2. Appearance and Aroma Appearance |
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Appearance
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Pour in a measure of whisky - about an ounce or a generous finger's breadth. Hold the glass to the light, or against a white napkin, and admire its colour, depth and clarity. New spirit is gin-clear; 20 years in sherry wood may turn the whisky the colour of treacle. Between these poles is a spectrum of hues.
The whisky's appearance should be a guide to how it has been matured, and for how long, since the colour comes from the wood. A very dark sherry will almost certainly have been matured in a first-fill oloroso cask; a very pale one suggests a third or fourth fill bourbon hogshead. Remember that unless you are drinking whisky which has been drawn from a single cask, a number of different casks (from three to three hundred) will have been vatted together. TTo confuse the issue further, distillers are allowed to add small amounts of colouring (in the form of caramel) in order to ensure that each batch looks the same as the next. They claim this is tasteless; many people think otherwise. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| A word on clarity. Most whiskies are 'chill-filtered' prior to bottling. On the bottling line the spirit's temperature is reduced close to freezing, in which state a number of 'impurities' can be filtered out. The reason for this is that these 'impurities' cause the whisky to go very slightly cloudy, when water (and especially ice) is added. Unfortunately, the 'impurities' are also flavour elements, and would be better left in. So if the whisky is slightly opaque it will have come straight from the cask, hand filtered only. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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 2. Appearance and Aroma 3. Taste and Finish 4. Examples of Tasting Notes
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 6. Create your own Tasting Notes 7. Tasting Remarks and Discussion 8. Create a visual tasting Star. |