Stranahan’s Names National Distributor.

In a significant development for the fledgling micro-distillery movement, Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey has appointed a national distributor, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), effective August 1.

RNDC is the second largest distributor of premium wine and spirits in the United States, with operations in nineteen states. Partnering with RNDC to handle distribution in these territories will enable Stranahan’s to refocus its efforts on increasing production of its straight Rocky Mountain whiskey.

Stranahan’s recently moved to a larger facility and increased production from six to eighteen barrels per week.

Stranahan's showed that it deserved attention from a legitimate powerhouse distributor by achieving distribution in 35 states and four foreign counties on its own.

RNDC operates in Arizona, Alabama, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey retails for about $55 a bottle.

Richard Paterson Teaches Us a Trick.

Richard Paterson is Master Blender at Whyte & Mackay, makers of The Dalmore Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky.

I had lunch with Paterson yesterday, along with his PR handlers and several other journalists. We ate, drank scotch, and listened to Paterson’s presentation about the company’s flagship single malt brand, The Dalmore, which has new owners, a new U.S. importer, and is being re-launched.

Paterson is one of Scotland’s best-known noses, but the highlight of his presentation yesterday was a parlor trick.

That may sound snide. I don’t mean it to. I’ve seen a million of these presentations, they’re all about the same, and this was a particularly good parlor trick executed by a master showman.

Paterson took a water glass that was about two-thirds full of plain water. Then he took a clean, white handkerchief, unfolded it, and draped it over the glass. Using his finger he made a well in the center and slowly poured in a few ounces of whiskey. Then he carefully removed the handkerchief and, voila, the whiskey was floating on top of the water, with a distinct line between them.

He even rocked the glass back and forth a few times, and the whiskey and water didn’t mix.

The trick isn’t hard to do, Paterson explained. The key is to make sure the handkerchief touches the water when you create the well and remains in contact with it as you carefully pour in the whiskey.

Oh yeah, The Dalmore. It’s good stuff. The familiar 12-year-old expression is still the flagship. It is an affordable and not-too-challenging entry into the world of premium single malts. But the new regime (The Dalmore used to be a Beam product) has broadened the line to include additional 15-, 30-, 40- and 50-year-old expressions (pricey), plus two NAS labels, called Gran Reserva and King Alexander III.

You can find out more about them here.

The Accidental Hedonist Gets Whiskey Right.

I have been tardy in reviewing this excellent book, which I expected to hate but enjoyed immensely.

Kate Hopkins, AKA "The Accidental Hedonist," takes a familiar approach. She decides to learn about whiskey by writing a book about it. She and a companion visit distilleries in Ireland, Scotland, Canada and the U.S. and the book is largely an account of their travels.

Unlike most writers who have tried something similar, Hopkins is not just a good reporter, she is a good thinker. She doesn't just parrot what she's told (a hazard, since producers will feed you a lot of hooey), she thinks about it and inquires further. In the end, she gets almost everything right.

There is so much hype surrounding beverage alcohol products that a writer’s best tool may be his or her BS detector. Hopkins has a good one, but she never lets debunking make her cranky. She is open-minded without being a sucker.

Hopkins is a very good writer. She has fun on the trip and the reader does too. 99 Drams is an unexpected and fresh take on whiskey. I highly recommend it.

I Am Michael Jackson's Successor.

In his blog recently, John Hansell asked the question, “Who will be Michael Jackson’s successor?”

I admire Hansell for asking that question in a public forum because anyone who writes about whiskey, as he does, can be suspected of harboring that ambition. Yet it is a natural question and one people have been asking privately for months.

For those who don’t know, John Hansell publishes and contributes to Malt Advocate Magazine, a publication for whiskey enthusiasts, to which I also contribute. Michael Jackson was a pioneering writer who also contributed to Malt Advocate until his 2007 death.

Mr. Hansell, in answer to your question, I am Michael Jackson’s successor.

Let me quickly add that I do not claim that mantle exclusively. I think you are one of Jackson’s successors too. I can name at least a dozen others. Michael Jackson has many successors.

I did not know Michael Jackson except through his work. To me, he was a guy who tried to learn as much as he could about subjects that interested him, then shared what he learned through the art of prose. I can relate. That he inspired me and others to follow his path is a key part of his legacy.

I do not know how Jackson felt about the title “beer and whiskey writer.” I’ve never liked it. That most of what he wrote touched in some way on beer or whiskey is undeniable, but that was just a way to tell a story about a place, a company, or a person, perhaps an artisan. He wrote about history and culture, passion and ambition, creativity and serendipity, not just beer and whiskey.

But as a writer who happened to write about drinks, he taught us more than anyone else has about how to approach that subject. I admire him for that. Also for his breadth of curiosity, his intelligence, his honesty, his modesty, and his wit. I like that he never hid his idiosyncrasies, or his insecurities. He wrote in a style that appealed to him. He never tried to dumb it down or tart it up.

Because Michael Jackson inspired so many people to share what they've learned about beer and whiskey, he can never have a sole successor. That is part of his legacy too.

No one will ever replace Michael Jackson. We don’t need a replacement since we still have the original. I hope people will continue to read him for a long time. For instance, I would love to see someone publish a collection of the columns he wrote for Malt Advocate and other periodicals.

As for me, I will continue to do my best to put one word in front of the other without stumbling over them and landing on my face. I do not measure myself against Michael Jackson, I wouldn’t dare. That’s not what being one of his successors is about. It is about never forgetting where you came from or who got you to where you are. For me, and I know many others, Michael Jackson was the first person who made writing about drinks seem like a good idea. Maybe someday, someone will say something similar about me. That would be nice.

What is Indian Whiskey?

The United States consumes a lot of whiskey. Know what country consumes more? If you said, “India,” you would be both right and wrong.

Probably you have heard about the booming Indian economy. Even in the current malaise, India is booming and creating unprecedented economic growth. That’s thirsty work. India has a domestic distilled spirits industry but her vast consumer markets are being eyed eagerly by the big international drinks companies like Diageo and Pernod Ricard too.

Whiskey is very popular there. Unfortunately, most of what they call whiskey is not the same as what we call whiskey.

Although a few snobs believe that only a distillate made from 100 percent malted barley should be called whiskey, most Americans and Europeans agree that whiskey is any spirit made from grain, distilled at a relatively low proof, and aged in wood. India prefers a more expansive definition. They recognize our kind of whiskey but they call un-aged spirits made mostly or entirely from sugarcane whiskey too.

Not only do they call it whiskey, they color and flavor it so it resembles scotch, which was introduced to India during the British colonial period. Many brands have Scottish-sounding names and use Scottish imagery in their packaging.

India has made distilled spirits from sugarcane for centuries, since even before the Raj.

Neither the European Union (EU) nor the United States will permit non-grain whiskey to be imported into our markets and sold here as whiskey. This is only a problem because it is getting in the way of our desire to sell our whiskey to them. EU regulations have become very influential internationally and other countries have adopted them too, creating a de facto world standard, with India on the wrong side of it.

In 2007, India’s UB Spirits Company bought Scotland’s Whyte & Mackay for $1.5 billion. The sale included 115 million liters (30.4 million gallons) of aging scotch whiskey. The Whyte & Mackay line was launched in India early this year and already has a 13 percent market share, according to the new CEO.

Not all domestic Indian ‘whiskey’ needs finger quotes. Amrut is made from malted barley grown in Punjab and Rajasthan. It is a two-million case brand, big by anybody’s standards. It is available in the United Kingdom, but I haven’t seen it here.

Why Spelling Matters.

We keep saying the spelling of whiskey doesn't matter, yet we keep writing about it at great length. So does it matter or not?

How one spells whiskey doesn't matter because that's all it is, a spelling difference. It is one word that may be spelled (or spelt, if you're British) in either of two different ways. The way one spells it tends to depend on where one lives. In good writing, about the only rule is pick a spelling and stick with it.

This is all very normal, as there are dozens of English words with more than one acceptable spelling, and that is how writers and editors handle it. As there tend to be American and British spellings (the British spellings being generally followed in all English-speaking countries except the USA), it's also good form to pick one or the other spelling family and stay consistently within it.

Therefore, if one uses color, maneuver and center, one should also use whiskey.

The problem is caused by people who refuse to follow logic and instead advocate a silly, awkward, inconsistently-applied, imaginary rule that says how you spell whiskey depends on the whiskey's country of origin, and when you are talking about all whiskey or whiskey generally, you have to use some really stupid and awkward formulation such as "whiskey and whisky" or the dreaded "whisk(e)y." You also have to violate the consistency rule by switching between spellings if your discussion spans several types.

Then you have the problem of a handful of American producers who label their products "whisky."

The reason all this matters is because the country-of-origin spelling rule leads people, a lot of people, to believe that the two spellings are actually two different words with different meanings. Then those people dream up all sorts of imaginary reasons for the split. They repeat imaginary tales about frugal Scots omitting the "e" to save ink.

Then it gets pernicious.

People falsely link the spelling to the type of still used, usually defaming American whiskey in the process. They imagine non-existent international laws designed to protect the integrity of the one true "whisky," as if the absence or presence of a solitary "e" is such a powerful thing.

Their reasoning is logical if a trifle obsessive. If there is such a rule, they figure, there has to be a reason for it, so they try to intuit what that reason might be.

It matters because it perpetuates the myth that single malt scotch isn't just a type of whiskey but is the only true whiskey, and must therefore be spelled "whisky." They actually believe that all lesser whiskeys are required to bear the "e" as a mark of Cain.

The Scotch Whisky Association (notice how I respect the chosen spelling of proper names) doesn't exactly say this, but they do contribute to the problem by insisting that their product always be spelled "whisky."

The question of bourbon whiskey versus Tennessee whiskey is related, but different. The awkwardness there is that a product must meet certain legal requirements to be called "bourbon whiskey" while the law is essentially silent as to the meaning of the term Tennessee whiskey. The producers of Tennessee whiskey (there are only two) define it as bourbon that goes through an additional step of charcoal filtering before aging. Many people mistakenly believe that this step disqualifies the product from being called bourbon. That question has never been reached and I, personally, consider the proposition dubious. The fact is that the producers of Tennessee whiskey simply prefer that term, as they think it makes their product distinctive.

There are now in place international treaties that prevent the importation into the United States of any foreign-made product purporting to be either bourbon whiskey or Tennessee whiskey. Could someone make Tennessee whiskey in Colorado? They could try, but I suspect the owners of Jack Daniel's and George Dickel would raise a mighty stink. They would argue that Tennessee whiskey describes both a style of whiskey and a place of origin. Presumably, if another producer wanted to open a distillery in Tennessee to make whiskey the same way Jack and George do, that would be okay.

As with the spelling of "whiskey," the problem here is that people imagine all sorts of reasons why Daniel's and Dickel cannot be called bourbon, all of which are false. If you tick off the rules for bourbon or, for that matter, straight bourbon, the Dickel and Daniel's products meet every single one.

That leaves another little issue. Why do I always spell Tennessee with a capital "T" but generally spell bourbon with a lower case "b"? Aren't they both place names? The best way I can explain it is that "Tennessee whiskey" still uses Tennessee as a place of origin while "bourbon whiskey" does not, as bourbon whiskey is not made in Bourbon County. Although the term has its root in a place name, it no longer is used as a place name when describing whiskey. A good way to think of it is that while "whiskey" and "whisky" are one word with two spellings, "Bourbon" and "bourbon" are two different words that happen to be spelled the same way, with one being a place name and the other not.

If you think this is a lot to write (and read) about something that isn't important, then don't read it, and certainly don't waste everybody's time by writing about how it's not important. This is one of those subjects about which a lot of nonsense is written. The true facts need to be on the record, and now they are.

WhiskeyFest Chicago Is Cutting Back.

In addition to reducing ticket prices, John Hansell has just announced that WhiskeyFest Chicago is being scaled back.

Although he doesn't say by how much, they are "cutting back slightly on the number of tickets we sell." Putting the best possible face on the situation, which is obviously being driven by the recession, he says this will create a "more intimate" experience.

True enough. I remember when it began and was smaller. For me, the biggest inconvenience in recent years has been that most of the seminar rooms fill up fast and if you come in late, you probably won't get a seat, let alone a taste of whatever they are sampling. At the peak of the evening, even the tasting hall can get shoulder-to-shoulder.

The bad economy may also reduce the number of scene-makers in favor of real whiskey enthusiasts, but that may be wishful thinking on my part. Although Hansell's announcement doesn't mention this, the number of tickets they make available is related to their contract with the venue, things like how much food they buy, maybe even how much of the available ballroom space they use, how much hotel staff they need, things like that. So it is a real number. If sales turn out to be stronger than expected, they can't just add tickets at the last minute. There comes a point, and this may well be that point, when they have to commit and take their chances.

So, are you planning to attend? I'll be there.

Malt Advocate Annouces Lower Ticket Prices for WhiskeyFest Chicago.

The good folks at Malt Advocate realize that today every dollar counts, but they still want you to come to WhiskyFest Chicago and enjoy yourself, and they also don't want you to miss a single issue of Malt Advocate.

So, they have decided to reduce the WhiskyFest Chicago regular admission ticket price to $95 (a $20 savings) and include a complimentary one-year subscription to Malt Advocate for anyone buying a ticket (an $18 value).

Go here to order tickets.

WhiskeyFest Chicago is on Wednesday, April 1, at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Chicago, from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM. I know that seems like a long time from now, but it always sells out, so don't wait too long.

If you already bought your ticket at the old, higher price, they'll give you a refund on the difference.

If you've never been, here's the drill. With your admission, you get a glass. The hall is full of booths from different whiskey producers: Scottish, Irish, American, Canadian, and Japanese. You go from booth to booth and taste the whiskeys. The list of participating whiskeys is here.

If you want to, you can also go to presentations by various speakers. That list is here.

There is also food, pretty good food and plenty of it, definitely enough to qualify as dinner.

Like most things that cover the whiskey waterfront, WhiskeyFest Chicago is scotch-heavy, but there is so much to taste that you can limit yourself to American whiskey and still have plenty to do for the event's entire three-hour duration.

A Meditation on the Boilermaker.

Some friends were discussing the custom of ordering whiskey or some other spirit with a "beer back," and that got us talking about that and the related bar calls, like "shot and a beer" and "boilermaker." (Not to be confused with the Purdue University campus icon.)

Shot and a beer is traditionally the working man's drink, in part due to economics. It would have been considered a trade-up from just drinking beer. It also ties in with the idea of session drinking, which is something people talk about in Great Britain more than here. Session just means you are going into an evening of drinking with a modicum of a plan, based on how much you can afford to spend, what you like, and perhaps also a calculation of how drunk you dare get and when you want that state to be achieved. The shots can be any spirit, and often among some of my younger friends it is tequila, vodka, rum or Jagermeister rather than whiskey.

"Shot and a beer" as a bar call also means you're asking for well whiskey and the house's cheapest draft beer. The "beer back" call usually follows a specific spirit call, but the orderer is still indifferent about the beer. If you are calling the beer too, you usually don't use the "beer back" terminology, you just place the two orders.

I haven't heard the boilermaker ordered as such very often. Although Wikipedia disagrees, I would say the term "boilermaker" means the spirit will be whiskey. Here again, we're talking well whiskey and draft beer. It's also not uncommon for the beer to be a pony, i.e., a smaller glass, often called, quite literally, small beer.

Again, working man's drink in working men's bars. Part of the idea was that the boilermaker would be the house special, a fixed price, and usually the cheapest way to drink at that establishment, save for quaffing the house draft all night. I've never known it to be served with the shot in the beer glass and never knew many people who liked to drink it that way. The shot in the beer I've also heard called a depth charge and now, commonly, a ______-bomb, e.g., Jager Bomb.

Again, in the tradition of working men's bars, if you were drinking straight whiskey, period, you were probably looking to get plastered as quickly as possible and wanted to be left alone. The shot-and-a-beer call was an indicator of sociability.

Personally, I might get a beer back when I feel like a whiskey but I'm also thirsty, though I probably get water back most of the time. Sometimes, though, there's nothing quite so refreshing as chasing a good whiskey with a cold lager.

In a working men's bar, whiskey rocks, whiskey and water, whiskey and soda, etc., would have been considered effete or pretentious, that being the way whiskey was taken among the middle and upper classes, the middle class being nothing but a bunch of aspiring snobs anyway.

A little bit higher class call for the exact same thing is to order a whiskey with a beer chaser. You just don't hear that word--"chaser"--much these days, though it was common in my youth. I can recall bars where the beer chaser was assumed, and provided at no additional cost, so you had to speak up if you did not want it.

What whiskey? It would depend on where you were drinking. Certainly in the South it would be bourbon. Pre-prohibition it would have been rye in a lot of places. In the Northeast it might be blended whiskey or even scotch or Irish. In the midwest it might be Canadian.

It's never been wrong to ask the bartender to show you what's in the well, within reason of course.

How the shot/beer combo picked up the name "boilermaker" is unclear. My theory is that boilermakers, as skilled craftsmen, would have been the highest paid workers patronizing a particular bar, and may have been the only ones who could regularly afford to alternate whiskey with beer throughout the evening. If you ordered a whiskey and a beer you were "drinking like a boilermaker," and eventually that became the bar call.

A Question for Craft Distillers: Where’s the Craft?

All of a sudden, in the past few years, small "micro" distilleries have popped up all over the country. The first ones were associated with wineries and made brandy. More recently, and in much greater numbers, people with brewery backgrounds have begun to make grain spirits.

There is no question that these operations are universally small. A few years back, one of the big distilleries tried to pose as micro, but was quickly exposed. No, the micro distilleries really are little.

But are they really craft? Are they truly artisanal?

In most cases, the answer is no. If you add the word "traditional" to the equation, that no is even more emphatic.

To reach that conclusion, compare the practices of micro-distillers to those of America’s big distilled spirits producers, whiskey-makers such as Jim Beam, Jack Daniel’s, and Wild Turkey; rum-makers such as Bacardi and Cruzan; and brandy-makers such as Gallo, Christian Brothers, and Paul Masson. Who employs more craft, those big guys or the micros?

This critique is not across the board. A small number of craft distillers take a back-to-basics approach, with no short cuts. More common are the ones who put a lot of craft emphasis on one or two parts of the process, but also use short cuts. An even larger number use every short cut they can to make products that barely meet minimum legal requirements for distilled spirits, let alone qualify as craft or artisanal.

One issue is ingredients. Rum, by law, is a distilled spirit made from sugar cane, but for hundreds of years the actual base material in rum production has been molasses, a by-product along the way from cane juice to table sugar. Molasses can be hard to handle. It’s much easier to dissolve table sugar in water and ferment that, which many so-called craft distillers do. Bacardi and Cruzan don’t, they use molasses.

But at least the table sugar-users do their own fermentation. Many of the micro distillers who make whiskey buy their wash—beer before it has been hopped and carbonated—-from a brewery. Of necessity, this means they are making malt whiskey, like they do in Scotland and Ireland, rather than corn whiskey like Jim, Jack, and all those other guys do here.

You can’t entirely blame them. It’s what their fledgling trade association tells them to do. "Why reinvent the wheel?" asks Bill Owens, President of the American Distilling Institute.

He recommends that you put your distillery next to a brewery, contract with them for wash, and start making whiskey. There’s nothing wrong with that idea, except where is the craft in buying your way past two-thirds of the process? It’s exactly like buying frozen bread dough, baking it in your oven, and calling yourself an artisan bakery.

Every industrial-scale, grain-based distiller in America, from the makers of Kentucky bourbon, to vodka-makers, to the folks who make fuel ethanol for cars, starts the process with whole grain, but not Bill’s guys. How come?

Micro distillers who make brandy and rum don’t mind fermenting, but it’s harder with grain. Fruit juice and molasses are fermentable just as they are, but grain starch is not. It must be converted. For that you need enzymes. In Scotland, the law requires distillers to use endogenous enzyme systems only. That’s a fancy way of saying you have to use malt, which is barley that has been malted, i.e., sprouted, to produce the necessary enzymes.

Some large American whiskey distillers use supplemental enzymes, which are permitted here but not universally used. No one has abandoned endogenous enzyme systems altogether except micro distillers, not because it’s better—-it isn’t-—but because it’s easier.

Another issue is equipment. Most micro distillers make a big deal about how they use pot stills, not column stills. What they actually use are hybrid stills. They are batch process, like pot stills, but instead of an alembic (the simple, one-piece still top that’s shaped like a tear drop), their pots are topped by...columns, exactly like the ones that give column stills their name.

Part of the problem is that these hybrid stills aren’t designed to make whiskey the way Americans make whiskey. They are European and designed to make brandy and other fruit spirits. They will distill a grain wash okay, into whiskey or even vodka if that’s what you want, but they can’t handle an American distiller’s beer, which contains husks and other undissolved grain solids. Even a wash made from corn and rye, instead of just malt, will give these stills fits.

Then there’s aging. Except for vodka and other clear spirits, most distilled spirits are aged in oak barrels, typically for years, occasionally for decades. Most micro-distillers can’t wait that long, so they sell unaged or very lightly aged products. There’s nothing wrong with that. There always have been unaged and young spirits sold, but aging is another part of the craft and most micro distillers give it short shrift. Virtually all bourbon whiskey is aged for more than four years. I know of only one micro distillery whiskey aged that long and it costs $300 a bottle.

It gets worse. Some micro distillers don’t make anything. They buy bulk spirits and bottle them. They have a distillery, or plan to; it’s making something, or will soon. The bulk goods are just a bridge until their own product is ready for sale, they say, but several have been saying that for years and not exactly publicizing how the only product they sell is one they didn’t make and probably can never duplicate.

The moral of this story is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, especially if you think you are buying an artisanal product and that matters to you. Do some research, ask questions, be skeptical. Most producers won’t lie to you outright, but you have to ask the right questions and listen to the answers very carefully.

Do these practices make these distillers, or their products, bad? Not necessarily, but that’s not the question. The question is, are these practices craft? Are they artisanal? Are they traditional? That’s where many of these new micro distilleries have issues.

I'm Trying to Start a Trend.

Whiskey is one of those English words—like aging, center, color, maneuver, and many others—that Americans and Brits spell differently. American writers often struggle to use the British spelling when referring to scotch whiskey (i.e., 'whisky,' no 'e'). UK writers occasionally return the favor. An American would never think of spelling color with a 'u' just because the subject is colors used by an English painter, for example. Why should whiskey be any different?

I'm trying to start a trend in which American publications spell whiskey the American way, regardless of the type of whiskey being discussed. I would expect publications in Canada or the UK to do the same, favoring their spelling.

The sole exception would be that when stating the proper name of a specific product, the word will be spelled the way the producer spells it, and also be capitalized as befits a proper name.

Example: That sure was some good scotch whiskey.

Example: Pass me another drink of that Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky.

Why do I think a change of practice is needed? The problem is that maintenance of the dual spelling protocol suggests that "whiskey" and "whisky" are two different words with different meanings when they are not. There is no definition difference between them. They are merely alternative spellings, with one preferred in the United States and the other preferred in Great Britain, along with a long list of other words about which nobody has this problem.

However, the maintenance of this pained protocol, which leads us to write things like "whisk(e)y" to feel like we're covering the category with a single word, also leads many people to conclude that, in fact, they are two different words with two different meanings, and they imagine all sorts of nutty distinctions.