Andrew started a discussion
14 years ago
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Scotch, scotch or not
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JohnMcWindows replied
Andrew,
I would have preferred Art, art or Scotch myself as well. If we dare digging in the stories behind and inside the bottles (a wonderfull internet experience/hobby by the way) we all may end up pretty surprised in the end...
Sticking with a label, whether it'd be the one on the bottle or the country of origin is showing no respect for a personal meaning of somebody else. Please let's not degrade what whisky is all about. Whisky is an experience. It changes with my moods, it changes with the weather. When I am facing my cabinet, I like to 'play' with my bottles. I start shuffling them around just to give everyone of them a fair chance to compete with my favorites.
Life's too short not to taste them all. Most unfortunately I'm not the kind of guy who drinks whisky every day so it takes a while before I can move to yet another experience. I think if I would do so, it would be the end of an important part of my 'Carpe Diem'.
Even though, most of the time I close my day with that kind of ritual...
14 years ago 0
markjedi1 replied
I'm a bit surprised by this thread and how you approach it, interesting as it might be, but we are all entitled to our opinions to be sure! To me, it's ALL whisky (or whiskey - bar the bourbons, of course). 'Scotch is whisky distilled, matured and bottled in Scotland'. Yeah, so. OK. I'm totally fine with that. So what if it's a politcal decision to 'protect' this product. I also think it protects the consumers (albeit a lot less than the producers, ok, I'm not stupid). It's the same thing with 'champagne' and 'cava' or even 'french fries' (which should be Belgian fries, by the way ;-)). Having said that, you'll hardly ever catch me using the word Scotch. I'll mostly describe whisky as... whisky or dram. I'm not bothered in the least and do not feel the need to philosophise about it all that much as long as it keeps tasting good! Slàinte!
14 years ago 0
The "World Whisky" thread had me thinking again about what we call Scotch and what we don't and why. I understand that there is a value to a brand and that the Scotch Whisky Association wants to protect that brand but has it become too politically correct? Why do we feel that we need to follow along and use the imprecise (if not downright mealy-mouthed) term “World Whisky” to describe the products of other nations ?
I guess what I mean by this is; For you is "Scotch" a simple geographic term or is it a term of art describing a process and its product?
Personally I am 100% in the “Term Of Art” category and have no difficulty describing Nikka as a Scotch, or more correctly as Japanese Scotch. To me the important elements that define Scotch are malted barley as raw material and pot stills for production and no “e” in whisky (to differentiate from the Irish pot still whiskeys).
The SWA clearly disagrees but they would also apparently have us refer to the Scottish grain whiskies, often single grain but not always, made with un-malted barley, wheat, rye and apparently even rice and produced in a Coffey still as a type of Scotch.
Are these grain whiskies more or less Scotch than Nikka, Suntory, Amrut, Glenora et al?