Distilleries have been releasing a lot of new expressions and limited offerings lately.
Every week, it seems, it’s something else: there are familiar whiskies aged in unfamiliar barrels, unfamiliar whiskies imbued with smoke from exotic elements, whiskies from the most remote distillery in Scotland, or the most remote distillery in the world, or aged in space, or aged in a warehouse where the temperature is determined by a jaybird’s song. There are boundary-crossers, like Irish-style triple-pot-still whiskey made in the US, or rye whisky made in the Highlands. They all get a lot of attention in the press, and rightly so. But as press releases land in my inbox at a rapid rate, I find myself asking: wherefore art thou Maker’s Mark? Or Famous Grouse? Or Canadian Club?
Sure, I’m well aware that core brands like these are the calling card of high-volume sports bars. They’re the top-earning workhorses upon which all the fancier expressions ride. Why bother with promotion or press outreach? The occasional holiday-time adverts suit the marketing budget just fine.
If a whisky novice at a bar or tasting event finds herself beside a certain kind of drinker, she could be forgiven for thinking there’s no point to consuming whisky if you’re not keeping meticulous records of what you drink and comparing lists with others. Too many times, I witness what spirals into a one-upmanship exchange: one party tries to out-impress the other, to demonstrate his supremacy. Each individual is a vessel that has,
over the course of his adult life, contained liquid worth thousands of years, cumulatively.
Whenever I hear an exchange of that sort, I’ll turn to the bartender and order a Maker’s Mark or Old Grand-Dad on the rocks, or a J&B and soda. Because here’s the thing that gets overlooked — or disregarded entirely — in the flurry of once-in-a-lifetime expressions and imaginatively matured liquid and seductive bottles coded in superlative declarations: nostalgia.
Maker’s Mark was my gateway whiskey. After graduating from university in Boston in the early 2000s, I had a network of chef and bartender friends. I’d often meet them after their shift for a late-night drink, or three, in a light-hearted subterranean bar called Silvertone. It was known for its 1960s-era adverts and home décor. You could get an expertly mixed Sazerac here, but most opted for Miller High Life. It was here that a bartender poured me Maker’s Mark, explained what makes a “wheated” whiskey, and charged me a reasonable $7 or so for the favour. In 2005, I found myself in Kentucky at that very distillery, where the late then-master-distiller Dave Pickerell, of Whistle Pig and Blackened (and more) fame, offered me some new-make spirit. It was a revelation. It was the moment I figured out that whiskey broadly embodies everything I love to think about: science, art, culture, history, international commerce, the environment. Fast forward to today, when I think about all these things for a living.
Because of these moments, I will opt for a glass of Maker’s over Pappy 15 any day. There, I said it. There’s a lot of chatter at tasting events about how certain smells can evoke memories, but the discussion rarely goes beyond that to how it makes you feel. The overwhelming reply would be nostalgic.
Nostalgia has a moody, misty connotation. It’s the soul’s security blanket. But it also stirs feelings of loss, albeit loss swaddled in pleasure. It is a strange paradox: it’s soothing, and also a reminder of things we can never get back. But memories, for better and for worse, are self-validating. As Nabokov wrote in Speak, Memory, “One is always at home in one’s past.”
Trying to keep up with the newest launch is, frankly, exhausting. At this point, let’s be honest and say that without an AI-guided cataloguing system, and a vast storage space in your home, it’s a straight-up fool’s errand. Sipping on the whiskies that you had during critical moments in your life — the products that shaped your mind, not served as another notch in your belt of connoisseurship — are more satisfying than any prestige bottle.
