What is whiskey to you?

I agree whisk(e)y is an art-form, a history of a region, the pain-staking process to perfect and then age, it is a pure representative of the individual region and culture with which it had came from. More than just a drink.

@ewhiskey oh what a thread to allow me to wax on poetically about this dear spirit. Each and every dram holds a unique personality, a unique story, a unique history. Each one has something new to tell me. Each dram has the ability to take me to an entirely different place than the last; each dram brings with it a new emotion, a new sensation, the recollection of a distant memory or the image of a moment conjured far away from where I stand today.

When I consider ordering a whisky somewhere, it excites me to imagine where that dram may take me. Is this going to take me on a quiet stroll through a creek brook somewhere, or on a sprinting gallop down a coastal trail? Will this dram remind me of a fond memory, say of my grandfather, or will it lead my imagination to the shores of Islay, a place I have never been?

How amazing this spirit, to be able to conjure not only a flavor, but a journey, with each and every sip. It's for those reasons, those deep and heart-felt connections and memories and emotions, that I love this spirit. I love this spirit for the way it makes me feel, not just the way it tastes.

"Uisge Beatha," the water of life... how fitting that title is for a spirit that shows me all corners of the globe, all realms of the world, all aspects of my life, all of which lie embodied within a couple ounces of liquid in a Glencairn Glass. Imagine that.

Uisge Beatha, the water of life, for me it's just that. Whisky is a moment of time that captures a tiny slice of life, a slice of life that encompasses who I'm with, where I'm at and everything that is going on during that slice of life. And that tiny moment, that slice of life is something that I can draw upon for the rest of my life.

Whisky has the ability, as has already been stated in this thread, to take you to new worlds, to a different part of the world, to a different time. It's one of the reasons that for me I try and hunt Silent Distillery bottlings. To be able to try a whisky that is 30 or more years old is a thing where you have to sit there and give such respect and just feel a little bit of awe as you can taste how different the whiskies can be from whiskies being distilled today.

Whisky is such an awesome thing, something that transcends race, gender, religion, country, language. All you need is a good dram and someone to enjoy that dram with. When I'm in the area, whatever area, if there is a Connosr member there, I want to meet up! To try whiskies that I'd never tried before, and create new memories with new friends.

Whisky is all of this and more, it's a hobby, a passion and a way of life.

Whisky is many things, and I'm not sure it can be distilled to a single thought.

It is memory; it is an embodiment of the place from which it was born (the water, the people, the land).

It is an art form (and people differ as much on their opinion of art as they do on whisky); it can be a moment of self-reflection and meditation.

It can be friends and family or it can be a shared experience with people you've never met.

It is everything and it is nothing; it can consume you or you can find balance with it; it is ever evolving, ever changing, never fully understood, complex and layered in ways that are still being discovered.

Whisky is Zen.

Ive been sitting quite a few minutes here now and Im still trying to find words but there´s no such word that would describe the feeling when I enjoy a wonderful dram. Whisky kinda takes me out of this life and puts me to the place where my heart is. Its like magic.

@ewhiskey What a great and intrinsically thoughtful question. I don't mean to personify whisky in any way, but it's similar to asking what is so wonderful about your spouse or what makes you love your family; there are a million reasons and they all combine to lead to the singular point that you, simply put, just love them.

It's like the sea...ever changing, evolving and taking you places...have a nice journey people!

A wonderful world of taste and shares,a great way to travel around the world without moving!

@feeinglis91 I'm a lurker but of course a whisk(e)y drinker. Your post inspired me to speak up for the first time (for better or for worse).

First, maybe if you said more about your project, people would be more inclined to be involved in the survey. In what discipline are you working and what is the goal of your research? Your formulation in this post is to my mind problematic if you are only setting out, as you write, to " to prove people right - that yes you can feel love towards a Whisky brand!" This, to me, sounds like something that a market researcher should be asking.

The fact that you are setting out to "prove" a point that you already assume to be "right" also seems kind of fuzzy to me and not at all scientific. (This is coming form a Humanities person, by the way, so I have no investment in hard science. I'm talking about a minimum of academic rigor.)

And why do you refer to "love' for the brand rather than "love" for the whisky? Is this a project about branding? If so, what you'll discover, I'm pretty sure, is that whisk(e)y drinkers are willing to abandon certain brands when the whisk(e)y no longer holds up.

If you look carefully through the reviews on this site, you will find discussions about whisk(e)y production described in painstaking detail: who distilled what for how long, with what mash bill, what yeast, etc. And in the context of American whiskey, the question of what "brand" one is drinking seems to be even less important.

Why not make a separate post, explaining what your project is about, including as much possible information about your methodology--and perhaps telling us a bit about your research goals. I think that this transparency would attract more people to your survey than these interventions on totally random topics: I've now seen two.

p.s. From a grammatical perspective, your reference to a "dissertation on Whisky brand's " does not instill much confidence.

Just to relate this response to the original question: whiskey/whisky is irreducible to branding, as nice as some of the bottles may be. This is why independent bottlings are becoming increasingly attractive to me, even if they are a tad more expensive...

@Jonathan My friend thank you for summing up my thoughts far better then I could. I can only say I agree so many times without sounding more like an idiot then I am, but thank you.

@Jonathan Well said. I almost posted a reply similar to yours but stopped myself. Now that you've broken the ice I'll say that I agree with you. I have taken several graduate courses in applied statistics, and I have to say that I winced and shuddered at reading the post by @feeinglis91. Talk about a BIASED survey! This goes against THE foundational principle of statistics if you actually want to show a statistically significant result!

@valuewhisky @Jonathan - I actually went and looked at the survey, but did not complete it - the questions themselves were strange and really had nothing to do with connosr, as they seem to expect that you are approaching the survey as a person that has already developed loyalty to one specific brand of whisky...while I've never taken stats, I have done graduate work and taken several research methodology courses, and while self-selection is acceptable in some areas, the self-selection bias must be acknowledged and cannot be your only source of data.

BTW - here is the text from the start of the survey:

"Examining how involvement in Online Communities can impact customer engagement and feelings of Love towards a brand operating in the Whisky industry

You are invited to take part in a short questionnaire that will contribute to a dissertation study for the University of Glasgow. It will take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete.

Please answer the following questions in relation to the Whisky brand website you were directed from to participate in this questionnaire.

This dissertation is titled "Examining how involvement in Online Communities can impact customer engagement and feelings of Love towards a brand operating in the Whisky industry" and is for the College of Social Sciences, Adam Smith Business School (www.gla.ac.uk/schools/business/).

The research is following the University of Glasgow Code of Ethics and it is fully approved by the Ethics Committee of the University. You are free to withdraw from the study at any point in time. By completing this questionnaire you demonstrate your consent for your participation in this study.

Researcher Name: Fiona Inglis Advisor Name: Dr. Cleopatra Veloutsou, Senior Lecturer of Marketing"

This is about the 3rd one of these requests for assistance in someones "dissertation study". There was a similar one a few months ago. My hunch is that these are people being paid by a marketing or polling company to gather information for a commercial client. They are probably paid on a piece work basis. It sounds bogus and should probably be ignored. @Jonathan summed it up nicely.

*back to the topic This pretty much sums it up

youtu.be/lTHKwoM9_Mc

@YakLord I did the same thing as you.

@NilsG That's hilarious and I agree.

@NilsG Love the clip! It's absolutely hilarious and makes me wanna go hunt that movie down just to watch. Their facial expressions completely mirrored what mind would be like!

@SquidgyAsh The movie is "Whisky Galore". An entire movie dedicated to the love (or maybe rather addiction in this case). Well worth watching!

Here's the link to the full movie.

youtu.be/_DjNPqFSwRo

Enjoy!

Thanks buddy! I'll have to give it a watch!

There is another one of these "help a student" surveys over on Whisky Magazine's forums. This one is for a person called "Post Grad" and he/she has a survey about Jameson's in order to determine how it affects Ireland's economic recovery. How often do you buy Jameson's? How do you like Jameson's? etc. etc.

I'm still not buying the legitimacy of these "theses" @feeinglis91. It still looks like bullshit to me.

I started this discussion because I wanted to share my appreciation for whiskey, and hear about everyone else's as well. The thread transitioned into a competition about if someone is being honest about a survey or not. The answer to that will not affect me or anybody else unless you involve yourself. Either fill out the survey, or don't. But don't loose sleep over it. I would appreciate though if that discussion is to be continued, that it is created as a new thread and we can return this one back to it's original question. What is whiskey to you? Thank you.

Point taken @ewhiskey. Consider it put to bed.

@ewhiskey This phenomenon will happen on 90% of all discussions, just get used to it. That's the beauty of connosr; you ask for cookie, but the doors to the whole bakery will swing open.

Completely agree with @NilsG here. This is one of the great things about connosr! The open and free discussion is perhaps the most appealing aspects of this site.

Fair enough, I will have to get used to it. I will at least ask to please not forget the original question. I would still like to hear people's thoughts. With that said, speak your mind! I definitely do not want to dictate what people should say or not say.

Cheers!

@ewhiskey I'm new to whisky so to me it represents an interesting discovery of flavours that I've never experienced before. So I guess it represents adventure. Finding new flavours is very cool.

@ewhiskey Back to the original question.....

Now, I do not write as well as most you and I am typing this on an iPod while holding a cigar....so I hope this makes sense. I am not a religous person, nor a student of science. A few months back, I was enjoying a few bourbons with friends. I was trying to explain how amazing it is that the wooden cask could flavor the spirit with hints of vanilla, cinnamon, dried fruits, green herbs, butter, etc. On the religious side, my grand-mother told me that God put everything on the Earth that man needs. On the scientific side, many things share a common make up of elements (even things in space). Is there a connection between something in the wood of a charred bourbon barrel and vanilla bean? When a whisky smells like herbs or grass, what do the two share on the molecular level? I find whisky fascinating!!!! I don't think I will every have it figured out. Honestly, I don't ever want to know the answer to these questions....that would only take the fun out of it.

Whisky for me is about two things: one - memory, like that song that comes on the radio and reminds you of high school; two - the land, where the whisky is made or where it reminds you of.

Several years back I had my first introduction to peated scotch whisky. I'd only been drinking scotch for a while and didn't understand much about it yet, only that I liked it. Instead of working my up to a peat monster I dove right in.

It was winter and around this time a certain person (who I wasn't familiar with yet) was raving about Ardbeg Uigeadail and naming it his top whisky. I thought, what the heck, and purchased a bottle. My original intention was to share it with a few friends at the office, where we have the luxury of sometimes partaking after work on Friday. No one was interested in the bottle, preferring to drink a new wine someone had brought in. No problem. I brought it home for myself.

I opened the bottle, poured myself a dram, took a whiff and immediately burned out my nostrils (oops, cask strength). After adding some water I sat down with my new pour to figure out what the raving was all about. Having never had a peated whisky, I found myself transfixed.

I'm originally from the state of Colorado here in the U.S. of A. I grew up hiking and camping in the Rocky Mountains with the family, visiting old mines, driving the mountain roads of Durango, attending summer camp in the forest, even skiing in Vail (not that I can actually ski). Something about the smell of morning dew in the woods, mixed with the last embers of the previous night's bonfire and the smell of moss in the cool, fresh mountian air sticks with you, even after you have to leave the state to pursue other endeavors. Sitting in my house with my nose in a glass of Ardbeg, I was immediately transported to my childhood, to the purity of nature as it exists in my romanticized view of Colorado and my upbringing. I must have sat there for a good fifteen minutes without taking a drink, just nosing the liquid, before I realized what was happening. Then, of course, I took a drink, and my journey was complete. It's possible that whichever peated single-malt whisky I started with would have had a similar effect, but now Ardbeg has a special place in my cabinet.

Not all whisky drinking is this kind of experience, but the idea is always there for me. And that's what whisky is to me.

The summer after I conquered Ardbeg, I took my young son camping for the first time. Yeah...it was awesome.