Learning to taste

As I embark on my bourbon journey, of course the goal is to try as many bourbons and other whiskies as possible. For now I am mostly concentrating on bourbon. I have tried about a dozen so far, and I am getting a little frustrated. Part if this is the nature of bourbon. In order for a spirit to be called bourbon, it must follow a fairly strict recipe/process. Since all bourbons follow these guidelines, it is difficult for them to produce something distinctive and clearly different from each other. The variances are subtle, especially to a new taster. I expressed this frustration in a post on the straightbourbon.com message board. The members there gave me some good advice. First was patience. Many of the experienced tasters there said that it took them six months to develop the ability to pick out nuances in different bourbons.

The second piece of advise I received was to develop the ability to isolate the 'rye' content of a bourbon. Some bourbons have a higher rye content than others. By conducting side by side tasting of these different bourbons, I was able to start to differentiate between bourbons for the first time. The first side by side tasting I did was Makers Mark (actually a wheated bourbon) and Wild Turkey 101 (high rye). The difference was clear. I am making progress! I even bought a bottle of straight rye whiskey (Rittenhouse) to compare the heavy rye flavor to my other bourbons.

Wheat is the other ingredient that is easy to isolate with a little practice. Examples of wheated bourbons are: Makers Mark, W. L. Weller and Pappy Van Winkle.