spicy, peaty, smoky, mesquite kind of flavor. The PX, that sweetness, just gives it just enough sugar to keep it drinkable while still giving you the real punch of that smoke. Yeah, people are going bonkers for this scotch right now, for sure. I can see why. It's really complex. There's a lot going on here. It's reasonably priced and it's a wonderful Scotch whisky. As we wrap another edition of Barrel to Bottle with Binny's Beverage Depot, we can't leave without our Q&A, Kristen. No, we can't. We can't. And we would like everybody to participate in our Q&A portion of the podcast. So if you write us your questions, your burning deepest questions, you'd like Pat Brophy to answer, go ahead and write us at Binny's Bev on Twitter. This week we've got Mark. Mark writes, What are the best reasonably priced whiskeys, Scotches especially, that are finished in sherry and port casks? Well, the world's your oyster with sherry and port casks and Scotch. Let's start with Glenmorangy. They have two called La Santa and Quintaruban, which are both 10 year old Glenmorangy original, finished for an additional two years in sherry or port. They go on sale regularly. Nice, luscious, fruity, but still light bodied and drinkable Scotch. One of my personal favorites for a heavily sherryed Scotch is Highland Park 12 year old. Highland Park is from the Orkney Islands, off the far, far, far northeast coast of Scotland, farthest north distillery in all of Scotland, actually. And it's 90% sherry barrel-aged, 10% bourbon barrel-aged. It's got a luscious, rich, raisiny and fig character to it, and a little tiny bit of salt and pea to it to really balance it out. It's, to me, just the perfect Scotch whiskey. Lovely. The Glenn Renge, the Port Finish, was the first Scotch I ever had. And I loved it, and that's kind of what turned me on. But I mean, if you're not sure if somebody is going to like a Scotch, I think these kinds of Port and Sherry Finish Scotches are a great place to introduce somebody to Scotch, and they are very reasonably priced as well. Absolutely. Sherry Finish, Port Finish Scotches that add that kind of fruity element to a Scotch. Great starting point for Scotch. Great. Thanks, Pat. Jeff, I have learned so much today about whiskey. Your pal, Pat Brophy here, knows his whiskey, but if I want to know more... You can go ahead and give us an email at spirits at binnys.com. Great place to do it, but also give The Whiskey Hotline a call. The number is 888-817-5898. You'll get Joe, you'll get Brett, you'll get Pat, and you'll get some information and some really good whiskey. Pat, thanks so much for coming on again today. We appreciate it. Hey, thanks for having me. And for Jeff and I'm Kristen, thanks for listening and keep tasting.