Whiskey love
Hi, I’m Whiskey Pam.
I’m not sure exactly when my love affair with whiskey began. Let’s go ahead and blame my mom. Not in a Sigmund Freud “tell me about your mother” kind of way, but rather, let’s blame my mom’s spectacular chocolate chip cookies. I can bake my butt off, but still have yet to duplicate her cookies, even knowing now that the secret ingredient was always a splash of whiskey. Year after year, I savored that magic combination on my taste buds: chocolate, nuts, brown sugar, love, tradition… and whiskey.
My parents didn’t drink whiskey, so that sad, dusty bottom-shelf bottle sat in the liquor cabinet for the duration of my childhood, dispensed a tablespoon at a time on baking days. Until the day, decades later, when my brother and I, ahem, “liberated” it during a family poker tournament that went late into the night.
It was not very good whiskey. But that’s what ice is for, right?
I drank Jack Daniels for years, in shot glasses or on the rocks, not really knowing there was more to discover. But then a Scottish friend of mine hosted a Scotch tasting that changed everything for me. He lined up the classic malts, one for each region, as well as some more unusual offerings. He educated us on the flavor profiles and totally let a roomful of friends “taste” (i.e., drink up) his Scotch whisky. That, my friends, is a very good friend to have.
Oh, did you see what I did there? Whisky, not whiskey. Because it’s Scotch. The spelling varies by region. I’ll use both, depending on the region. “Whiskey” when referring to American or Irish offerings. “Whisky” for the Scots and Canadians. I’ll use whiskey as the generic term because I’m American, even though the part of me that desperately wishes I were Scottish really wants to drop the e.
I was a single malt snob for years, back when that was the trendy thing to be. Lagavulin 16 was my Scotch of choice, with its heavy peat and smoke. Less smack-you-over-the-head than Laphroaig 10 (which a friend affectionately called barbequed Scotch), but still distinctively Islay. Family and friends who traveled abroad brought me back bottles of the double matured “Distiller’s Edition” Scotches that weren’t available in the States then. I loved being able to offer friends a dram of a whisky they couldn’t just buy themselves at the liquor store.
I never lost my love of smoke but over time I came to appreciate the more subtle fruit, spice, and sweetness of Scotches like Glenmorangie and Balvenie, and those became my entry into the world of bourbon. Maybe that’s backwards for an American, but that’s how it happened for me.
Now bourbon is flying off the shelves as fast as distillers can age it or dye it brown to pretend they have aged it, and I am joyfully riding that wave as well. The small batch bourbon boom is bringing a craft element to whiskey, a trend that makes me do a happy dance. Which, no, I will not be doing on video. There’s not enough bourbon in the world, people. (That’s not true. It could totally happen. Like if I score a bottle of Pappy this year.)
Because of this craft whiskey boom, one can buy artisanal whiskey made from quinoa or blue corn. Many distillers, both large and small, are producing single barrel offerings. It’s a very good time to be a girl who’s into whiskey.
So I’ll be talking whiskey here. Scotch, bourbon, rye, craft whiskeys, tasting notes, comparisons, paraphernalia and the fabulous affectations, cocktails, history, and whatever is hot in the whiskey world. I may also talk about some other spirits from time to time, especially complex sipping libations that I think will appeal to whiskey-drinkers. But whiskey is my first love. Or maybe cookies.
If you have whiskey questions, or a particular whiskey you would like to see reviewed, please ask! And for more whiskey news, follow me on Twitter.
When Pam isn’t living some imaginary fabulous whiskey lifestyle, she can be found hanging at home in her PJs with her husband and school-aged twins, or driving her glamorous minivan shuttling the kids to dance and gymnastics. She also writes a blog focusing on self-love, body acceptance, and being a mom at Pam-a-rama ding dong. With the more lucrative half of her brain, she works as a statistician and scientific writer. Follow her on Facebook (facebook.com/whiskeypam) and Twitter (@pamdesmond)!