lew's bottom shelf
IT’S CLEAR BY LEW BRYSON
I owe some of you an apology. In my last column, I took a swipe at unaged whiskey. I wrote, “... unlike ‘white whiskey,’ people actually like drinking unaged rum.” I’m here to eat those words. Or drink them, I guess. See, not long after I sent that column in, I was visiting a distillery and tasted some delicious new make. That made me think back to when I tasted a dipper of Maker’s Mark right off the doubler, and how good it was: “like warm vodka, the best vodka I’ve ever tasted, with sweet corn overtones,” it says in my notes from that day. But there was also the ‘moonshine’ and ‘white whiskey’ I’d tasted in the years from about 2005 to about 2014, when some distillers had to bottle unaged spirit to bring in some cash to keep the doors open until their whiskey was aged. I can’t be the only one who remembers spirits that were feinty, hot, touched with fermentation issues; stuff that never should have been in a tank, let alone a glass. Don’t blame it on not spending time in the barrel. Unaged whiskey has a history and tradition that is, if anything, even older than whiskey. In Germany, it’s known as kornbrand, ‘grain brandy,’ as opposed to the fruit-based schnapps. Japanese shochu is unaged grain spirit (it can also be made from sweet potatoes, sugar cane and nearly 50 other things, but rice and barley are common bases). And of course, in Ireland, they have poitín, always unaged and punishingly strong. It’s definitely a real thing, but it was done a disservice by inexperienced distillers who didn’t know what their spirit should have tasted like, smelled like. Most of them got better and had aged whiskey to sell, but the damage was done. White whiskey was bad stuff, and most of us weren’t going to even try it. Michael Myers at Distillery 291 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, remembers those days. “There was a push to sell white whiskey back then,” he said. “And craft distillers were not distilling clean enough. I had a guy come up and say, ‘White whiskey, that’s awful.’ “You haven’t tried mine, I told him. “He said, ‘If you can handle the criticism, I’ll
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taste it.’ Okay, I poured him some 291 Fresh. “‘Say, that’s pretty good!’” That’s what I’m talking about: unaged grain spirit, made with a whiskey mash. Myers still bottles 291 Fresh, from a bourbon mash, and his Colorado White Dog from a rye mash, because people like it, in cocktails, on the rocks. He’s not alone. One of my local guys, Jared Adkins, at Bluebird Distilling in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania still bottles and sells Bluebird White Rye Whiskey: 80/20% rye/rye malt. “When I’m giving tours and tastings,” Adkins said, “I tell people, ‘This is the whiskey you’d be drinking in colonial times.’ I was just trying to get close to what whiskey tasted like before aging was popular. They’re tasting what rye grain tasted like.” That’s the key to the appeal of this stuff: the taste. It’s not vodka, as I realized way back when at Maker’s Mark (Dave Pickerell handed me that sample, that’s how long ago it was). It’s not distilled that high and tight, there’s still plenty of flavor in there. Sometimes it expresses as a tequila-like freshness, sometimes as a grainy sweetness. And like white rum, like blanco tequila, it can be damned good in a cocktail (like 291’s trademarked Whiskarita) or a simple, crisp highball. Maybe, now that we’re experimenting with new and old yeasts, with heirloom corn and ancient strains of barley and wheat, with seedbank resurrection rye, all in the name of flavor ... maybe it’s time to give white whiskey another chance. Maybe now that we’re all a bit smarter, a bit more experienced, and have some better kit, white whiskey could have a chance to shine like the bright, clean, electrifying spirit it can be. “I still sell it in the [state liquor] stores,” Adkins told me about his Bluebird White Rye Whiskey. “It does okay, it still sells. Nothing crazy, but it still moves. Some of it is the novelty; that’s kind of an easy sell. And there’s a collection of people who still like white whiskey. We’ll keep it as part of our product line.” Myers, at Distillery 291, is quite a bit more bullish. “I believe in white whiskey, I have from Day One,” Myers said. “I just did a four grain wheated rye. The white dog off the still is just amazing, it’s so special. Will I have another
Maybe, now that we’re experimenting with new and old yeasts, with heirloom corn and ancient strains of barley and wheat, with seedbank resurrection rye, all in the name of flavor ... maybe it’s time to give white whiskey another chance. Maybe ... white whiskey could have a chance to shine like the bright, clean, electrifying spirit it can be. white whiskey to sell? “White whiskey is ready to come back,” he said, “and it’s going to be big. That’s truly how I feel.” Poitín, shochu, kornbrand, old school moonshine. White whiskey. Yours to perfect, yours to present. ■
Lew Bryson has been writing about beer and spirits full-time since 1995. He is the author of “Tasting Whiskey” and “Whiskey Master Class.”
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