12/20/2023 0 Comments Sipping whiskey for beginnersThat was a nice image - completely foreign to me, but aspirational. With a glass of whiskey, I can set it down and relax and it’ll keep me company for a long time.” “It’s something I can really relax with, as opposed to having to worry about dilution in a cocktail or pound a beer before it gets cold. “One thing that I like about whiskey, especially sipping it neat, is that I can take my time with it,” Peterson said. I asked the group what they like about whiskey, and each associated the liquor with stories and experiences. The cocktail certainly rounded off the rougher edges of the whiskey, but the harshness was still present and made it hard for me to imagine drinking an Old-Fashioned for fun. Lisy jumped behind the bar to make me an Old-Fashioned that I sipped gingerly, trying to remember the experience was meant to be restrained and enjoyable, rather than a means to a drunken end. Like Risen, the group suggested training my palate to enjoy whiskey by sipping cocktails, rather than going straight to neat pours. “It’s creating a little taste of comfortability and a little taste of exploration,” she said. What do I like? What do I not like? What have I been getting into lately, and what have I moved away from? What sort of experience do I seek when I drink? Andrews said it’s important for bartenders to learn where drinkers are coming from so they can build bridges from what they already enjoy to new flavors. You don’t NOT like whiskey, you just haven’t had whiskey the right way.’”Įveryone asked me questions. And when they’re like, ‘Oh this is fantastic, what’s in it?’ I can say, ‘I just made you a cocktail with whiskey in it. “I can make them a cocktail where whiskey is the base but I don’t tell them and ask them what they think. “I personally love when people are like, ‘I am not a whiskey drinker!’” Barrett said, laughing. Eager to share everything they love about the spirit, they were not put off by my whiskey hesitation. The group can be categorized as the previously mentioned “whiskey nerds.” In November, the four traveled down to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail to learn and push their palates. I ventured to Mordecai, a cocktail bar and restaurant in Wrigleyville, to seek the advice of people who are both whiskey experts and lovers: Mordecai’s bar manager Tom Lisy and spirits archivist Kris Peterson, and sister bar Billy Sunday’s general manager Stephanie Andrews and bartender Jeremy Barrett. Knowing all of this didn’t magically make me like whiskey, but it did help me understand the differences between products and why I might eventually prefer one of them over another.Īrmed with knowledge, it was time to taste. White whiskey, for example, is barely aged, so it doesn’t pick up the brown color or vanilla-and-caramel flavors from the barrel that are a big part of what makes whiskey what it is. A lot goes into whiskey production, and any tweak along the way can change the end result. He walked me through the process, from milling grain to distilling to barreling to bottling, using plenty of words that sent my brain back to 11th-grade chemistry. I met Robert Birnecker for a tour of their facility. When Robert and Sonat Birnecker founded Koval in 2008, it was the first distillery in Chicago since Prohibition. The place to go for more background knowledge was Koval Distillery.
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