Recently I was trying to research a nice bottle of whiskey as a gift.
The more I look the more I have come to the conclusion there is absolutely no such thing as a good whiskey (or bourbon or scotch). There is only what a person likes.
It seems there are a thousand whiskeys and a thousand different tastes and 10,000 opinions on what is and is not good.
Are there any reliable metrics for this stuff? I do not want to spend $50-100 on a bottle that they won’t like just because they hate peaty whiskeys or love them peaty whiskeys but I guessed wrong.
I would say to first find out if they prefer bourbon or scotch or what have you. Knowing that much, a pricey-ish bottle of the preferred variety is going to be OK.
Back when I owned my distillery I was at a city fair selling my booze. Two girls came up to by booth ordered cocktails took a sip and immediately spit it back in the cup and demanded refunds. I refused but offered to either pour them another one or a different cocktail. They couldn’t stand the thought of drinking more of my product and stood there bad mouthing me and my booze for about a minute and then proceeded to the booth next door where they continued telling them how terrible my booze was and that I should be put in jail for selling it.
The very next people in line were also two women about the same age. They ordered the same thing and started raving about how wonderful my drinks were. They traded drinks and continued to rave about how this was the best thing they had ever had. Then they took off to go get their friends to try my booze and came back 3 or 4 times that night. I’ll never forget the look of shock on the face of the first two girls as they watched the second two.
All of that is to say that taste is almost completely random and two people who may be similar in most respects can taste and enjoy things completely different.
As I age (like a good scotch…) I realize that a good gift is better than a big surprise. So ask!
You could even say "Hey, I’m buying you a nice bottle of whisky… (and don’t try to talk me out of it). Where are you on the continuum of peaty scotch to smooth irish whisky to warm bourbon? Got any favorites?
Or even better, “What’s on your wish list?”
I had a friend (also my pastor) who, when I said I didn’t know much about scotches, turned to the other guys in our Men’s Group and said “Boys, we got us a nooooobie! My front yard, Friday night, fire pit… everybody bring their favorites, and we’ll see what digs likes.”
What I discovered: Peaty? Yuck. Smokey? Good. Smooth? Yum. Irish whisky (Redbreast) and Kentucky bourbon (Woodford).
Or, if your friend is also a nooooobie (my people!), take him to a bar and have the bartender pour shots of the best in each category.
No, that’s exactly wrong. That’s the whole point of the thread. There’s so much variety of options and variety of personal tastes that this simply doesn’t apply.
Better to ask them which brand they like, and then maybe find something similar enough to be palatable, but different enough to be worth exploring. Of course, this requires the giver to be very familiar with a wide variety themselves.
And honestly, price isn’t all that great an indicator. One of my favorites is the cheapest one I can buy around here. Bought it on a whim one time because I liked the name, turned out I liked the scotch, too.
I call that “the scotch for bourbon drinkers.” It’s smooth and warm, the opposite of a mossy Islay scotch. It’s wonderful, it’s thirty bucks (AS ARE MANY OF MY FAVES), you can even find it at Trader Joe’s… and I love gifting it, or bringing it to a poker night, because the bottle has monkeys on its shoulder!
Maybe look at it from a budget point of view? what’s your price point? I have spent an inordinate amount of covid time watching youtube video reviews of scotch and bourbon.
Seems pretty universal that the price performance trade off drops significantly at about $80 pre-tax.
~$50 seems to be about the minimum for a better class of drink.
~$20 has some “these are awesome for the price” like Old Tub or Evan Williams Bottled in Bond Bourbon
I’ve been drinking vodka lately. I like Belvedere, Stoli, Tito’s, Grey Goose, etc. I put the bottle in the freezer and pour myself a glass.
Out of curiosity I decided to explore the slightly lower priced vodkas, and found them totally acceptable.
On my most recent liquor store run, I looked at the lowest shelf of vodkas and deliberately chose the cheapest, Vladimir. Nice plastic 1.75 liter bottle and dirt cheap. Totally acceptable.
I never understood the appeal of expensive Vodka’s. By definition Vodka is “the peoples” alcohol, meaning cheap stuff that gets you hammered. I guess flavored makes a difference but is there actually “cleaner” stuff that doesn’t give you as bad of a hangover?
Basically, there are three classes of vodka: bad, good and overpriced. Bad vodka will give you a nasty hangover and might kill you. Overpriced vodka is good vodka in an expensive bottle. In short, don’t drink anything either cheaper or more expensive than Stoli/Absolut/Finlandia.
It should be. Making vodka is super-easy: buy the highest-proof straight alcohol you can get, add water. That’s it. If you add a fancy bottle, you have yourself a vodka brand. And many (most?) of the available vodkas do exactly that (a few distill themselves, but since everything but straight alcohol is meant to be gone what does it matter?)
Whiskey is different. It takes months to years to make a whiskey, and wood, location, temperature, mash bill, etc. all contribute to the final product. The cheapest versions are unlikely to be the best (harsh tasting), but the best are almost certainly not the most expensive.
True, and it would be something they likely wouldn’t ever have bought for themselves, yet might find interesting anyway. Which is a great gift, in my book. I’ve never bought—or tried, that I can remember—something like Knappouge Castle’s 12 year old whiskey (Huh, the Irish use the ‘e’ version of the word), but I’d be quite happy receiving one as a gift.
If you really wanted to give them a bottle of Scotch, be very careful that you know their tastes. I like nearly all of them, but many Scotch fans detest most Islays, and many smoke heads find bog-standard Highlands like The Glenlivet to be kind of dull.
I was thinking of posting a poll: Maker’s Mark, or Knob Creek? But rather than start a new thread, I’ll just post here.
I don’t drink a lot of bourbon, and sauce is expensive up here with all of the taxes; so when I drink bourbon, it’s usually Maker’s Mark. I’ve had Knob Creek, but I don’t want to spend the money on two bottles of bourbon for a side-by-side comparison. Of the two choices (and only two), which do you think is better, and why?
As someone who drinks a variety of Scotch, I would agree. If you know they like Scotch, but don’t know what kind, then get them something else. People who like single malts may turn their noses up at blends, while those who like blends may find some single malts undrinkable. I’ll drink a milder single malt like Glenfiddich or sometimes a blend as a regular thing, but may have a Laprhoaig (which basically tastes like a fire in a boot factory) on occasion.
In general, I think that Scotch has a much wider range of tastes than bourbon or other whiskeys. The latter may vary in harshness based on price, but not so much in taste compared to Scotches.
My taste in scotch has broadened over the years, and I’m now at the point where I sometimes enjoy Laphroaig with a spash of water; when I was younger, I’d describe Laphroaig as tasting like bong water.
I’m staring at a liquor closet wall of various Ardbegs and Lagavulins now. It’s definitely an…acquired taste.
Got into Scotch via my ex-Father in law, who loved him some Glenmorangie, and Oban when he felt adventurous. “Hey, Pops! Try this new one we think is interesting!”
I can’t remember whether it was Bowmore 10 or 12, or Laphroaig 10, but he definitely, Did. Not. Like. It. At all. Rarely have I seen someone scrinch up their face so much when tasting something.
Part of the issue is that some of the categories are so broad as to be meaningless. Take “Scotch Whisky” for example. That covers anything from a very peaty Islay single-malt, to a Scotch grain whisky, to a blended whisky that has a little bit of everything, without really tasting particularly like either. Same thing for rum, but on an even more wide scale- you have variations in raw material (molasses v. cane juice), aging, distillation procedures, etc… that vary across wherever rum is distilled. And things like gin are also pretty broad, with the large variations in botanicals and the proportions of the botanicals. Something like Hendricks Gin is very different than New Amsterdam, which is also very different than Beefeater.
Bourbon is more similar, because there are remarkably strict laws about its production, but even there, there’s at least one big divide- wheat vs. rye. At least 51% of a bourbon’s mash bill has to be corn, but in practice it’s more like 65-70%. So that remaining 30-35% is generally 5-10% barley malt, and the balance is usually wheat or rye. An example of a bourbon that uses wheat is Maker’s Mark, and Knob Creek uses rye. Wheat ends up being pretty neutral, while rye imparts a distinct “spicy” character to the resulting bourbon.
Ultimately, it’s all down to what someone personally likes. Some people like rye (I do), and others like the less complex flavor (some call it “smoother”) flavor of wheat. Or some like Demerara rums, while others like Barbados style rums like Mt. Gay.
It’s not even true that cheaper products are necessarily rougher- plenty of inexpensive rums and bourbons are actually well made products, if maybe not aged as long, or marketed as hard as more expensive variants.
My taste in scotch has broadened over the years, and I’m now at the point where I sometimes enjoy Laphroaig with a spash of water; when I was younger, I’d describe Laphroaig as tasting like bong water.