Different Time, Different Whisky

There are many things that can affect your palate and your overall experience. Whatever you have eaten/drank throughout the day will definitely affect your palate. Also, your general mood/disposition, company, atmosphere, temperature, etc etc will affect your enjoyment of said drinking experience. As with everything in life, it's all vastly interdependent.

Also, different release years and/or batches/barrels will have slight variances as well.

@Phil73805 The first pour out of a bottle can be quite different from what will follow. The higher notes of the whisky are more present for the better or the worst. Sometime it is just different, sometime you are left with alot less and sometime when the higher notes recessed they are revealing alot more that you didn't even thought was there. I opened a Tobermory 10 yo last week and was very disappointed by it and a week later the smoke is bigger and I have black currant not unlike the Highland Park 15 yo from 3 years ago. It is a huge come back. That is just an example. Now about tasting, I read about it. One of the first lesson I learned in my reading was that you may be able to detect some flavors a 100 times better than your neighbor while for other flavors it will be the opposite. So it is totally normal that you don't recognise some whiskies in some reviews. You just need to find the reviewer that describe a known product just like you would described it. And I totaly agree with KRB80. Sometime my taste buds are simply not there.

Thank you all for sharing your perspectives, it has certainly helped me understand thing better. However, I neglected to mention one other factor that, as it turns out, is crucial. I had a cold and thought I was over it...much like the gentleman in this article wordsofwhisky.com/happens-taste-whisky-cold…

I am feeling like a bit of a muppet but I am glad I mentioned it because I learned a lot from both of you. Thanks again.

@Phil73805 Your palate will change as well, without your direct knowledge. This summer I had a whisky newbie friend over for a tasting. He had been at a store looking at scotches and a fellow recommended Talisker 10 yr to him as a starter scotch! He could barely drink it. He brought it with him and we swapped. I gave him a bottle of Macallan 12yr. Eight months later he was back and tried the Talisker again. He had no hope he would like it at all, but really liked it a lot. He didn't realize how much his palate had expanded.

But I suspect it was having a cold that did it for you as you say.

I've made the same mistake as you, thinking I was through with a nasty cold and having a dram, but ultimately finding it completely void of taste or in the very best case, being extremely one sided.

If there is one thing that I've learned to avoid before sampling whisky, it's coffee. For me, drinking coffee too close to a tasting session can really ruin my perception of flavours and aromas. I end up getting that 'yep, this is whisky' sensation you mention. Now I try to put at least one hour (or maybe two) between my last cup of coffee and my dram.

I agree with the other posters on their comments as well. Some days I don't 'feel' my whisky at all.

I've said it before - but a small cup of (weak!) green tea will clean that palate nicely and double your enjoyment of a good dram... even when you have a cold.

Of course you won't detect ALL the subtleties quite as well with a cold, but the medicinal value of a strong dram has long been praised by malt drinkers :-D

Thank you all again. The cold is dead and with it's timely demise my sense of taste and smell have returned. Much to my delight. And to celebrate I wrote a review of the Balvenie Doublewood 12 which has been restored to its former glory.

Hi there. @Phil73805. One more that could alter your tasting notes is your mood at the specific time of tasting. Try making a review when you "really feel like it". Another thing could be climate change. Try the same whisky under different circumstances and you'll see how the taste will change.

It's been mentioned before, but what you've eaten/drank beforehand makes an incredible difference, for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes your tastebuds might be coated with things which affect the interation of the whisky, or there still be an aroma of something strong which overwhelms or intermixes with the whisky's aromatics (which is why it's a good idea to avoid food pairings which have garlic in them).

There can be temperature differences which can affect the volatility/evaporation of alcohol once it gets into your system, or remnants of food/drink can mix and alter the viscosity of the whisky... all of which will make for quite a different experience.

And then there's things which actually affect how your taste/smell system behave, like Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets (www.thinkgeek.com/product/ab3f/) for a slightly more extreme example.

So, yeah, loads to think about really!

Rather than start another discussion I thought I'd raise a similar concern on this thread. I can't taste the sweet notes in any of my whisky! Even the HP12 which is consistently sweet is just smokey now. It was just Passover so I used the Wine preserver spray to keep my open whiskies from oxidising. I'm starting to wonder whether this gas changes the taste of the whisky. Does anyone have any experience with the Wine Preserver? Since my malt journey began I am struggling with consistency in taste. I dabbled with Port over Passover which I loved, for its consistency as well as its taste. It's strange that a whisky never seems to taste the same from one tasting to the other.

@Phil73805, I use Private Preserve wine preserver quite a lot. The only whisky I seriously thought might have had its taste affected by it was The Laddie Ten. I really haven't noticed change in anything else.

The upshot? I still use the gas frequently, but, now that I have obtained a supply of small bottles, I rely the most strongly on decanting into smaller bottles with very small air spaces. When I open another bottle of The Laddie Ten I will decant it within the first week and avoid the inert gas.